The suggested attire for the 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, held on Thursday night at the Barclays Center, was “rock-and-roll black tie.” On the floor, where people drank champagne and the air smelled of chocolate-covered strawberries, this resulted in Slash-style top hats on women, velvet jackets, and the occasional leather fedora; elsewhere, members of the Kiss Army, dotted throughout the arena like aging Juggalos, wore black-and-white face paint. The year’s inductees—Peter Gabriel, Kiss, Cat Stevens, Linda Ronstadt, Hall and Oates, the E Street Band, and Nirvana, as well as the managers Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham—united a crowd that doesn’t hang out together much.
The mood of the induction ceremony, held annually, tends to fall somewhere between Oscar night and group therapy. The award’s structure—artists become eligible twenty-five years after their first record comes out—has anguish built into it. Old lineups are reunited, grievances are referenced, absent heroes are celebrated, haters are goaded. It’s a chance for redemption, often perceived as too little, too late. Recently, the scale of the angst-in has expanded: the ceremony, long held at the Waldorf-Astoria, or at the hall itself, in Cleveland, or in Los Angeles, was trying an arena, and the hordes were feisty. At the start of the show, Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone and co-founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was booed, presumably by Kiss fans, angry that Kiss had been denied entry for so long. In 2014, the Hall of Fame is in need of some redemption, too.
The night began, as so much did, in the Cavern Club: early footage of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and their managers, Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham. (Epstein died in 1967. Oldham, in a noble stance—if not quite as noble as the Sex Pistols’, in 1996—didn’t attend.) “He brilliantly positioned the ‘dangerous’ Stones as the cultural antithesis of the lovable Beatles…. The idea of your daughter marrying a Rolling Stone was a horrific prospect,” Peter Asher said of Oldham, in his induction speech. “Today, of course, she would be marrying into the aristocracy.”
Peter Gabriel was inducted by the very cheerful Chris Martin, of Coldplay. “I’d like to read from the Book of Genesis,” Martin said, beaming. (“And the angel Gabriel said to Phil the Collins … I am going solo. Ye shall be the singer of Genesis now.’ ”) One takeaway: if we’ve been worrying about Chris Martin, we can direct our energies elsewhere. Gabriel performed a few songs, including a loose, warm version of “In Your Eyes,” with Youssou N’Dour, which threatened to turn into a jam.
No sooner had the light, the heat died out than a huge plume of fire shot up onscreen: there was nineteen-seventies Kiss, in full makeup, with the crouching, lizardlike Gene Simmons delightedly spitting fake blood. Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine, inducted them. “They are four of the most recognizable faces on the planet,” he began. Later, he said, “It was not easy being a Kiss fan. Just as Kiss were relentlessly persecuted by critics, their fans were relentlessly persecuted by the self-appointed arbiters of taste in middle schools and high schools across America.”
“Because they suck, man,” a man in the audience muttered.
Morello, getting worked up, said that the criteria for inclusion should be “impact, influence, and awesomeness,” and argued for Kiss’s domination of each category (“over a hundred million albums worldwide!”; “Slipknot! Garth Brooks! Pantera!”; “One guy belching fire and spraying blood!”).
Kiss’s critics and its fans weren’t the only ones at loggerheads. The band, fighting over which incarnation of itself should play, had chosen not to perform at all. Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley, and Peter Criss took the stage in suits, without makeup—four of the planet’s somewhat less recognizable faces—and stood in front of projections of the Demon, the Spaceman, the Cat, and the Starchild. “We are humbled,” Simmons said. Stanley took the mike. “We’re being inducted for the things we were kept out for,” he said. “The People don’t want to be spoon-fed. The People buy tickets and albums. The people who nominate do not.” The People roared.
Kiss left the stage, and the People, somewhat agitated, found themselves listening to “Moonshadow,” by Cat Stevens. Art Garfunkel appeared at the lectern. “We’re rockers!” he said, of himself and Stevens, who now goes by Yusuf Islam. (He performs as Yusuf.) Garfunkel sang parts of “Here Comes My Baby” and “Morning Has Broken,” and said, smirking, “This guy’s better than Paul Simon.” He added, “All the girls I took out were Cat Stevens fans.” He concluded with an homage to his friend’s political consciousness (“What’s really going on in this spinning ball in space? Syria, the Congo…”). That day, Salman Rushdie had tweeted about a different angle of Yusuf’s political consciousness: a link to the 1989 Times article “Cat Stevens Gives Support to Call for Death of Rushdie.”
Not surprisingly, the fatwa issue went undiscussed. Yusuf praised “the all-knowing, who made us all” and sang “Father and Son,” “Wild World,” and “Peace Train,” in front of projections of a forest. Men in polo shirts and parkas stood and swayed, as if in a megachurch. “God bless! Peace!” Yusuf said.
“It’s So Easy,” at that point, came as a relief. Onscreen was young Linda Ronstadt, singing with a flower in her hair. At the mike, Glenn Frey, her old bandmate, said, “It’s about time!” Ronstadt wasn’t there—she, too, doesn’t care about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But it’s been a year of Ronstadt appreciation—the news of her Parkinson’s diagnosis, coupled with the passing of time, had emboldened her devotees and humbled her detractors (chief complaint: she didn’t write her own songs), and the Ronstadt Army had had its way. This resulted in an arena full of Kiss and Springsteen fans listening to Carrie Underwood sing “Different Drum” (brassy, “Idol”-ish, but competent: she pulled off the big “Goodbye” at the end). Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris sang “Blue Bayou,” Sheryl Crow sang “You’re No Good,” and Stevie Nicks sang “It’s So Easy,” with the others, Frey included, singing backup. They all sang “When Will I Be Loved.” Harris, Raitt, and Nicks brought the right vibes; Crow and Underwood hit the hardest notes. Together, they formed a composite Ronstadt.
Then we were looking at Bruce Springsteen, lean, tan, hair mussed into a flame shape, ghost of a goatee on his chin. “In the beginning, there was ‘Mad Dog’ Vini Lopez,” he said. He talked about every member of the E Street Band (“My consigliere, my comic foil, my blood, blood, blood brother”) and said, “I told a story with the E Street Band that was, and is, bigger than I ever could have told on my own.” He expressed regret for not pushing to have the band inducted when he himself was, sixteen years ago. Then the inductees spoke for almost an hour, lovingly thanking all of their family members and associates. Finally, they played—“The E Street Shuffle,” “The River,” and “Kitty’s Back.” It was uplifting, after the other performances, to be in the hands of this family, this bar band turned kings. But forty years of the Springsteen story, with music, was too much to wedge into an eighth of an evening.
Questlove, proud Philadelphian, inducted Hall and Oates. The duo, widely accepted as great, has also been mocked (for being white soul singers, for veering into eighties bad taste). Questlove didn’t mention this, but his tone defended them a bit. “There is not a person here who didn’t sing along with them when they came on the radio,” he said. “There is not a person here who didn’t own ‘Rock ‘N Soul Part 1.’ I’m still patiently waiting for Part 2.”
“I bet you’re glad there are only two of us,” John Oates said. The arena laughed its head off, applauding. Veering between grateful and chippy, Hall complained about being the only Philly act in the Hall of Fame. “That’s fucked up! There should be more Philadelphia artists in this place. Now I want to go play.”
After a feedback issue—more angst, resulting in Hall yelling into the darkness about his monitors—they played “She’s Gone.” It was gorgeous. But Hall couldn’t sing high notes, of which there are plenty in “She’s Gone,” as well as in the next songs, “I Can’t Go for That” and “You Make My Dreams Come True.” Like the Ronstadt songs, they provoked admiration, wistfulness, a bit of melancholy.
The mystery lingering over the whole event, in the months preceding as well as that night, was the mystery of Nirvana. Inducted in its first year of eligibility, Nirvana hadn’t been subject to controversy about its artistic relevance; even by Tom Morello’s standards, there’s no doubt that Nirvana belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My generation talks about hearing “Nevermind” for the first time, and seeing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on MTV, the way our parents talk about seeing the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show”: people remember where they were, when it was, and how they felt. Nirvana changed the cultural landscape, then ended abruptly, with Kurt Cobain’s suicide, in 1994. The mystery: What would Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic sound like in 2014, playing Nirvana’s music, after twenty years without him?
“Good evening. I’m Michael Stipe,” Stipe said. He talked about the artist’s role in helping people see themselves more clearly (a point made about R.E.M. in its own induction), and about how Nirvana’s music blasted through late-eighties disaffectedness with “crystalline, nuclear rage” and showed a “sweet and beautiful but fed-up fury, coupled with howling vulnerability.” He said, “Nirvana defined a movement for outsiders: for the fags, for the fat girls, for the broken toys, the shy nerds, the goth kids from Tennessee and Kentucky, for the rockers and the awkward, for the fed-up, the too-smart kids, and the bullied.”
Grohl and Novoselic took the stage as “Drain You” played. Their manner was grateful and kind. Grohl thanked the four Nirvana drummers who’d come before him (“Guess what Chad’s responsible for? If you listen to a song like ‘In Bloom’—bah, yah, GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH!—that’s Chad!”) Novoselic said, “I want to say thank you to Kurt Cobain, and I wish Kurt was here tonight, O.K.?” Cobain’s mother, Wendy Cobain, said, “He’d be so proud. He’d say he wasn’t, but he would be. I just miss him so much. He was such an angel.” Courtney Love hugged Grohl and Novoselic.
“We’re going to have a few ladies joining us tonight,” Novoselic said. Joan Jett came onstage. Then: the solo guitar riff that begins “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” followed by Grohl’s furious drumming. Jett, singing in front of a projection of Cobain, sounded powerful, sexy, and creepy. Grohl, whaling on his drums, hunched forward, long hair flying, looked and sounded just like he did in the nineties. People in the stadium jumped and danced. “A mosquito! My libido!” Jett sang. It was cathartic; when the song was over, you wanted to hear “In Bloom,” and Chad’s drum parts, and the rest of the album. Kim Gordon, in Cobain-esque stripes, sang a screamy version of “Aneurysm”; Annie Clark sang “Lithium”; Lorde did a lugubrious “All Apologies,” with Gordon on bass. Nirvana—Grohl and Novoselic and friends—sounded as definitive as ever.
The induction ceremony was five and a half hours long. At the night’s end, Nirvana—who had suffered more than any other inductee, and had complained about nothing—brought everybody to a higher plane. Hearing Nirvana there felt much the way hearing Nirvana had in the first place, circa “Bleach” and “Nevermind.” It was the sound of joy, rage, crisis, calm, love, vitality: the reason we love rock and roll.
Above: Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, St. Vincent, and Lorde, who played with Nirvana. Photograph by Theo Wargo/WireImage/Getty.
