Appetite for Deconstruction

At last, I have found the time to offer comments on the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions. This year's class is a mostly respectable one, with at least one exception, and it looks like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is getting its act together. But as long as it keeps inducting pop acts, as long as it engages in political correctness, and as long as it doesn't undertake some necessary steps in the form of expulsions, it won't be able to regain badly needed and severely lost credibility. I don't want to see the hall expel Madonna only after it's too late to regain their credibility, just like the League of Nations expelled the U.S.S.R. for invading Finland three months after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland that began World War II. (Germany left the League in 1933.)

So here are the artistes for this year:

Guns 'n' Roses. Love them or hate them, the biggest, baddest metal band of the late eighties deserves induction, even though Axl Rose declined the honor and asked not to be inducted in absentia. Guns 'n' Roses captured a good deal of the growing angst of the waning days of the Reagan era with their piercing music, particularly Rose's horrifying vocals and Saul "Slash" Hudson's guitar. The Los Angeles band were viewed as a real rock and roll group, not a bland corporate rock act like REO Speedwagon or a hair band like Ratt, by everyone from Keith Richards to George Michael. So Axl's going to have to live with this: His old band deserves the honor. As Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, who inducted them, said of their debut LP Appetite for Destruction, "It’s the best debut album in the history of rock and roll. Every song hits hard. It takes you a trip to the seedy world of Los Angeles. The thing that set them apart from everyone else was guts. They never lost their edge for one second."

Rose leads a new Guns 'n' Roses, but the only thing the new band has in common with the old one, apart from Rose, is the name. Slash, bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Steve Adler were at the induction ceremonies, and Rose wants nothing to do with them.

the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Another one of LA's finest. In the 1986 movie Tough Guys, Kirk Douglas plays a gangster freed from prison after thirty years who tries to be "with it." Dancing in a Los Angeles club to live music from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Douglas's character tells his young girl he's dating, "Oh, yeah, I have all their albums!" Actually, the Chili Peppers were a new band at the time, but the catalog they've since created contains some of the most nervy rock and roll of the past quarter century, along with the beautiful rock ballad "Zephyr Song" and the tongue-in-cheek critique of their home state, "Californication."

Donovan. There are always going to be people annoyed by Donovan's wan hippie songs and patchouli-oil wisdom. So what? Even at his most insipid, Donovan could come up with some enjoyable, fun singalongs like "Mellow Yellow" and diverting fluff like "There Is a Mountain."  (First there is a mountain, than there isn't one, than there is.) But he belongs in here primarily for his warm, personal ballads like "Catch the Wind," his bright and jaunty "Sunshine Superman," and his embrace of the pop-troubadour tradition begun by Woody Guthrie, which Donovan manifested in the form of his definitive cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Universal Soldier." And a guy who has the audacity to combine a spoken-word fairy tale with a ripoff of the fadeout chorus of the Beatles' "Hey Jude" to produce something as iconic as "Atlantis" deserves induction into the Hall for sheer cojones. :-D

Laura Nyro. Nyro was more successful as a composer than as a performer, but her contribution to rock and roll was tremendous. Her heartfelt maternal ballads combined blues and Brill Building influences, and her gorgeous voice was an invaluable contribution to the singer-songwriter tradition. One testament to her talent was that artists who covered her were faithful to her original vision. Play the Fifth Dimension's remake of "Stoned Soul Picnic" and Barbra Streisand's cover of "Stoney End" and you'll hear what I mean. Eli and the Thirteenth Confession remains her masterwork, but her 1971 album of R&B covers with Patti LaBelle's group Labelle, Gonna Take a Miracle, is widely praised as a successful blend of white and black pop. Her songs still resonate after her death from cancer in 1997; "Emmie" still has the way to get up and move me.

the Small Faces/ the Faces. Despite the fact that the Small Faces and the Faces had three common members - keyboardist Ian McLagan, drummer Kenney Jones and bassist Ronnie Lane - they were two entirely different groups. The Small Faces, led by guitarist/vocalist Steve Marriott (they were called the Small Faces because they were all short), they were a jaunty Mod group that produced catchy, clever tunes like "Itchykoo Park." When Marriott left to form Humble Pie, singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Ron Wood of the first Jeff Beck Group joined McLagan, Jones and Lane, and a new band with a different name (Stewart and Wood were much taller than their new bandmates, hence they became just "the Faces"), a new look, and a new sound emerged. The new sound was hardier, boozier, and bluesier . . . and it so rocked. Sadly, neither band gets much airplay on the few remaining classic rock stations in America. "Itchykoo Park" and "Stay With Me," though, are both definitive samplings of the Small Faces and the Faces, respectively, and each song makes the case for their induction.

the Beastie Boys. Okay, who invited these guys? They may be great in the hip-hop context, and they may have been the first credible white rap act long before Eminem showed up, but I have no patience for rap acts being inducted onto the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As I said this past fall, they should create a separate hall of fame for rappers and be done with it. And any group whose idea of a protest anthem was "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)" clearly doesn't deserve to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ahead of Jethro Tull.

Backing groups. Space does not permit me to individually sing the praises of Bill Haley's Comets, Hank Ballard's Midnighters, James Brown's Famous Flames, Buddy Holly's Crickets, or Smokey Robinson's Miracles, but it's no-brainer to include them when you take into account whom they backed and the backing work they did. Although, if you want my opinion, I wouldn't induct the Miracles as a standalone group. "Love Machine," their seventies hit sans Smokey, is a really dumb song. Who wants a hugging, kissing fiend anyway?

Non-performers Don Kirshner (who was the musical director for the Monkees, promoted the work of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and was one of the very few producers who kept rock and roll on American television in the seventies with "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert"), New Orleans producer Cosimo Matassa, Miami engineer Tom Dowd (who worked with everyone from Eric Clapton to the Allman Brothers) and British record producer Glyn Johns (who worked with all the major British bands of the sixties and has worked with Americans such as the Eagles and John Hiatt) were all inducted this year. They all deserve the honor. Matassa and Johns are the only ones still living to enjoy it.

So, still no Tull, no Rush, no eighties folkies or indie bands, no British bands Americans have never heard of, no induction of Beatles manager Brian Epstein in the non-performer category. Better get used to that. On to 2013.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was originally established to honor rock and roll performers but has since gone on to include performers representing a variety of pop styles. I'm supposed to say that here.

 :-p