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A slate of 11 inductees were announced for the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Performer inductees were selected from more than 500 voters from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. The ceremony will be held on Saturday, April 14, 2012 in Cleveland (where the Hall is based) and air on HBO in early May. The ceremony is open to the public. Here’s a breakdown of the nominees:
Beastie Boys
Induction category: Performer
“The Beastie Boys (Adam Yauch, Mike Diamond and Adam Horowitz) are among the pioneers of rap. The first white act to make real inroads in the emerging genre, they were known initially for boorish party music, but would develop into a group critically acclaimed for its musicality, experimenting with different soundscapes, even producing an instrumental album.” EW “Their 1986 debut album Licensed To Ill – a supremely bratty, hard-punching, pitch-perfect mix of rap and hard rock – was hip-hop’s first number one album.” RH “The single ‘(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)’, became a teenage party anthem of the 1980s.” RH 1989’s Paul’s Boutique “was one of the high points of hip-hop’s golden age of sampling” RH and throughout the ‘90s, the group fused hardcore punk and funk into their sound. The trio are still active, having released Hot Sauce Committee Part Two just this year.
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Donovan
Induction category: Performer
“The first British folk troubadour who truly captured the imaginations of early Beatles-era fans on both sides of the Atlantic, Donovan Leitch made the transition from a scruffy blue-jeaned busker into a brocaded hippie traveler.” RH He “became a Dylan-esque visual presence” RH with songs like “Catch the Wind” and “Mellow Yellow” and “ignited the psychedelic revolution virtually single handedly when the iconic single ‘Sunshine Superman’.” RH
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Tom Dowd
Induction category: The Award for Musical Excellence
Dowd was a scientist whose “dreams of becoming a nuclear physicist research specialist were sidetracked when he began using his engineering knowledge to work as a freelancer for various New York record labels.” RH He became an Atlantic Records staff engineer and producer in 1954 and embraced technological innovations like the use of stereo and eight-track recording machines. RH “At Atlantic, he recorded, and occasionally produced, artists such as Big Joe Turner, Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Aretha Franklin, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.” RH “In later years he helped to create the signature sound of the Allman Brothers Band, Cream, Dusty Springfield, Rod Stewart, Bette Midler, Chicago and the James Gang.”
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Guns N’ Roses
Induction category: Performer
Guns N’ Roses emerged in 1987 with their debut album Appetite for Destruction which spawned the #1 “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and the top ten hit “Welcome to the Jungle”. The latter referenced the “gritty realities” RH of the group trying to make it “as just another long-haired band trying to make it on the L.A. Sunset Strip club scene.” RH Frontman Axl Rose, guitarist Slash, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Steven Adler “established themselves as one the most dynamic and explosive hard rock bands in history. In many ways, they became the Rolling Stones for a new generation.” RH However, after their pair of Use Your Illusion albums in 1991, which sported memorable songs like “November Rain” and “You Could Be Mine”, internal strife ate away at the band. A covers album followed in 1994, but then everyone jumped ship except for Rose, who put together a new lineup and finally released an album of new material 14 years later.
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Glyn Johns
Induction category: The Award for Musical Excellence
Born in 1942 in Epson, England, Johns started out as a performer and then became “an apprentice to the producer Shel Talmy, who worked with the Who and the Kinks. By 1965, Johns was engineering Rolling Stones’ recording sessions, including 1967’s Their Satanic Majesties Request and 1968’s Beggars Banquet.” RH “By 1971, Johns had hit his stride as a producer, with Who’s Next by the Who, the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers and the Faces’ A Nod Is as Good as a Wink... to a Blind Horse to his credit. He produced the Eagles’ first three albums and is arguably responsible for creating that group’s distinct Southern California sound.” RH He has also done producing and engineering work for Traffic, Procol Harum, Spooky Tooth, The Move, Steve Miler Band, The Band, Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, The Clash, Jimmy Page, John Hiatt, and David Crosby. In 2011, he worked as “mixer, engineer and producer of Ryan Adams’ 2011 album, Ashes and Fire.” RH
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Freddie King
Induction category: Early Influence
Guitarists Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Peter Green, Jeff Beck, and Carlos Santana “have all acknowledged their debt to Freddie King (1934-1976), the “Texas Cannonball.” RH Classics like “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” and “Hide Away” have become “part of the DNA of modern electric blues.” RH The Texas-born King and his family went to Chicago in 1950 and he started learning his craft from bluesmen like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Jimmie Rodgers. King found chart success with six R&B hits in 1961, including four top tens. In the late ‘60s and ‘70s, he “thrived on rock, jazz and blues scenes and at festivals” RH and right up until his death was influencing acts like “Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan and the next generation of disciples who would take electric blues into the ’80s, ’90s and beyond.” RH
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Don Kirshner
Induction category: Ahmet Ertegun (nonperformer) Award
He started out as a songwriter working with Bobby Darin and went on to work at the famous Brill Building in New York during its heyday. He was pivotal in creating The Monkees and The Archies and later hosted Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, a live television music show which aired from 1973 to 1982. Kirshner died of heart failure on January 17, 2011.
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Cosimo Matassa
Induction category: The Award for Musical Excellence
New Orleans R&B historian Jeff Hannusch has written that “Virtually every R&B record made in New Orleans between the late 40s and early 70s was engineered by Cosimo Matassa, and recorded in one of his four studios.” RH Some of the artists who “helped give birth to rock and roll” RH recorded at Matassa’s New Orleans’ studios, including Fats Domino, Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Professor Longhair.
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Laura Nyro
Induction category: Performer
The Bronx-born singer/songwriter and pianist (1947-1997) began recording as a teenager. During the ‘60s, other artists scored hits with her songs, among them Blood, Sweat & Tears with “And When I Die”, The 5th Dimension with “Wedding Bell Blues”, and Three Dog Night with “Eli’s Coming”. In the early ‘70s, Barbra Streisand “charted three consecutive times with Nyro songs” RH and in 1971 Nyro recorded with the vocal group Labelle. Elton John has said, “The soul, the passion, the out-and-out audacity of her rhythmic and melody changes was like nothing I’d ever heard before.”
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Induction category: Performer
With its “fusion of metal and rap” RH the Red Hot Chili Peppers formed in 1983 “in the sin-and-glamour capital of America – Hollywood, California.” EW “Singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Michael Balzary AKA Flea, guitarist Hillel Slovak and drummer Jack Irons were high school pals who combined their passions for Jimi Hendrix, Seventies R&B and hardcore punk with sexual exuberance and local skateboard culture.” RH By the group’s 1991 breakthrough album BloodSugarSexMagik, the Peppers had endured the 1988 drug-related death of Slovak and welcomed new guitarist John Frusciante. With songs like “Give It Away” and the #2 pop hit “Under the Bridge”, the group became one of the core groups of the ‘90s alternative rock scene. Kiedis and Flea, along with drummer Chad Smith and guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, released the Peppers’ tenth album, I’m with You, this year.
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
The Small Faces/The Faces
Induction category: Performer
The Small Faces formed in London in 1965 at the peak of the British Invasion. They consisted of singer Steve Marriott, bassist Ronnie Lane, organist Ian McLagan, and drummer Kenney Jones. They “set the standard for Sixties soul-inflected pop and English psychedelic romanticism” RH before Marriott quit in 1969. Then Jeff Beck Group alumnis Rod Stewart and Ron Wood were enlisted and the group was reborn as The Faces. They “made joyful roots music with arena muscle, cutting their own immortal body of work” RH before breaking up in 1975. The two variations “have been a lasting inspiration on artists like the Black Crowes, the Jam’s Paul Weller, the Replacements and Oasis.” RH Stewart and Wood are previous inductees as a solo artist and member of The Rolling Stones, respectively.
See DMDB music maker encyclopedia entry for more.
Resources and Related Links:
- RH Rockhall.com The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Announces 2012 Inductees
- Billboard Cleveland Calls Up Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faces, Laura Nyro, Donovan
- EW Entertainment Weekly Guns N’ Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- The DMDB Blog: And This Year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees Are… (9/28/11)
- The DMDB Blog: And This Year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees Should Be… (9/28/11)
- The DMDB Blog: The Top 100 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Hopefuls (10/22/11)
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