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:
“Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Rock ‘n’ roll is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty and utter enervation.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)
“I was afraid the waking arm would break
From the loose earth and rub against his eyes
A fist of trees, and the whole country tremble
In the exultant labor of his rise;”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)