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Rock’s Hall of Fame Preps for 19th Ceremony
NEW YORK (Billboard) – There is an unwritten rule in the music business: Getting a Grammy Award means you have won the approval of your peers. Getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame means you’ve become a respected and enduring legend.

During the past 18 years, the Hall of Fame honor has gone to such an elite group that it is little wonder the induction ceremonies have produced unforgettable moments — reunions of disbanded superstar groups, emotional and historically rich speeches and once-in-a-lifetime, all-star jam sessions.
The magic will continue with the 19th annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony March 15 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. This year’s inductees are Jackson Browne, the Dells, George Harrison, Prince, Bob Seger, Traffic and ZZ Top.
Stars set to induct the honorees include Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Tom Petty, OutKast and Alicia Keys. VH1 will tape the event for broadcast March 21.
A lifetime achievement award in the non-performer category will be presented to Jann Wenner, co-founder and editor-in-chief/publisher of Rolling Stone and chairman of Wenner Media.
In 1983, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was created. Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records and considered by many the “godfather” of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, invited record-company leaders, top managers, attorneys and other influential industry people to take part.
A select group of people joined the foundation’s board of directors. They included Ertegun as chairman, Wenner as vice chairman, Sire Records co-founder and president Seymour Stein as president, attorney Suzan Evans as executive director and attorney Allen Grubman as secretary/treasurer.
NO BROADCAST
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation eventually bought the rights to the Hall of Fame name. And the board immediately decided against a TV broadcast of the induction ceremonies.
The inaugural Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner took place in 1986 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, which has been, for the most part, the longtime home of the event.
“My only regret was that we didn’t start a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sooner,” Stein says. “We were having so much fun in the music business it didn’t occur to us to have one sooner. We don’t tend to realize the value and importance of rock ‘n’ roll. Music is the thing that unites us around the world, and so much of it is American and rock ‘n’ roll.”
As annual induction dinners continued, the idea of a physical museum to enshrine the history of rock ‘n’ roll gained momentum.
“Our goal was to build a museum, but in the beginning we envisioned buying a brownstone in New York City and filling it with memorabilia,” Evans reveals.
But interest in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum quickly grew to such an extent that the foundation received offers to fund and house it from several cities, including Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, New York, Atlanta, New Orleans and San Francisco. Cleveland — home to pioneering rock DJ Alan Freed, who is credited with coining the term “rock ‘n’ roll” — landed the museum.
Designed by noted architect I.M. Pei, the museum is a striking, 150,000-square-foot structure, anchored by a 162-foot tower. “I.M. Pei was our first choice as the architect,” Ertegun notes. “When I asked him to do it, I said to him, ‘Be sure to tell your children about this offer before you turn it down.’ And of course, his children said that he had to do it. He gave us what is probably one of the greatest achievements of his career.”
Builders broke ground for the museum in 1993. A star-studded concert televised on HBO marked its opening in 1995.
STRIKING A BALANCE

Wenner says, “The biggest challenge was getting it right, because we were starting something new. We took our time, because we wanted to get it right. We wanted a balance of making it serious with a historical purpose as well as it popular and attractive to visitors.” The museum prides itself on presenting the ultimate history of rock ‘n’ roll, according to chief curator Jim Henke. In addition to permanent exhibits (including those devoted to Hall of Fame inductees), it features limited-edition exhibits, educational programs and special events.
“We have a Hall of Fame series in which we bring inductees to play in this little theater that seats about 160 people and answer questions from the audience,” Henke says. Music notables who have participated in the series include Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Ray Davies of the Kinks, Dickey Betts of Allman Brothers Band fame, the Band (minus Robbie Robertson), record producer Jerry Wexler and the songwriting duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
For years, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies remained somewhat cloaked in the kind of mystique similar to exclusive club events. That changed in 1996, when VH1 began televising the ceremonies.
“We resisted televising it for a long time,” Evans says. “The artists enjoyed the feeling that they could say anything, knowing it wasn’t going to be televised. But then people started criticizing us for being ‘elitist’ and not sharing this event with everybody.”