The Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
It was the breathless prose in my AAA guidebook that finally reeled me in. My wife, Kim, read out loud about how we could see the Sun studio gear used by Elvis Presley, the psychedelic Porsche driven by Janis Joplin, the Cub Scout uniform worn by Jim Morrison–these are as close as we get to the relics of saints in these godless times!–and suddenly I felt a pang. Was my heart really so hard that I could just keep doing 70 down I-90? I turned to Kim and told her, “Load the Instamatic, honey. We’re goin’ in.”
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You enter on the plaza level–the only free part of the museum, so it’s devoid of attractions–and are directed down to the ground level before being led upward in tighter and tighter circles until you reach the tip of the pyramid. The biases of the founders are obvious almost immediately. The ground floor is named after one of them–the “Ahmet M. Ertegun Exhibition Hall”–and there are large displays devoted to Atlantic Records (the label he founded) and his close personal friends the Rolling Stones. A few floors above, there’s an entire wall paying tribute to Rolling Stone magazine, whose founder, Jann Wenner, is the Hall of Fame’s biggest booster. “Rolling Stone has always incited its writers to take risks,” I read in the accompanying placard, and I couldn’t help laughing: I had just been fired by Wenner for writing a negative review of Atlantic superstars Hootie & the Blowfish (or more specifically, for complaining publicly when he replaced it with a nicer one).
Still, I found myself rushing gleefully between certain displays–John Cipollina’s oversized amplifiers and primitive guitar effects, Roger McGuinn’s 1968 prototype Moog synthesizer, and some of the bricks and stage props from Pink Floyd’s legendary Wall. The insidiousness of it all only struck me when I stopped in front of a dummy of George Clinton dressed in one of Parliament-Funkadelic’s outlandish stage costumes: furry jacket, psychedelic braids, orange pants, platform shoes shaped like “Atomic” dogs.
Touchy but pervasive issues like drug abuse, racism, and misogyny are also given short shrift. A wall is devoted to a display called “Don’t Knock the Rock,” and Frank Zappa is depicted as single-handedly having saved the music from the evil right-wing censors of the Reagan era–never mind that his main foe, Parents’ Music Resource Center founder Tipper Gore, was and is an allegedly liberal Democrat. No one seems to have caught the sad irony of the official Hall of Fame maps and brochures, which include a “Parent Alert” stating, “Because some films and exhibits contain mature themes and images, please ask Visitor Services for information regarding suitability of exhibit content.”
Wenner had added my name to the list of this year’s voters shortly before he canned my ass. The ballot was forwarded in the mail to Minneapolis too late to vote, but it arrived with a nifty little “Voter Information Booklet.” “The Bee Gees have three calling cards when it comes to Hall of Fame consideration: popularity, artistry, and impact,” it stated. “Nothing will ever come close to the magic of the Mamas and the Papas when they were the Sight and Sound of the Summer of Love,” and so on. There was also a cassette featuring one song by each nominee (Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’”). Such is the grasp one must have on rock history to be entrusted with the task of distinguishing Hall of Famer from non-Hall of Famer.
