Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – Class of 2014

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2014 was an interesting mix of musical styles.  Let’s take a quick look at the inductees and celebrate their accomplishments.

Peter Gabriel

Peter, already inducted as a member of Genesis was an obvious choice.  I’ve picked Here Comes The Flood from his first solo album, to celebrate his indiction.

Here Comes The Flood – Peter Gabriel

Kiss

Kiss was my guilty pleasure during the 70s and I saw them live multiple times.  To this day they were the most entertaining act I have ever seen.  Today, I’m featuring Beth from, the Destroyer album, which was sung by drummer Peter Kriss and shows a softer side of the group.

Beth – Destroyer

I was impressed by the induction speech for the group by Tom Morello so I included it for your review.

Good evening, I’m Tom Morello.

They are four of the most recognizable faces on the planet, and one of the most iconic and badass bands of all time—tonight is the night that Kiss enters the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Growing up, Kiss was my favorite band—and 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. Arguments and even fistfights were not uncommon. I recall as a 15-year-old telling one bully, “You can kiss my Kiss-loving ass!” because Kiss was never a critics’ band, Kiss was a PEOPLE’s band. And so I waited in a long line on a bitter cold Chicago morning to buy a ticket for my first concert, a Kiss concert. I was especially thrilled because imprinted on the ticket were words that hinted that it was going to be a special event. The ticket said “A partial view of Kiss.” I was certain this meant the band were going to reveal some new secret corner of their artistic souls. In reality it meant that my seat was behind a pole. Still, that concert was the most exciting, cathartic, loudest and most thrilling two hours of live music I’ve seen to this day.

Nirvana

I was older by the time that Nirvana burst onto the scene in the 90’s so I was never a big fan; however, their talent and influence on music is undeniable.  Let’s listen to a great unplugged performance Come as You are from 1993.  While you are listening you can read Michael Stipe’s induction speech for the group

Come As You Are – Unplugged 1993

Good evening. I’m Michael Stipe and I’m here to induct Nirvana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

When an artists offers an idea, a perspective, it helps us all to see who we are. And it wakes up, and it pushes us forward towards our collective and individual potential. It makes us — each of us — able to see who we are more clearly. It’s progression and progressive movement. It’s the future staring us down in the present and saying, “C’mon, let’s get on with it. Here we are. Now.”

I embrace the use of the word “artist” rather than “musician” because the band Nirvana were artists in every sense of the word. It is the highest calling for an artist, as well as the greatest possible privilege to capture a moment, to find the zeitgeist, to expose our struggles, our aspirations, our desires. To embrace and define a period of time. That is my definition of an artist.

Nirvana captured lightning in a bottle. And now, per the dictionary — off the Internet — in defining “lightning in a bottle” as, “Capturing something powerful and elusive, and then being able to hold it and show it to the world.”

Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl were Nirvana. The legacy and the power of their defining moment has become, for us, indelible. Like my band, R.E.M., Nirvana came from a most unlikely place. Not a cultural city-center like London, San Francisco, Los Angeles or even New York — or Brooklyn — but from Aberdeen, Washington in the Pacific Northwest, a largely blue-collar town just outside of Seattle.

Krist Novoselic said Nirvana came out of the American hardcore scene of the 1980s — this was a true underground. It was punk rock, where the many bands or musical styles were eclectic. We were a product of a community of youth looking for a connection away from the mainstream. The community built structures outside of the corporate, governmental sphere, independent and decentralized. Media connected through the copy machine, a decade before the Internet, as we know it, came to be. This was social networking in the face.

Dave Grohl said, “We were drop-outs, making minimum wage, listening to vinyl, emulating our heroes — Ian MacKaye, Little Richard — getting high, sleeping in vans, never expecting the world to notice.”

Solo artists almost have it easier than bands — bands are not easy. You find yourself in a group of people who rub each other the wrong way and exactly the right way. And you have chemistry, zeitgeist, lightning in a bottle and a collective voice to help pinpoint a moment, to help understand what it is that we’re going through. You see this is about community and pushing ourselves. Nirvana tapped into a voice that was yearning to be heard.

Keep in mind the times: This was the late Eighties, early Nineties. America, the idea of a hopeful, democratic country, had been practically dismantled by Iran-Contra, by AIDS, by the Reagan/Bush Sr. administrations.

But with their music, their attitude, their voice, by acknowledging the political machinations of petty but broad-reaching, political arguments, movements and positions that had held us culturally back, Nirvana blasted through all that with crystalline, nuclear rage and fury. Nirvana were kicking against the system, bringing complete disdain for the music industry and their definition of corporate, mainstream America, to show a sweet and beautiful — but fed-up — fury, coupled with howling vulnerability.

Lyrically exposing our frailty, our frustrations, our shortcomings. Singing of retreat and acceptance over triumphs of an outsider community with such immense possibility, stymied or ignored, but not held down or held back by the stupidity and political pettiness of the times. They spoke truth, and a lot of people listened.

They picked up the mantle in that particular battle, but they were singular, and loud, and melodic, and deeply original. And that voice. That voice. Kurt, we miss you. I miss you.

Nirvana defined a moment, 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. We were a community, a generation — in Nirvana’s case, several generations — in the echo chamber of that collective howl, and Allen Ginsberg would have been very proud, here.

That moment and that voice reverberated into music and film, politics, a worldview, poetry, fashion, art, spiritualism, the beginning of the Internet and so many fields in so many ways in our lives. This is not just pop music — this is something much greater than that.

These are a few artists who rub each other the wrong way, and exactly the right way, at the right time: Nirvana. It is my honor to call to the stage Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl.

Hall and Oates

I was a huge Hall and Oates fan early in their career (think Abandoned Luncheonette) but not so much after they moved into their more popular pop phase in the 80’s.  If you weren’t paying close attention in the late 70’s you might have missed their underrated rock album called Beauty on the Backstreet.   Let’s listen to Bad Habits and Infections from that album to celebrate their induction into the Hall.

Bad Habits and Infections – Beauty On The Backstreet

Linda Ronstadt

Linda, Linda, Linda………  It’s about damn time that she finally gets into the Hall of Fame.  To celebrate here is Linda’s great performance of J. D Souther’s Prisoner In Disguise.  By the way, that’s J.D. singing harmony.  If you read Glenn Frey’s induction speech below you will discover that J.D. and Linda were a couple early in her career.

Prisoner In Disguise – Prisoner In Disguise

Hello, everybody. I’m Glenn Frey and it is my great pleasure tonight to induct Linda Ronstadt into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’d like to start by saying it’s about time. It was my selfish wish that Linda would have been inducted in 1998 with the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, the Mamas and Papas and Santana. But that time has passed, the time is now, and Linda’s music and legacy give us so much to celebrate and contemplate.

In the late-1960s, after playing in various folk groups in her hometown of Tuscon, Arizona, Linda moved to Los Angeles and became a member of the Stone Poneys. They made three albums together and had one hit, ‘Different Drum.’ When the group broke up in 1968, ready or not, Linda became a solo artist. I first met Linda in 1970 at the Troubadour bar. For my part, it was love at first sight. There was just one problem: a guitar-slinging, love-rustler from Amarillo, Texas named John David Souther. He beat me to the punch, which would become a pattern throughout our careers — thank God he never met my wife.

So Linda and I, we became friends, and in the spring of 1971, she hired me and a singing drummer from Linden, Texas named Don Henley to play in her back-up band. From the first rehearsal, I felt we were working on a style of music none of us had ever heard before. Two years later, people called it “country-rock.” While touring with Linda that summer, Don and I told her that we wanted to start our own band, and she, more than anyone else, helped us put together the Eagles. That’s right. And later, she gave our careers a big shot in the arm by recording our song, ‘Desperado.’

Between 1969 and 1973, she made four solo albums. They were all really good, but they were laying the groundwork for what would be her breakthrough album, ‘Heart Like a Wheel,’ produced by Peter Asher. 1974 was the first of many magic years in Linda’s career. She found herself in a place that all artists dream of, when the producer and the material, the singer and the players all come together and something otherworldly happens in the recording studio, This was ‘Heart Like a Wheel,’ an album for all-time. The haunting title track, Linda’s deceptively simple arrangement of ‘Guess It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,’ the Hank Williams classic, ‘I Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love With You’ and the smash ‘You’re No Good,’ kept this album in the charts for 51 weeks. And Linda became a star.

Peter and Linda went on to record five more albums, choosing material from songwriters she loved and admired. Songs like ‘Love Is a Rose,’ ‘Tracks of My Tears,’ ‘Heat Wave,’ ‘That’ll Be the Day,’ ‘It’s So Easy,’ ‘Blue Bayou,’ ‘Poor Poor Pitiful Me,’ ‘Tumblin’ Dice,’ ‘Back in the U.S.A.,’ ‘Ooh Baby Baby,’ ‘Blowin’ Away’ and ‘When Will I Be Loved.’

By the end of the 1970s, she was known as “The Queen of Country-Rock.” Uncomfortable with that label — or any other label, for that matter — she longed to break out and try things beyond rock and roll. She went to New York to sing the role of Mabel in Gilbert & Sullivan’s ‘Pirates of Penzance.’ She knocked it out of Central Park, and was nominated for a Tony.

While living and working in New York, she decided to make a jazz album — a standards album, if you will. She teamed with legendary arranger Nelson Riddle and made not one, but three records, each one an impeccable work of musical art. When the first album, ‘What’s New,’ was released, it sold three million copies and spent 81 weeks on the Billboard album chart.

For the longest time, she wanted to sing and record with two dear friends, Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton. They called their partnership ‘Trio,’ and they made two gorgeous records together. When the first Trio album was released, it was certified platinum, it won a Grammy and a CMA.

Always reaching, always stretching, Linda had yet another dream. She wanted to record an album of Mexican songs, sung entirely in Spanish. Her record company freaked out. But she gathered the finest musicians in their field and recorded ‘Canciones de Mi Padre,’ the songs of my father. Upon release in 1987, it went double platinum…in a day. It sold millions of records worldwide and is the biggest-selling non-English language album in American recording history.

I wish I had the time to share with you the fascinating stories, you know, of all the talented people she’s worked with over the years. They’re all part of her music family — Linda’s always been about family.

Linda Ronstadt recorded 31 albums. She sold over 100 million records and had a career that spanned five decades. She has been a shining example and a true inspiration to every woman who ever stood in front of a microphone and sang her heart out. And through it all, she remains nothing but authentic. You see, Linda lives in a place where art trumps commerce, where self-exploration trumps self-exploitation, where hard work and integrity trump fame and failure. She never wanted to be a star, she just wanted to make good music.

Although Linda is now retired and does not travel anymore, she sends you all her very best wishes and a heartfelt “Thank you.” She is one of the greatest voices of all-time, and she shared her voice with beauty, grace and love. So on behalf of your family and your friends, your peers and music fans from all over the world, it’s my honor to say, “Welcome to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Linda Ronstadt!

Cat Stevens

Cat Stevens is an amazing talent and so deserves this honor.  Father and Son, which I have featured below, meant a lot to me back in the 70’s when I was on the “Son” side of the song.  Today it means a lot more to me looking at it from the perspective of the “Father”.

Father and Son – Tea For The Tillerman

The E Street Band

The E Street Band, Bruce’s trusty band of sidekicks finally got the recognition that they deserved this year.  You can’t really appreciate the greatness of the band from a studio track so today I have featured a performance of Jungleland from 1975.  Brilliant!

Jungleland – Live At Hammersmith 1975

Of course there was only one choice to induct the band…..here is what Bruce had to say in his speech……

Good evening. In the beginning, there was Mad Dog Vini Lopez, standing in front of me, fresh out of jail, his head shaved, in the Mermaid Room of the Upstage Club in Asbury Park. He told me he had a money-making outfit called Speed Limit 25, they were looking for a guitarist and was I interested? I was broke, so I was. So the genesis point of the E Street Band was actually a group that Vini Lopez asked me to join to make a few extra dollars on the weekend.

Shortly thereafter, I met Dan Federici. He was draped in three quarter-length leather, had his red hair slicked back with his wife Flo — she was decked out in the blonde, bouffant wig — and they were straight out of Flemington, NJ.

So Vini, Danny, myself, along with bass player Vinnie Roslin, were shortly woodshedding out of a cottage on the main street of a lobster-fishing town: Highlands, NJ. We first saw Garry Tallent along with Southside Johnny when they dragged two chairs onto an empty dance floor as I plugged my guitar into the upstage wall of sound. I was the new kid in a new town, and these were the guys who owned the place. They sat back and looked at me like, “Come on, come on, punk. Bring it. Let’s see what you got.” And I reached back and I burnt their house down.

Garry Tallent’s great bass-playing and Southern gentleman’s presence has anchored my band for 40 years. Thank you, Garry! Thank you, sir.

Then one night, I wandered in the Upstage, and I was dumbstruck by a baby-faced, 16-year-old David Sancious. Davey was very, very unusual: He was a young, black man who — in 1968, Asbury Park, which was not a peaceful place — crossed the tracks in search of musical adventure, and he blessed us with his talent and his love. He was my roomie in the early, two-guys-to-one-six-dollar-motel-room years of the E Street Band. He was good, he kept his socks clean; it was lovely. And he was carrying around a snake around his neck at that time, so I lucked out with Davey as my roommate. [laughs] AND, Davey’s the only member of the group who ever actually lived on E Street!

So I walked in and he was on the club’s organ. And Davey’s reserved now, but at the time, he danced like Sly Stone and he played like Booker T, and he poured out blues and soul and jazz and gospel and rock & roll and he had things in his keyboard that we just never heard before. It was just so full of soul and so beautiful. Davey, we love you, and we still miss you so, you know?

But predating all of this was Steve Van Zandt. Steven: frontman, hitman. I walk into the Middletown Hullabaloo Club; he was the frontman for a band called the Shadows. He had on a tie that went from here down to his feet. All I remember is that he was singing the Turtles’ “Happy Together.” During a break at the Hullabaloo Club in New Jersey, he played 55 minutes on and five minutes off, and if there was a fight, he had to rush onstage and start playing again.

So I met Stevie there and he soon became my bass player first, then lead guitarist. My consigliere, my dependable devil’s advocate whenever I need one. The invaluable ears for everything that I create, I always get ahold of him, and fan number one. So he’s my comic foil onstage, my fellow producer/arranger and my blood, blood, blood, blood, blood brother. Let’s keep rolling for as many lives as they’ll give us, alright?

Years and bands went by: Child, Steel Mill, the Bruce Springsteen Band — they were all some combo of the above-mentioned gang. Then I scored a solo recording contract with Columbia Records, and I argued to get to choose my recording “sidemen,” which was a misnomer, in this case, if there ever was one.

So, I chose my band and my great friends, and we finally landed on E Street — the rare, rock & roll hybrid of solo artistry and a true rock & roll band.

But one big thing was missing … It was a dark and stormy night, a Nor’easter rattled the street lamps on Kingsley Blvd. and in walked Clarence Clemons. I’d been enthralled by the sax sounds of King Curtis and I searched for years for a great rock & roll saxophonist. And that night Clarence walked in, walked towards the stage and he rose, towering to my right on the Prince’s tiny stage, about the size of this podium, and then he unleashed the force of nature that was the sound and the soul of the Big Man. In that moment, I knew that my life had changed. Miss you, love you Big Man. Wish that he was with us tonight. This would mean a great, great deal to Clarence.

An honorable mention and shout-out to Ernie “Boom” Carter. The drummer who played on one song only: “Born to Run.” He picked a good one. So here’s to you, Ernie. Thank you, thank you.

Thanks, of course, Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan, who answered an ad in the Village Voice. And they beat out 60 other drummers and keyboardists for the job. It was the indefatigable, almost dangerously dedicated Mighty Max Weinberg and the fabulous five finger of Professor Roy Bittan. They refined and they defined the sounds of the E Street Band that remains our calling card around the world to this day. Thank you, Roy. Thank you, Max. They are my professional hitmen. I love them both.

Then, 10 years later, Nils Lofgren and Patti Scialfa joined just in time to assist us in the rebirth of Born in the U.S.A. Nils, one of the world’s great, great rock guitarists, with a choir boy’s voice, has given me everything he’s had for the past 30 years. Thank you, Nils. So much love.

And Patti Scialfa — a Jersey Girl — who came down one weekend from New York City and sat in with a local band, Cats on a Smooth Surface and Bobby Bandiera at the Stone Pony, where she sang a killer version of the Exciters’ “Tell ‘Em.” She had a voice that was full of a little Ronnie Spector, a little Dusty Springfield and a lot of something that was her very, very own. After she was done, I walked up, I introduced myself at the back bar, we grabbed a couple of stools and we sat there for the next hour or thirty years or so — talking about music and everything else. So we added my lovely red-headed woman and she broke the boy’s club!

Now, I wanted our band to mirror our audience, and by 1984, that band had grown men and grown women. But, her entrance freaked us out so much that opening night of the Born in the U.S.A. tour, I asked her to come into my dressing room and see what she was gonna wear! So she had on kind of a slightly feminine T-shirt and I stood there, sort of sweating. At my feet, I had a little Samsonite luggage bag that I carried with me, and I kicked it over. It was full of all my smelly, sweaty T-shirts and I said, “Just pick one of these, it’ll be fine.” She’s not wearing one tonight. But Patti, I love you, thank you for your beautiful voice, you changed my band and my life. Thank you for our beautiful children.

So, real bands — real bands are made primarily from the neighborhood. From a real time and real place that exists for a little while, then changes and is gone forever. They’re made from the same circumstances, the same needs, the same hungers, culture. They’re forged in the search of something more promising than what you were born into. These are the elements, the tools, and these are the people who built the place called E Street.

Now, E Street was a dance; was an idea; was a wish; was a refuge; was a home; was a destination; was a gutter dream; and finally, it was a band. We struggled together, and sometimes, we struggled with one another. We bathed in the glory, and often, the heartbreaking confusion of our rewards together. We’ve enjoyed health, and we’ve suffered illness and aging and death together. We took care of one another when trouble knocked, and we hurt one another in big and small ways.

But in the end, we kept faith in each other. And one thing is for certain: As I said before in reference to Clarence Clemons — I told a story with the E Street Band that was, and is, bigger than I ever could have told on my own. And I believe that settles that question.

But that is the hallmark of a rock and roll band — the narrative you tell together is bigger than anyone could have told on your own. That’s the Rolling Stones; the Sex Pistols; that’s Bob Marley and the Wailers. That’s James Brown and His Famous Flames. That’s Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

So, I thank you my beautiful men and women of E Street. You made me dream and love bigger than I could have ever without you. And tonight I stand here with just one regret: that Danny and Clarence couldn’t be with us here tonight.

Sixteen years ago, a few days before my own induction, I stood in my darkened kitchen along with Steve Van Zandt. Steve was just returning to the band after a 15-year hiatus and he was petitioning me to push the Hall of Fame to induct all of us together. I listened, and the Hall of Fame had its rules, and I was proud of my independence. We hadn’t played together in 10 years, we were somewhat estranged, we were just taking the first small steps over reforming. We didn’t know what the future would bring. And perhaps the shadows of some of the old grudges held some sway.

It was a conundrum, as we’ve never quite been fish nor fowl. And Steve was quiet, but persistent. And at the end of our conversation, he just said, “Yeah, I understand. But Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band — that’s the legend.”

So I’m proud to induct, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, hard-rocking, booty-shaking, love-making, earth-quaking, Viagra-taking, justifying, death-defying, legendary E Street Band.