Too "Late" For the Hall

It finally happened.  Joe Cocker, who died in 2014, is finally getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.

Now, I have largely stopped commenting on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a rule, mainly because I thought it jumped the shark long ago with dubious inductions and a very, very, very loose definition of rock and roll to include dance-pop singers and to include rappers in the name of "diversity."  But I have to say that Joe Cocker's induction this year is well-deserved.  It is altogether fitting that I should say so.

It is also appropriate that I should applaud the induction of Bad Company, one of the very few rock supergroups that lived (note tense) up to the promise of and the hype over their formation.  And I do.  But the induction comes in retrospect of BadCo frontman Paul Rodgers' well-founded suspicion of the very idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  When record producer Ahmet Ertegun, in 1986, helped Jann Wenner get the project going, he asked Rodgers for his support.  Rodgers, then in Jimmy Page's post-Led Zeppelin group the Firm (which was as much an embarrassing disappointment as Bad Company was not), declined the opportunity.  Rock and roll, he said at the time, wasn't something to be celebrated in a museum but instead was a living, breathing entity that had a spirit meant to be celebrated by playing the records or performing your own music rather than building a fancy temple in which to honor it.  (I'm liberally paraphrasing here.)  

Something must have happened to make Rodgers acquiesce to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's mission to honor rock and roll musicians by means other than playing a record or taking in (or putting on) a show.  Oh, right,  rap exploded and smug stars of that pop form take pleasure in seeing rock decline and fall and in seeing its younger practitioners live in their parents' basements and getting nowhere because no record label wants to sign a new rock band these days and, besides, the old veterans are still bankable acts.  In short, rock is not a living, breathing entity anymore.

Even if rock were still as relevant as it used to be and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame weren't the joke it has become, I still would be as much in favor of Bad Company's induction as I am now.  I'm only sorry it didn't happen sooner.  Bad Company guitarist Mick Ralphs, who had previously been in Mott the Hoople, died recently, leaving Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke - both of whom had been in Free - the only surviving members of the original 1974-1982 lineup.  (Bassist Boz Burrell died in 2006.)  The belated and posthumous inductions of Joe Cocker and Bad Company's Mick Ralphs are, in a sadly ironic way, just another reason why the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame can no longer be taken seriously.