So now that the dust has settled on this year's induction ceremony, where does the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame go from here? Most of the artists who created rock & roll have already been elected, and most -- but certainly not all -- of the deserving artists who came after them through the early Seventies have also found their way in. Sometimes it took some effort. It's unconscionable, for example, that the Velvet Underground and Joni Mitchell had to wait so long for their inductions. But in order to maintain credibility in the future, the Hall is going to have to address some important issues, issues that get to the very heart of what rock & roll is -- and what it has become.

First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I've been a member of the Hall of Fame's nominating committee since the early Nineties. Every year the other committee members and I receive a list of all the performers who released their first record twenty-five years ago or more, and we rank them through a ballot process. The artists who end up with the most votes get nominated. Over the years, in the interests of democracy, the nominating committee has grown considerably, as has the body of voters that determines which artists are ultimately elected to the Hall.

Bluntly, that expansion has meant that popularity has increasingly become a criterion for entering the Hall of Fame. That's fine as far as it goes. Rock & roll is supposed to be popular music, after all, and the prospect of having hits is among the biggest motivators for making music in the first place. But getting into the Hall of Fame shouldn't be merely a popularity contest. That only diminishes what the Hall set out to achieve when it was founded in 1986.

Maybe Eric Clapton deserves three inductions (for the Yardbirds, Cream and, most controversially, as a solo artist). But if he does, doesn't Iggy Pop deserve to get in, either for the hugely influential work he did with the Stooges or on his own? Now that Steely Dan has released a new album -- and a Top 10 album at that -- that band's chances of getting inducted have increased exponentially. But is that the real reason Steely Dan deserves induction?

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have made a running joke in interviews and on their Web site of their being ignored by the Hall of Fame. "We've qualified several times," Becker told the New York Observer recently. "Ozzy Osbourne described us as the perennial losers." And, while we're at it, what about Ozzy Osbourne himself and Black Sabbath? The vast majority of Hall of Fame voters (including me, truth be told) are not metal heads. But is it fair for an entire genre of music -- music that has been part of the rock & roll landscape for thirty years -- to be discounted? And, while it's great that the Hall of Fame recently devoted an exhibition to hip-hop, what happens when those artists begin to become eligible? Will voters -- and the nominating committee, as well -- be open-minded enough to acknowledge the contributions they have made?

Of course, now that the highlights of the annual induction ceremony are televised -- which was not true until the last few years -- there is also a danger that too many artists will be inducted. A television show means that you have to have a certain number of performances. Unlike, for example, the Baseball Hall of Fame, where sports writers do the voting and if only a couple of players garner enough support, they're the only ones elected, the Hall of Fame has virtually committed to a minimum of six inductions a year. Beyond a certain point, will the honor of being elected to the Hall be diminished because the standards have been allowed to decline?

These are tough questions to answer. The battle between populism and purism, between commerce and art, has been an essential tension in rock & roll, and it makes perfect sense for that conflict to charge the Hall of Fame as well. Rock & roll has been made by unruly people, and for the past fifteen years people like me have tried to make those people comfortable in a museum. Their work deserves the acknowledgment, but their spirit bristles at being contained, codified or embalmed in any way.

I believe in the Hall of Fame and its mission. And I also believe that the next five to ten years will truly determine how relevant the Hall of Fame will finally prove to be to the music it purports to honor.

ANTHONY DeCURTIS
(March 11, 2000)