The One That Rankles the Most (Updated: She got in!)

[I originally published this post before its subject was inducted, which she was in 2021.]

I promised myself that I would not discuss specific or individual acts, but keep this blog about genres and subgenres which are unfairly (if they are) excluded from the Rock Hall.

But there is one person I really feel I need to talk about: Tina Turner.

Yes, she is inducted, but as part of a doubles act—  with Ike.

And I feel that she more than deserves an individual induction for her much-longer solo career. Now, that’s true of several other acts who are also in only as part of a band, and not as solo artists.

What is specifically upsetting in Turner’s case is her well-known mistreatment by Ike. And it is beyond upsetting to me that she had to work as hard as she did to be free of him… only to find her name linked to his, for eternity, in the annals of the Hall.

Inducting Tina Turner as a solo artist would send a very clear message that the Hall recognizes her as a person, as an artist with boatloads of talent and sterling integrity.

The Hall already has received a lot of criticism for not including more women. Tina Turner is a shoo-in. She is universally beloved. She had a bio-pic movie way before some of the other Inductees. And she lives in Europe, so her induction would be worldwide news. She's already in her 80s, so the clock is ticking loudly here.

If you want ratings for your Induction broadcasts, I bet you could get Oprah, an avowed fan, to induct her. In case you needed more incentive to right this wrong, or to induce Turner to fly from Switzerland to the States for a statuette.

Update: Turner has been nominated for solo induction for 2021. 

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/tina-turner-should-be-in-the-rock-hall/

Update: She got Inducted in 2021! At least she was alive to know about it.

This documentary was released prior to her Induction, and no doubt helped that Induction happen: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8399720/

Also, she won the Fan Vote. I will have to see how much this, historically, has helped acts get Inducted, but I doubt it could hurt: https://www.vulture.com/2021/05/tina-turner-wins-2021-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-fan-vote.html

Longshots and Critical Darlings

In linguistics, there are two main schools of thought. Prescriptivists would say that “alright” is unacceptable, since it should be “all right.” Descriptivists would say “alright” is… fine, because so many people have used it for so long, it has become acceptable. 

So the question is… what is the purpose of the Rock Hall? To tell people which rock acts are important, or to reflect which acts the people themselves already think are important?

Since its very inception, the Rock Hall has been about prescription, not description. It is run by experts, we are told, who really know which acts are really important for us to know about and listen to.

And that’s fine. After all, the acts that are on the radio and loudspeakers in public places and in superhero movie soundtracks… you already know about those. They are easy to find out about. You don’t have to attend a class or visit a museum— just sit down, turn on the closest music-playing tech, and there they are.

If museums serve a function at all, it’s to educate. And that means telling you things you don’t know, and can’t learn from the TV and radio.

If they serve another function, it’s to preserve history. In pop-culture, “history” is last week. Come on, name last year’s winner for Best Picture at the Oscars.

There is a story about a boy on an archaeological dig in the Middle East. He excitedly shows the dig’s leader a pottery shard he found, with some writing on it. “Nice,” says the leader. “That’s 200 years old.” The boy gets even more excited, until the leader says, “You can keep it. We’re looking for things that are 2,000 years old.”

But this not rock science, it’s rock music, which has been around less time than some people still living. Still, even music that’s 25 years old is… “old” in music terms.

Once, in the mid-’00s, my own wife referred to a 1980’s song as “old.” I took umbrage; I listen to that era’s music, but also jazz and blues from the 1930s, folk music that’s even older, and classical that’s older yet. “No,” I said, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic is an ‘old’ song. That song on the radio is younger than you, and I am not married to an ‘old’ woman.”

So it’s important to tell people about music they don’t know, whether it’s because it was always obscure, only popular among a certain group of people, or— gasp— made before they were born!

On the other hand, if the Rock Hall did not induct bands people know, they wouldn’t sell any tickets. It’s a balance.

There is a book I have called The Rock Snob’s Dictionary. I suppose I am to a degree a musical snob. But because I am, I can introduce my kids to music their friends can’t. I know what songs the songs on the radio sampled, or plagiarized, from. When my kid doesn’t recognize, say, a sitar in a song, I can tell him that’s what it is.

It’s the job of the experts in the Hall to tell us what, and who, we don’t know, not to just echo what’s popular. “Fame” runs both ways. It can be a “hall of the already-famous,” or a “the famous-because-they-are-in-the-Hall.”

A TV station once advertised the reruns they broadcast by saying, “If you haven’t seen an episode, it’s new to you!” even if it is, you know, old. And education is about what’s new to you, even of it is “already knew” to others.

So there should be at least one inductee every year that makes people go, “Who?” Because the next step after that can be, “Well, if they got in, they must be pretty good! I’m gonna go check ’em out.” Which is when the preservation and education happen.

And that’s pretty damn alright.

Update: Todd Rundgren got Inducted in 2021. 

Did We Run Out of Early Influences Already?

As with the Non-Performers/Ertegun Award, the Hall seems to have lost steam in giving out the Early Influences Award.

It was given every year, from the inaugural year— 1986— to 2000.

Then, not for nine years, until 2009. It can be understood if, during that time, people just assumed that anyone worth receiving it already had.

But then, they started giving it again… every three years, for some reason: 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018…

In fairness, it is potentially possible to run out of people who one can say both lived before rock music was a “thing” and also contributed to its development. Reasonably speaking, they would have had to be active between 1920 (the early days of blues and jazz) and 1950, probably in the US… and have not just performed, but likely recorded and been broadcast somewhat widely.

Still, it’s hard to fathom that-- even with those narrow parameters-- only 33 people qualify.

Rock pulls from so many other genres, and in so many ways. Rock is not just about the music— it’s about stage presence, dance moves, costuming, vocal inflections, and that rock attitude and energy that electrify.

Certainly, we can look across a three-decade span in one of the most musically fertile places in world history and come up with someone every year to who contributed to rock music.

I have an idea. The Hall began inductions in 1986, and as of this post's first posting, it has inducted the class of 2020. That’s 34 years of inductions. And, as of 2020, there are 33 Early Influencers.

So let’s call that “close enough for jazz” and just say that the Hall has inducted, at least on average, one Early Influence per year.

How’s about, then, going forward, they induct one more Early Influence every year, to keep the average going… until they really run out.

https://www.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/erry-2018/11/53debedacc4690/rock-roll-hall-of-fame-20-earl.html

Update: in 2022, they Inducted music preservationist Elizabeth Cotten, who like Pete Seeger kept the old songs alive by always singing them. 

In 2023, Link Wray, an early rocker, was inducted as an Earl Influence after multiple nominations.

The Non-Heavy Side of Soul

While there seem to be rock acts that rock too hard for the Rock Hall to induct, soul does not have that problem. Lots of heavy R&B, soul, and funk acts are in. More could be, and should be, inducted— but the objection does not seem to be that they are too heavy.

No, for soul, the problem is the opposite. If a R&B, soul, or funk act is not heavy enough, that’s a problem for the Hall.

Thing is, lots of acts on the lighter side of R&B and/or soul are hugely popular. Their hits have remained the mainstays of party-DJ set lists for fifty years in some cases.

To say they were not influential is also ridiculous. Much of today’s music owes its existence to those acts. They have been covered and sampled endlessly.

Lighter rock, disco, and pop are in. So the idea that there needs to be some sort of heaviness to achieve worthiness or authenticity? Nah.

Think of the concerts during the induction ceremony once these bands start getting in... Getting asses in seats is only going to be hard because they will all be up boogie-ing.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-snubs-randb-legends-like-janet-jackson

Update: Tina Turner got Inducted in 2021, as did Billy Preston, with an Award for Musical Excellence. And then Lionel Richie got Inducted, in 2022.