April 7, 2017: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Part 2

Brooklyn, NY
Barclays Center

So, as promised, I'm sitting at 25,000 feet working away at trying to describe everything that happened on Friday night at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Know now that this is likely to get long and I'm also likely to forget a few things. It was such an incredible night of music and stories and the energy of the whole event just was one I'll never forget.

I was going to open with some of the pre-show festivities, but this post should be long enough with out them, so they'll be saved for the next installment. Get to the meat of the matter. Leslie and I were in our seats by 6:45 (right next to Janice and Randal in a happy coincidence!) as we had received an email prior to leaving that everyone MUST be in their seat by 7:00 because the show was being filmed for HBO (to air April 29.) Looking around the arena I instantly knew there would be no way that would happen. The place was still mostly empty, including all the tables on the main floor. About 7:00 we started getting announcements that the show would be starting soon and would everyone please take their seats. That's really when things filled in and the floor quickly filled up with the variety of celebrities and friends and families of the bands being inducted (as of course were the inductees.) We saw several members of Yes pass by our seats near the back of the arena. About 7:15 the lights went down, the music came up and the show was on.

The show opened with Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone and the man behind the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, welcoming one and all to the show and listing off the names of those being inducted. As each performer was announced roars would rise up from the crowd. When he got to Journey, a good size cheer went up that was soon challenged by the introduction of Yes. The final act mentioned was Pearl Jam and the place went absolutely nuts. They were definitely the top dog Friday night by way of response. I wasn't particularly surprised by that. When the ballot was announced and I saw Pearl Jam among the nominees beside making me feel old, I knew they would breeze their way in the door. The introduction ended with Jann paying tribute to Chuck Berry and off it went into a memorial tribute to the founder of rock and roll.

While the tribute played, we studied the happenings on the stage below the screen. A performer was set up to open the show, but we weren't sure who it would be. We had heard a rumor that Journey was going to open the show, but looking at the set up that was on the stage as the show started it was clearly not part of Journey's gear. ...

{pause for stupid guy in seat in front of me leaning back making it impossible to read what I'm typing.}

{delay for SF Giants Opening day}

... We could see people coming on stage and one was a violin player. Ok, definitely not Journey. As the tribute ended, I noticed a silhouette of someone standing at the front of the stage and I said "that looks like Jeff Lynne." The lights came up, and ELO is on stage and launches into Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven". They followed with two of their own songs, "Evil Woman" and "Mr. Blue Sky." ELO isn't a band I'm hugely familiar with and generally falls into the "oh yeah, I like that song, I forgot about that one" category. They left the stage and the screen behind the stage showed the tribute clip about the history of ELO. While this was happening, down on the stage, there was a scramble as the road crew for the show pulled off all of ELOs gear. Dhani Harrison came out at the end of the video and began the induction speech for ELO. It was a fairly long speech as much of it was about the family relationship between the Harrisons and Jeff Lynne. There was a good deal of humor and it was clear how close of a friend Jeff Lynne was to George Harrison. My favorite part was Dhani talking about how Jeff Lynne was an alien from another planet and that, really, all of his father's friends were aliens who were sensitive to Earth's sun and up popped a photo of the Traveling Wilburys all decked out in sunglasses. Then the members of ELO came up and gave their speeches with Jeff Lynne closing out the speeches.

This was the only induction that went by this pattern of having the band perform first. The rest all had the pattern of a video introduction that ran about 3-5 minutes covering the career and history of the inductee including interviews with the inductees. The video would be followed by the person presenting the inductee by giving a speech highlighting the accomplishments and influences of the whoever was being inducted. While this was going on the stage would get switched out for the next performance. Then the performer would come up and give their speeches and when that was done off to get set up to perform two or three songs. For the most part the speeches were very similar across the performers, so I'll only mention a few highlights that stood out especially since many of them are already appearing on line for folks to read and see.

ELO was followed by Jackson Browne taking the stage to induct Joan Baez, who I was shocked to learn hadn't been inducted before now. While even she admitted it was an odd choice since her background is folk music not rock and roll, her influence on the music and politics of the 1960s can't be overlooked. Additionally rock and roll isn't just one thing -- as just this class of inductees shows -- its origins include folk, blues, and jazz influences. It is the music of the people and that's where Joan Baez fits in to this. She was one of just a few of the inductees who had clearly practiced her speech. The best part was how she said this induction made young people find out who she was and that her granddaughter didn't know who she was until she was able to bring her backstage at a Taylor Swift concert. I laughed and even remembered that concert since it was the Taylor Swift show here in the Bay Area at Levi's Stadium. No, I didn't go, but Joan Baez strutting down the stage with Taylor Swift is going to make the local entertainment section of the paper every time. I remember thinking at the time how cool that was that a young star was recognizing her predecessors and someone who knocked down doors for her to reach the success that she has today.

Joan then did her performance center stage with just herself and a guitar for "Swing Low Sweet Chariot". She then introduced a few guests to come on stage and perform with her and out came the Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter. They performed "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon)" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" together with the crowd joining in on the chorus of the latter. The simplicity of their performances was what made it most memorable, just a couple of acoustic guitars and vocals. When I got home, I had time to catch up on a backload of newspapers I hadn't had time to read and discovered that she is planning to retire from touring and recording after this year, so if she's coming to town near you this year make a chance to go see her.

Yes came up next and were inducted by Neil Peart Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush. I can't say that I'm a huge Yes fan, and the one time I've seen them I found myself dozing off in my seat. I'm only passingly familiar with the members of the band, so putting names to faces was a little challenging. The highlight of their speeches came from Rick Wakeman who was cracking jokes throughout and got lots of laughs from the audience. They only played two songs, "Roundabout" and "Owner of a Lonely Heart", and holy smokes were they good. Geddy Lee joined them on bass for "Roundabout" (at least, I don't remember if he stayed on stage for "Owner of a Lonely Heart") and was also quite impressive (not a huge Rush fan either.)

The induction of Tupac Shakur followed and that's when a lot of folks left their seats for a break. I know a lot of people don't feel that rap should be included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I'm not of that mind. Inductees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame include blues, jazz, folk, R&B, and soul music. Like Joan Baez and her folk background, Tupac and rap is a natural progression of the music of the people. I don't know a whole lot about Tupac, but I do know much of what he sang about was from a socio-political perspective. Snoop Dogg gave a great induction speech and accepted on behalf of Tupac. Alicia Keys then came out with her band and performed in tribute. I won't pretend to know what she performed -- I was never the target audience for Tupac's music and couldn't name one of his songs to save my life. The only thing I recognized was a bit of Bruce Hornsby's "That's Just the Way It Is", which I assume was sampled for one of Tupac's songs and got me perked up as I am a fan of Bruce Hornsby. Snoop Dogg and a couple of other rappers then came out to perform a couple of songs. As I posted on Facebook, I didn't know what I was seeing but it was a really good performance and the crowd really got into it.

Journey's induction followed Tupac and since I've already covered that in my previous post I'll move along to Nile Rodgers who was being inducted by Pharrell for musical excellence. When his introduction video played there were snips of some of the many songs he has performed on and/or produced and showed many of the people he's worked with over the years. I knew he had worked with almost everybody, but had forgotten some of the specific songs/albums he was involved with. His speech was quite good and he got very emotional at one point saying something along the lines of he just wanted to be a background session guy and never expected to be where he was. There wasn't any performance associated with his induction since he wasn't going in as a performer.

The In Memoriam segment came up next and the video screens showed a bunch of musicians and music industry people who had died since last year's induction ceremonies, much like you'd see at the Grammys or Oscars. I didn't watch the whole video as I took that moment to catch up a bit on Facebook, but two of the faces that popped up and got me were George Michael (for some reason I really didn't expect to see him in that segment, denial perhaps?) and Benny Collins aka "Wolfman Black" of Journey's original road crew. That one I thought was a really nice touch. The last face on the screen though was Prince, and as the lights came back up on the stage it was time for Lenny Kravitz's tribute performance.

Lenny opened with a really interesting interpretation of "When Doves Cry" complete with a gospel choir. It was quite different from the original, but really well done. He followed it with "The Cross" which was a song I wasn't that familiar with but was also very well done. I've seen Lenny a couple of times in the past and he's just an excellent performer.

And finally it was time for the "headliners" of this induction ceremony. While everyone being inducted was more than deserving, Pearl Jam was clearly the biggest act going in based on the overall response of the audience and their position as the final act of the night. In addition to seeing Joan Baez going in, Pearl Jam was another of the class of 2017 I really wanted to see beyond the induction of my all time favorite band. I've referred to Pearl Jam as my "college band" -- when they hit the scene in the early 90s, I really enjoyed their stuff (and, okay, I was just out of college when they hit.) I think Ten is a brilliant album and I followed them fairly closely the first few years of their career. For some reason though, I never saw them live -- probably for lack of someone to go with as it was definitely before I'd go to shows on my own. Having them inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame really made me feel my age. These guys are my contemporaries, that they've been around for 25 years is just stunning.

David Letterman inducted them as a last minute replacement for Neil Young who had to cancel due to illness. He's looking an awful lot like Santa Claus these days. He gave a nice speech and included a story about having the riff from "Black" stuck in his head for months and another about Eddie Vedder giving his son a guitar after appearing on one of his last shows. When the band made their way to the stage, the entire arena went nuts. By far this was the loudest ovation anyone had received all night. I was on my feet cheering as well. As I looked at the band on stage, I kind of chuckled to myself as I thought "when the heck did Pearl Jam become a bunch of middle aged accountants?" Most of the guys looked way too straight laced to be rock stars, much less part of the grunge movement of the 1990s! (I had a similar thought a few months ago when they appeared on The Late Show with Steven Colbert, though that time it was "My God! Pearl Jam is a middle age dad band now!") I certainly have a hard time remembering I'm in my late 40s now, so seeing these guys who are also now in their late 40s is a little jarring. We're all supposed to still be in our 20s!

Anyway, the various members of Pearl Jam gave their speeches and they wrapped up with Eddie Vedder. His speech was a bit rambling and jumped all over the place, but it did weirdly flow from one part to the next. He did have to add his side of the tale about Letterman's bit about "Black." He led into it by talking about how he watched a lot of Letterman's show before making it big, so it was a regular thing for him to keep doing after success came. He then told a story about getting really stoned one night and watching the show when Letterman was going through the "Black" riff and then looked directly into the camera and said "Eddie? Eddie? You need to come on the show Eddie." Naturally in his state, Eddie thought he was imagining things and "that it might be time for rehab."

Pearl Jam's performance closed out the show with "Alive", "Given to Fly" which was dedicated to Michael J. Fox who was in the audience, and "Better Man" which is probably my favorite Pearl Jam song. They were absolutely amazing. I've always known Pearl Jam was a great live band and this short three song set totally lived up to their reputation. A very brief break followed to allow time for other inductees and presenters to join them on stage for the close out jam song. Neal and Jon were representatives from Journey, Dhani Harrison and Geddy Lee were among the presenters to join, and there were a couple of guys from Yes on stage. I'm not sure if there was anyone from ELO since the only one I know/recognize is Jeff Lynne and I don't remember seeing him on stage. They closed out the show with Neil Young's "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World." SO. MUCH. ENERGY! Everyone in the place was totally rocking out and even the celebrities in the front rows on the floor were up on their feet and fist pumping along. Since Neil Young wasn't in attendance, Neal Schon go to take on the guitar solo and he killed it.

The show wrapped up about midnight and I'll be really curious how it gets edited down for HBO. The running time was nearly 5 hours and the transitions from one thing to the next were a lot shorter than I expected them to be. I imagine a couple of songs will get cut and maybe some of the induction speeches from the bands (I could see Aynsley Dunbar's speech falling on the cutting room floor for example), but there wasn't a whole lot of filler in the show that you could really trim down.

All in all, this was a great night and a totally memorable experience. I'm actually looking forward to watching it all again in a couple of weeks on HBO* and being able to relive it all. I particularly look forward to seeing Journey again because I was so hyped up when they came out it's really kind of a blur in my mind. It was so completely worth all the hassle and expense it took to get to and see this show. I knew if this day ever came I wasn't going to miss it for anything, and it all lived up to my expectations and more. (Or almost more, there's just one small thing that would have made it perfect....)

*Edit: The HBO broadcast of this show really chopped it to bits. Both Journey and Joan Baez had songs edited out. All of the speeches were edited, with several dropped from the larger inductee groups. The broadcast really had a hard time capturing the energy of the event and it felt much more staid than it was in person. The most criminal thing however, was running the closing credits over the finale and not showing the whole thing. All in all a record of the event, but not in line with being there in person.

2016: The Year the Music Died

Here we are at the start of 2017, a brand new year, and the foremost thought on my mind is good riddance to 2016. While I've experienced years with far worse personal happenings than 2016 had, I can't remember a year with so many external happenings that bummed me out so much. A large factor in that was the many musicians lost in 2016, especially ones that I vividly remember from my high school days. David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, George Michael. While there were many more than just those four, those were the ones that hit me the most as they really took me back to a particular place and time. This even though I wouldn't characterize any of them as my musical heroes. In short, teen-aged me had a pretty crappy year.

David Bowie was the first shocker -- I saw the news of his passing late on the evening of January 10 on Facebook. I was doing one last check before bedtime and, wham, there it was. My first thought was of my cousin Laura, a huge Bowie fan, and how she'd be waking up to some lousy news. I was surprised by just how much his death impacted me. He was not one of my musical heroes -- I'm more of a "greatest hits" fan -- but I felt his loss deeply. In talking with Laura about this some time later, she said something along the lines of "well, you know how much he meant to me", and while that is certainly true, I don't think it's the whole thing. As I said, I'm more of a "greatest hits" fan, and I found a lot of his music to be somewhat esoteric for my tastes, but I also recognized his supreme talent. He was a unique creative force for his time and being able to witness it was something to appreciate. Losing that kind of creativity makes things a little less bright, and that's what I think had me feeling such loss.

Then a week later, news came of Glenn Frey's death, and this time I was more than a "greatest hits" fan. The Eagles were the first band whose album I wanted to buy for the music and not the teeny-bop idol of the day (sorry Journey!) While his death reminded me of some solo work from the '80s I had totally forgotten about, it was more losing half of the creative team of a band I'd enjoyed since I was 10 years old that hit me. Even with that though, I wasn't as sad as I was about Bowie, and I think that's in part due to being a bigger fan of the other half of that creative team -- Don Henley. Still, I knew before it was even announced that Glenn's death was the end of the Eagles. I'm so glad I got to see them several times over the years after they reunited in the early '90s.

Hop ahead in time to April when I overhear a couple of my co-workers talking. All I hear is one (in his late 20s) say "Well, he was kind of old." and the other (in her early 30s) reply "Yeah, I guess so." When I ask who they're talking about and they say "Prince." I look at them incredulously and say "He's not old! He's in his 50s, what's going on?!" Well, that was another wasted work day. As with Bowie, I'm a casual fan of Prince's; pretty much the early part of his career from 1980-ish to 1986-ish, what I described to my mom as "peak Prince." Purple Rain will always and forever remind me of high school, and if you were a teenager in the '80s and can't recite the opening of "Let's Go Crazy" upon request you've lost your '80s cred. Again, as with Bowie, I recognized the loss of a great creative talent and far far too young. That it was due to a drug overdose made me sadder -- I thought I had managed to get past the losing musicians to "sex, drugs, and rock & roll" a while ago and had moved on to the "age and illness" phase. While Prince's death was due to an addiction to prescription medications rather than the stereotypical hedonistic drug abuse cycle, it's still a loss that could have been prevented.

And now we've come to Christmas day and the loss of George Michael. This is the one that's hit me the hardest and had me thinking of a lot of different things over the past week or so. I recognize part of that is due to timing. With his death on Christmas and subsequently having the following week off from work, it's allowed me to stew on it more and with fewer distractions than the others I've mentioned. Would I have reacted the same way if he died next week once I got back to work? Who knows, but I do know that this past week I've listened to a lot of his music on repeat. I did the same with Bowie, Prince, and Glenn Frey too, but it was mostly while commuting to and from work rather than sitting in my living room reading a book or newspaper where I could stop what I was doing and listen to a song or two. It's a little weird to be listening to the peppy pop of Wham! and suddenly start crying.

So I've been thinking about why "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" puts a lump in my throat. I've figured out a couple of things. As I said at the beginning, none of these losses were of personal musical heroes (though they've definitely got me thinking about how I'll react when I DO lose a musical hero), George Michael definitely had a pretty significant role to play in my overall musical fandom. Add in three very vivid memories of him and his music, and it makes more sense.

We'll start with the memories. Back in 1984 this pop band from England appeared -- Wham! -- featuring catchy pop tunes and an absolute heartthrob on lead vocals. I, along with many of my friends and classmates at my all-girls high school, had discovered George Michael. Wham! was really my teen-heartthrob band. While many of my friends were also huge fans of Duran Duran, I passed on them for Wham! Now, generally, my music tastes (especially at that time) lean to mainstream rock and roll -- Journey, Huey Lewis, Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Bryan Adams, with a dash of alternative in the guise of the Police and U2 (remember, we're talking 1984.) But oh those songs were so catchy and George Michael so cute! So, I had my teen-aged obsessive musical crush. I was completely jealous of friends who got to go to the Wham! concert at the Henry J. Kaiser center in Oakland on the Fantastic tour. (The fact I can remember it was at the Henry J. Kaiser center 30+ years later despite NOT going should say it all.) In my bedroom at home, I had very little wall space for posters due to the configuration of the room. I managed to hang a Wham! poster on my closet door (which was NOT an easy thing) and it stayed up through the end of high school. So, with all of this, you can imagine how excited I was when one of my friends decided she didn't want to attend the Day on the Green concert labor day weekend 1985 that featured Wham! as the headliners. She'd had a falling out with one of our other friends and rather than go to the show with her, offered to sell me her ticket. I begged my mom, promising we'd be chaperoned by another friend's older sister, and Mom relented, giving me the $20 for the ticket. My first concert! It's Wham! Woo hoo! (As I got older, it was a little more embarrassing to say Wham! was my first concert rather than Journey or Huey Lewis or pretty much anybody more "rock".) The chaperone fell through, so I made my friends swear that if my mom asked later to say that yes, we were chaperoned. Forget the fact that I'm a month from my 17th birthday and days from starting my senior year of high school. Parents, what can you do?

We had a great time at the show and got to hear a couple of new tunes that were due to be released on Wham!'s upcoming album. Of course, it was only a few months later that Wham! broke up and their final album, Music From the Edge of Heaven, was released. It was strange timing as about the same time this all came about I had a falling out with one of the friends I'd gone to the show with (the same friend the friend who'd sold me the ticket had a problem with) and other fractures and fissures among my group of friends had popped up. My senior year of high school was strange and as a result I didn't listen to Wham! much after then as there were so many conflicting memories.

Fast forward in time, and it's now early 1988, and I'm going up to Lake Tahoe with my friend Ana Gloria and her family. Our friend Mary is also coming along, so we pile in a car with Ana and her sisters for the drive up to Tahoe. Someone has a copy of George Michael's first solo album Faith on cassette. It'd been out for a few months at that point, but I hadn't bought it yet. A combination of the Wham! hangover, lack of funds, and that fewer and fewer albums were being released on vinyl conspired against me. If I wanted to buy Faith it was going to have to be on cassette (which I considered a waste of money) or CD (which besides being expensive required a CD player which I didn't have.) But we played the tape in the car on the ride up to Tahoe and I finally got to hear the whole thing. As a result, I finally scrape up a few bucks for the cassette (to eventually be replaced by the CD once I get a player about a year later.) That's a particularly memorable weekend full of laughs and listening to Faith reminds me of that fun time.

Fast forward even more now, and it's 2008. George Michael has more or less faded from popular view in the US, and the last album of his I purchased was 1990's Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1. I probably haven't listened to it or Faith in ten years, but when George announces his first US tour since 1991, I decide it would be fun to go. 2008 had started off kind of rocky and a fun pop concert seemed to be just the thing, little did I know what was in store. On June 1, I woke up to a phone call that my good friend, and Journey partner in crime, Darla had died from a cerebral hemorrhage. That this knocked me for a loop is a severe understatement. The only thing that kept me together was trying to be there to support her husband and daughter who were, naturally, even more devastated than I was. So it was on June 19, 10 days after burying my friend, I'm at the HP Pavilion in San Jose seeing George Michael live in concert. It was a fun, joyous night of music and the first time I'd felt even close to normal in three weeks. I thought of Darla often during the show, but the healing power of music was really what I needed. I will be forever grateful for that.

So, with those memories, and my teen-idolatry, I've begun to realize why George Michael's death has impacted me differently from the others. There's a very different connection going on with this one. But that's not all. Remember way back up there I mentioned he also influenced my overall music fandom? Well, there's that too.

Back in high school when I would devour as much information on Wham! and George Michael as I could, I knew he was a huge fan of Elton John. Well, that definitely made him cooler in my book as I thought Elton John was fantastic. Bonus points for the cute guy with good music taste! In the early '90s there was a tribute album put together for Elton John and Bernie Taupin with a variety of performers covering different Elton John tunes. I was already on a bit of an Elton John kick at that point, so when I noticed that George Michael was the only performer not to cover a known hit, but a lesser known album track called "Tonight" I was curious. The liner notes had comments by each performer about the song they covered, and the ones for "Tonight" told of George buying the album Blue Moves and instantly falling in love with the song. Hearing his gorgeous rendition sent me on a mission to find a copy of Blue Moves and some other lesser known (at least to me) Elton John albums, making me an even bigger fan of the legend that is Elton John. His duet with Elton on "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" is another all time favorite.

Around this same time Freddie Mercury of Queen died and there was a massive tribute concert a few months after his death. I never had an opinion one way or the other about Queen -- they were a band that people about 5-6 years older than me were in to (people about George's age.) To me, they were a band that had a few hits in the '70s and '80s that I remembered and kind of liked, but beyond that I didn't know much. The concert was huge with all sorts off performers playing in tribute and/or taking turns singing lead vocals with the surviving members of Queen playing. George Michael joined for "Somebody to Love" and "These Are the Days of Our Lives." Those recordings, along with a couple of other live tunes, were released on an EP that I picked up and led me to eventually purchase Queen's two greatest hits CDs, thus ensuring I discovered a legendary band. That I was far too late to the party to ever see Freddie perform is a disappointment, but I can at least enjoy that I have seen Queen twice and hear those legendary songs performed live. Thanks for the introduction George.

So 2016 was a disappointing year for all the brilliance that was lost. That we still have the music left behind to enjoy and remember is a comfort. I still think I'm going to be listening to more George Michael and Wham! than I have in a few years though, at least for the near term.

In closing, one of the things that happens when you have a lot of free time to go delving into the memory bank is getting stuck in the YouTube rabbit hole. I was looking for some old Wham! videos (specifically "Young Guns") when I stumbled on a video I had completely forgotten. Enjoy "Club Tropicana" and see why 15 year old me had a huge crush on 20 year old George.