Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Controversy
Wenner, who co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 1983, has endured quite a bit of controversy during his career as it relates to his involvement in the organization. Fans and supporters of several artists, which include Chicago, Deep Purple, The Doobie Brothers, Kansas, KISS, The Monkees, Electric Light Orchestra, Yes, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Motörhead, Jethro Tull, Linda Ronstadt, The Marvelettes, Chubby Checker, Mary Wells, The B-52s, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Rush, Dokken, Warrant, Ratt, Queensryche, Mötley Crüe, Rory Gallagher, Journey, Judas Priest, Dio, Foreigner, Iron Maiden, The Guess Who, Bachman–Turner Overdrive, The Moody Blues and Jan and Dean, have placed a large amount of blame on Wenner for keeping them out of the Hall of Fame. They claim Wenner has lobbied to keep them from consideration and nomination to the Hall based on personal bias and a dislike for their music. Supporters of Beatles/Mersey Beat champion and manager, Brian Epstein, also feel that he has been unfairly precluded from nomination for honor in the Non-Performer category. This omission has given rise to much speculation as to the possible reasons for Wenner's consistent snubbing of Epstein's arguably inestimable contribution to the infrastructure of rock and roll.
In June 2007, Monkees bassist Peter Tork came forward and alleged to the New York Post that Wenner is excluding the group:
| “ | "doesn't care what the rules are and just operates how he sees fit. It is an abuse of power. I don't know whether The Monkees belong in the Hall of Fame, but it's pretty clear that we're not in there because of a personal whim." Tork believes Wenner doesn't like the fact that The Monkees, who were originally cast as actors for a TV sitcom, didn't play their own instruments on their first two records. "Jann seems to have taken it harder than everyone else, and now, 40 years later, everybody says, 'What's the big deal? Everybody else does it.' Nobody cares now except him. He feels his moral judgment in 1967 and 1968 is supposed to serve in 2007. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Jann Wenner
Famous quotes containing the words rock, roll, hall, fame and/or controversy:
“Under that rock that holds
the first swift kiss
of the spring-sun’s white, incandescent breath,
I’d seek
you flowers.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I,
To mourn, and murmur and repine,
To see the wicked placed on high,
In pride and robes of honor shine.
But oh, their end, their dreadful end,
Thy sanctuary taught me so,
On slipp’ry rocks I see them stand,
And fiery billows roll below.”
—Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
“Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too—unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child’s trouble.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under stones.... Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate,—a stone to a bone? “Here lies,”M”Here lies”;Mwhy do they not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)