On the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2024 Induction Ceremony

The Rock Hall matters because it matters. We can write three million words about how it is a travesty and how much it sucks but the reaction of the musicians, their peers, the people they influenced, their families, and even their fans is the only true reason to pay attention to this institution. Every year someone gets on that stage and is visibly moved or says in their acceptance speech how important it is for them to get this level of recognition or to receive this honor from this particular body, and 2024 was no different. 

I did not attend this year’s ceremony in person, but did watch live. (The only time I’ve attended in person was in 2014 for the E Street Band’s induction.) I planned to watch this one live like I haven’t bothered to in years because of the MC5. I even poked around on Ticketmaster a few times to see what the market looked like because Cleveland is only a few hours away. I am very glad I did not pursue this with any discipline because I would have been furious beyond all belief, because the MC5 were inducted under “Musical Excellence” and not as Performers, which is the category that matters. “Musical Excellence” is a consolation prize. It is the “oops we need to get you in somehow and we can’t get you nominated despite being a band that has influenced other bands across the world for literal decades” category, and that seemed to govern the amount they were permitted to participate. 

Last night’s induction opened with Dua Lipa performing “Believe” solo and then joined by inductee Cher. I like Dua Lipa but this was not a great night for her and energetically was not a great way to open this evening. Zendaya gave the induction speech in an incredible dress that I hoped was vintage Bob Mackie, and it turned out that it was. Cher gave a speech in which she basically flipped everyone off, mentioned all of her number one hits, and how everyone had given up on her.  

Kool and the Gang were next, and you knew going into it that it was going to be unsatisfying because there were only two statues on the podium and you don’t have to be a music history scholar to know that there were more than two people in the band. This was one of many moments in the evening where you saw the results of the Rock Hall’s desperate yearning for relevancy making them induct younger acts the first year they’re eligible because they think it will keep them interesting to the youth. It means that the musicians that made the actual music that you put into a Hall of Fame die before they get a chance to stand on that stage and hold that statue and say thank you to their fellow musicians, to their producers and other collaborators, to their road crew (Peter Frampton was the first one to mention them) and to their fans. 

In what will obviously be the cuts for commercial breaks in later broadcasts, there was a chyron appearing at the bottom of the screen telling viewers what was coming later in the broadcast. It was so clearly meant to be,  “hey, old white dudes, don’t turn off the TV even though you’re going to have to sit through rap artists and people you don’t care about, Peter Frampton and Foreigner are coming! Sammy Hager is gonna induct Foreigner! Sit tight!” But at no point did said chyron ever mention the MC5. With zero fanfare, out came Tom Morello and although he was admittedly wearing a t-shirt for Wayne Kramer’s charity Jail Guitar Doors and a White Panther Party hat, this is Tom Morello and that could easily be his regular daytime attire. It wasn’t until he started speaking that I was sure that he was inducting the MC5. 

Friends, this is why I was here. It was why I set a timer on my watch so I didn’t forget because it started at 7pm, it was why I planned my day so that I was home and settled and ready to watch my goddamn band get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, after six tries and the demise of every single member. I was delighted that Morello said “motherfucker” twice on Disney+ in the course of his induction speech. Morello is always a compelling and energetic live speaker but you could tell that he felt this one, especially at the end, when he said “welcome home to the rock and roll hall of fame” - his voice was shaking, he was visibly emotional. The tribute film vignette followed, in which we all could identify every piece of live footage (there just isn’t that much) and a variety of talking heads, the same as everyone else’s tribute footage.

But then it was over, and instead of an acceptance speech, or some musicians influenced by the band getting onstage and performing a medley of hits (or at least well-known songs) we instead got Sammy Hagar walking out to induct Foreigner. That’s when I realized that they weren’t going to allow any of the family members to accept the awards for the band on camera, because this wasn’t a category for which this usually happens, and the only reason they got anyone speaking for them was because Tom Morello must have personally made it clear that he was going to be inducting his band. We could let Sammy Hagar ramble for minutes on end to induct Foreigner, a band so bland that I cannot name any other members besides Lou Gramm and Mick Jones (‘no, not that Mick Jones’ is how the joke used to go back in the day), we could let Julia Roberts basically tell us how much of a huge Dave Matthews Band fan she was, we could let the Foreigner touring band, which is not a band that contains any actual member of Foreigner, perform live, we could allow endless mediocrity to take up center stage during prime time but we could not somehow organize a group of musicians to perform MC5 music onstage at their Rock Hall induction. 

Earlier in the week, at a promotional event here in Detroit for HOW WOMEN MADE MUSIC, the NPR book I have an essay in (this is my newsletter, I get to plug my shit) during the Q&A someone asked a question about what we thought of this year’s inductees and I think they really meant they wanted us to offer opinions on Cher and Mary J. Blige, but instead I used the time to go off on the MC5 getting shoved into Musical Excellence instead of getting the slot they actually deserved. Some man in the audience asked ‘What’s the difference?’ and this is the difference, pal, because when you nominated under Musical Excellence it is really intended for someone like Norman Whitfield, who absolutely was influential as a songwriter and producer. 

Frankly, Jimmy Buffett didn’t belong shoved into the honorable mention category eitherm but that is not my battle. However, he not only got an induction speech from James Taylor, which was heartfelt and deeply genuine, and several musical interludes, Dave Matthews coming out before the speech and then Taylor with Kenny Chesney and Mac McAnally in a medley. The scope of the time allotted to him and the depth of the presentation did not feel like an afterthought; I literally did not realize Buffett was also under Musical Excellence until I was writing this and wanted to doublecheck my notes. 

But the scope of his induction further supports my assertion that the Rock Hall didn’t give a shit about the MC5 and were only guilted into it and the fact that the MC5 were not first-ballot hall of famers completely disqualifies the entire body as a body of governance as to what is rock, what is influential, what is important, and what matters. There is no lack of working musicians who would have been only too glad to pull some of their pals together -- including all of the musicians who toured with Wayne Kramer in the last iteration of the MC5 -- and would have said “hell yes” if they were asked to perform a tribute to the band that influenced them. But we did not get that, and I am never going to stop being mad about it. 

I don’t give a fuck about Foreigner but at least Sammy Hagar was amusing and the segments where artists were inducted by people who cared about the music and the performers were the most interesting even if they weren’t the most polished - Roger Daltrey speaking warmly about his friendship with Peter Frampton over the years wasn’t flashy but it was interesting and sincere. I am not a Jimmy Buffett fan but the sincerity and the reverence of the tribute was unmistakable. On the other hand, there was literally nothing about Julia Roberts’ induction of Dave Matthews that felt relevant or appropriate for rock’s so-called highest honor. (It also says a lot about that band that this is who they decided who should induct them.)

Mary J Blige came out there with an entire production and I honestly thought that based on how intricate the entire segment was that she was going to be the closing number. That is because there is no world in which Dave Matthews outranks Mary J Blige or Ozzy Osbourn by any universally accepted standard, but this is the world of the Rock Hall where there’s someone sitting there with data (I hope it is data-based; I’m probably also hallucinating to think that) and deciding that the way the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should close out its induction ceremony is with Julia Roberts inducting the Dave Matthews Band. 

Like the Tribe Called Quest tribute performance, whoever booked the Ozzy tribute clearly, obviously loves and understands his influence and his particular genre. Every single person on that stage was delighted to be there and, as the kids say, understood the assignment. Ozzy couldn’t perform, but instead, after intoning “ALL ABOARD,” surveyed the performance from a giant leather bat throne of evil, while Maynard James Keenan, Billy Idol, Wolfgang Van Halen, Zakk Wylde, Robert Trujilo, a whole bunch of other people that even complete heavy metal tourists such as myself could recognize as a star-studded and excellently performed tribute. 

Finally, let’s talk about production values. When the people coming to the podium to give induction or acceptance speeches are making jokes about your janky microphone -- and those microphones continue to not work -- you have a huge problem. This is not the first Rock Hall induction ceremony in this building, what the actual hell was going on? The mic didn’t work regularly, the staging looked half-assed and cheap, and the stream was out of focus constantly. This is Disney, for fuck’s sake, this should not be a production that is difficult for you to execute with the most minimal of production standards! It was absolutely embarrassing that in 2024 this production couldn’t be executed with the highest level of competency.

There was no performance this evening that was so complicated or technically complex that could excuse why the actual microphones weren’t working. Dionne Warwick couldn’t be heard to the point that you could hear the crowd complaining. She said, “I can’t talk any louder, so they’ll have to turn up the mic.” The sound crew should have expired from sheer mortification. And I don’t know what the problem was with the teleprompter but, again, this is not the first year you have had people who normally don’t use a prompter having to use a prompter so you would think that whoever was running it was used to this by now, and could respond to the situations where people were digressing or getting emotional or losing their place with more skill. I was equally annoyed and uncomfortable for everyone on both sides. The artists deserve better than this.