Rock Hall Welcomes New Inductees

Van Halen, Grandmaster Flash, R.E.M., Patti Smith Honored

(AP)  Two of the biggest rock bands of the 1980s took different paths to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday — indie favorites R.E.M. with a happy reunion and party band Van Halen with a fragmentary turnout.

Otherwise, the hall took on a New York flavor with the girl group sound of Spanish Harlem's the Ronettes, downtown poet Patti Smith and South Bronx's Grandmaster Flash, the first hip-hop act so honored.

The rock hall's 22nd annual induction ceremony was the first beamed live to the world, through VH1 Classic and aol.com. The inductees will be enshrined at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum in Cleveland.

R.E.M., out of Athens, Ga., largely invented the college radio scene in the 1980s with songs like "Radio Free Europe," then became mainstream stars behind hits "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts."

"R.E.M.'s music is truly all-encompassing," said Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who inducted them. "They used every color on the palette, they invented colors on their own and they put up this huge mural of music and sound and emotion."

Vedder said singer Michael Stipe's voice touched his heart even though, in the early years, he couldn't understand a word he was singing.

R.E.M performed again Monday with its original quartet, welcoming back drummer Bill Berry, who had left the band in 1997 after suffering an aneurysm onstage two years earlier.

Stipe said his late grandmother once grabbed him by the arm and said what R.E.M. means to her is "remember every moment. And this is a moment I shall never forget."

Only Van Halen's second lead singer, Sammy Hagar, and ex-bass player Michael Anthony turned up for their induction. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen has just gone into rehab and original lead singer David Lee Roth stayed away in a tiff over what he would perform.

Hagar said he wished his bandmates could be there, but "it's out of our control."

"It's hard for Mike and I to be up here to do this, but you couldn't have kept me away from this with a shotgun," Hagar said.

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Photos: 2007 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame

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It took less to keep Roth away. He stood up the hall, reportedly because he couldn't agree on what to sing with the band Velvet Revolver, which offered a tribute. Joel Peresman, president and CEO of the Hall of Fame, said Roth was offered a chance to sing a song of his choice with the house band. "The decision not to come was solely his, not ours."

Hagar and Anthony joined Velvet Revolver to sing "Why Can't This Be Love."

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five represented the first of what may someday be many hip-hop artists. Flash's turntable scratching techniques and the memorable refrain of "The Message" — "don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge" — were recalled.

Hunched over a podium, present-day rapper Jay-Z read his induction speech off a PDA.

"Thirty years later rappers have become rock stars, movie stars, leaders, educators, philanthropists, even CEOs," he said. "None of this would have been possible without the work of these men."

Flash said he thought there was a time his induction wouldn't be possible because they were a hip-hop act. But he said there are plenty of rock influences in what he did.

Shy and fighting back tears as she accepted induction, Smith recalled friends and family who didn't live to see the day. Shortly before he died, Smith's husband Fred "Sonic" Smith asked her when she did make the hall of fame to "please accept it like a lady and not to say any curse words."

The bohemian poet straddled the hippie and punk eras, with her album "Horses" setting a standard for literate rock. She performed her biggest hit, "Because the Night," co-written with Bruce Springsteen, and the Rolling Stones' classic "Gimme Shelter."

Smith's mother also didn't live to see her daughter make the hall of fame, but passed on some instructions.

"I'm not going to make it," she recalled her mother saying. "When you do, sing your mother's favorite song, the one I like to vacuum to."

Saying "this is for you, mom," Smith performed her 1977 song "Rock 'n' Roll N——-."

With jewelry dangling from his hair, a mustachioed Keith Richards inducted the Ronettes, the New York City girl group who sang 1960s era pop symphonies like "Be My Baby" and "Baby I Love You." He recalled hearing them the first time on a tour together in England.

"They could sing all their way right through a wall of sound," Richards said. "They didn't need anything. They touched my heart right there and then and they touch it still."

Lead singer Ronnie Spector thanked a list of people from Cher to Springsteen to her publicist — but made no mention of ex-husband Phil Spector, the producer whose gigantic "wall of sound" is synonymous with the act. Phil Spector's trial for the murder of an actress at his suburban Los Angeles mansion is due to start next week.

After the Ronettes sang a trio of their hits, bandleader Paul Shaffer came to the microphone to read a note from Phil Spector, who said "I wish them all the happiness and good fortune the world has to offer."

Hall officials paid tribute to one of the institution's founders, record executive Ahmet Ertegun, who died in December. One of his top artists at Atlantic, Aretha Franklin, sang the first million-seller she made with Ertegun, "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)."

[smb221]

OK, now I'm pissed! Why would you induct a rap artist into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?!?! That doesn't make any sense, and I'm sure a lot of other people will be pissed about it too.

[olebd]

I just sampled some Grandmaster Flush on the internet and have to add that trash is nowhere near qualified to be in the Rock Hall of Fame. I did detect a sampling of Queen on one of the tracks and wonder if this is why he was inducted(?) I am more qualified to be there by just starting my car or yawning. It's a dismal era for rock and roll these days. Will it ever come back? I doubt it. The majority in society have been dumbed down enough to accept garbage.

[olebd]

I knew rock and roll was in trouble years back when I started hearing idiots refer to the likes of Madonna and Britney Spears music as rock and roll. Now I see the trend is to try and blend everything together further. Last I remember, Grandmaster Flush was FUNK not rock and not rap although, I can't remember the last time I heard something from him. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is scraping the bttom of the barrel now.

Keep in mind that trends in music that you hear today are decided by only a handful of people. They take no talent nit wits who have never written a song or played a instrument and prop them up in front of a microphone. It's assembly line/manufactured stardom and disposable music cranked out for the quick and easy almighty dollar.

[kaliveotin]

I've never heard of "Grandmaster Flash" but if it's really Hippity hop it doesn't belong in the Rock and Roll hall of fame. The Rock and Roll hall of fame should be for famous rock and rollers. Grandbaster Flash is not famous and they are not Rock and Rollers. Who the hell is on the Governing board. You wouldn't put a crickit player in the baseball hall of fame, or a soccer player in the football hall of fame. It must be time for an IDIOTS hall of fame, we could make the first inductees those who decided "hiooity hop" artists should be part of the rock and roll hall of fame.

[randalds]

There should never ever be a rap "artist" in the rock and roll hall of fame. Rap is not rock and roll and it's not even music. It's exceptionally bad poetry set to childishly simplistic computer music. Hip-hop needs to form it's own museum to house their "talent" and keep them from contaminating rock and roll. I saw a moron on MSNBC who says he's on the nominating committee saying that soon all of the inductees will be hip-hop and how he doesn't understand how Van Halen made it through. Well if this fu*cking moron doesn't understand that Van Halen IS rock and roll and Grandmaster Fu*ck up B isn't then he's not only an idiot, but he needs to be kicked off the nominating committee NOW.

KEEP THAT RAP SH*IT OUT OF THE ROCK AN ROLL HALL OF FAME!!!! IT'S NOT ****KING ROCK AND ROLL!!!

[erichsh]

As far as I'm concerned, music's death began when MTV was born around 1979. Within the span of a few years, music that was written to be listened to and appreciated, music from the heart and soul, was replaced with drivel that served no other purpose than a backdrop for a splashy MTV video. Then a decade or so later, whatever little musical traces remaining were completely stripped out - when they stopped singing altogether and replaced it with total trash gutter-language swearing and violence (aka "rap"). To quote Bob Seger (a true musician, one of the best) - "I like that old time rock-n'roll".