Audio By Carbonatix
part 2 of 2
That afternoon the press was invited to enjoy free grub on a pleasure boat, the Goodtime III, rented for the evening by Radio Shack. There was finger food and liquor aplenty, as well as a band featuring a man in a sailor uniform playing Kenny G licks on an alto saxophone and a sixtysomething drummer who imitated Louis Armstrong as he scatted around the phrase “Radio Shack and all their fine Realistic products.”
As the Goodtime bar closed, a $1,000-per-plate black-tie gala was getting under way at the museum. Photogs swarmed around a red carpet laid across the plaza in the hopes of getting candids of stars, but not all that many chose to show: Casey Kasem and the ubiquitous Ben E. King were present, but they were outnumbered by legions of record-company executives accompanied by their trophy wives. Nevertheless, TV news that night provided far more coverage of this event than of the death of a man (later identified as Dr. John Carey, a respected Cleveland AIDS physician) who fell to his death from the deck of the William G. Mather, a floating maritime museum moored about fifty yards from the Goodtime III.
On Saturday morning at a few minutes before 10 (when the museum was scheduled to open to the general public), a long line of people with tickets bearing times throughout the day was snaking through the plaza. At the front doors, a young couple with a baby were arguing with several Black Berets who were trying to move them toward the other visitors-to-be. The woman, in particular, was having none of that. “We’re not going anywhere,” she growled. “We’ve been here for hours, and we’re going to be the first ones into the museum. You understand me?” The Black Berets finally relented, and when the doors opened, the woman’s stern look vanished. She all but sprinted toward the TV cameras and bubbled about how overjoyed she and her family were to win the race.
Again, museum attendees were directed down the escalator that had taken sneak-peakers to the loading dock. But this time we were admitted to the Ahmet M. Ertegun Exhibition Hall, where the main body of the museum’s collection is arrayed. Inside, music from dozens of sources blared simultaneously, producing a very un-museumlike din. It was the first good sign.
Over the next two and a half hours, I explored the various exhibits along with thousands of Clevelanders and a handful of media types and found presentations that ranged from the sublime to the silly. An example of the latter? The heads of mannequins that wore various costumes didn’t resemble the people they represented with the exception of hairstyle; as a result, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sid Vicious and one of four Michael Jacksons bore the exact same face. Other mannequins were too tall to fit in their designated case–so their heads were chopped off and mounted on the rear wall beside their bodies. The proximity of these pathetic figures to a tableau featuring an Alice Cooper figure using a guillotine painted perhaps too vivid a picture.
On the plus side, Barrie and curator James Henke (a veteran of Rolling Stone) went to the trouble of collecting memorabilia from individuals throughout the rock era–not just superstars like Lennon, but second-tier performers and artists whose importance as inspirations never led to large-scale fame. There were costumes from Allan Touissant, Ruth Brown and Irma Thomas. There was an elaborate re-creation of Parliament-Funkadelic on stage. There was a shirt from John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service, an outfit worn by Soulsonic Force, guitars used by Reverend Blind Gary Davis and Jimmy Reed, ripped shorts from Sean Kinney of Alice in Chains. And, in a bow to contemporaneity, a case featured duds owned by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, L7 and two additional groups–Psychotica and the Dopes–that aren’t even on the cultural radar screen yet.
Lots of non-clothes-related paraphernalia was available for viewing, too, including an excellent anti-love letter sent to the Rolling Stones circa the Sixties (“I SPIT on you and go to the toilet on you. That’s all your [sic] worth. So do what I said, and GET OUT, we HATE you!”). And on the whole, the hall’s interactive displays proved functional and entertaining. One allowed attendees to listen to songs from curator Henke’s debatable list of rock’s most memorable songs. Another let viewers toggle back and forth between music and videos from a band of their choice and those made by two acts embraced by the first as influences.
Some exhibits were wrongheaded: A film called Fans–You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me was insulting (it made all music lovers look like obsessive idiots), while “Rock Around the Clock”–basically a circular room dominated by banks of TVs flashing contrasting images–was incoherent. But the short flicks Mystery Train and Kick Out the Jams, by director Susan Steinberg, were effective, if somewhat superficial, overviews of the music–and the majority of the other depictions were done with at least a modicum of intelligence and wit. In short, the hall was a fun place to go. You can argue about whether or not such a museum should have been built in the first place, and many will. But at least on the main level, I felt, the job had been done well.
If the goal of the Blue Shirts and the Black Berets was to remind everyone why security guards are almost universally disliked, they did their jobs, too. At 12:45, all members of the press were physically ejected from the hall (I was grabbed as I was trying to find a friend at the gift shop, where he intended to buy a glass snowball with a model of the museum inside).
Museum communications coordinator Jeff Hagan said at the time that the action was being taken due to overcrowding. He lied. Actually, a previously unannounced gaggle of donors, money men and famous people, including James Brown, were being led through the hall from 1 to 4 p.m.–and didn’t want flashbulbs going off in their faces. The impromptu tour also caused chaos outside, where people who’d bought tickets to go through the museum between the aforementioned hours were refused admission. In rock and roll, everyone is equal–but some people are more equal than others.
Fortunately, the Blue Shirts and the Black Berets let us pass when we returned at 4:30. Soon thereafter, we discovered that we’d already seen the meat of the museum. The reason for this had everything to do with the pyramid shape of I.M. Pei’s design; its geometrically challenging glass-and-steel look is striking–and strangely appropriate to the hall’s subject matter–but the size of the levels shrinks severely as visitors rise within it. The second floor sported a wonderful room focusing on rock radio, dubbed The Big Beat; there, visitors could listen to vintage recordings of DJs such as Freed and Sly Stone, who was a San Francisco air personality prior to forming Sly and the Family Stone in the late Sixties. But aside from a cafeteria, the main attraction on the third floor was a conglomeration of bricks and inflatables from Pink Floyd’s The Wall trek in 1980; the props didn’t move, but at irregular intervals, voices from behind them shrieked at passersby. As for the fourth floor, it was dominated by a theater whose film, Rock Is…, was the weakest of the museum’s movies–and the fifth floor held little more than a small radio studio and a curved staircase leading to the Hall of Fame itself.
The hall, as it turned out, was the biggest disappointment in the entire edifice–a small, dark room with black walls in which were mounted small video monitors that flashed computer-generated black-and-white images of hall inductees. The performers’ signatures appeared near the screens, but if anyone tried to touch them, a Blue Shirt materialized to tell him to stop. Furthermore, and in contrast to the rest of the museum, there was absolutely no sound–the silence was unnerving.
The result felt less reverent than funereal. As one observer said, “It’s like viewing the body.”
I went back to Ohio
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
–from “My City Was Gone,” by the Pretenders, 1983
To most early Eighties listeners, “My City Was Gone” was Pretenders vocalist Chrissie Hynde’s sarcastic attack on her blighted home state. But the nearly 60,000 people at Memorial Stadium for the Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum apparently disagreed; they were so hyped up by the ditty’s opening chords that by the time Hynde broke into the chorus–“Hey, ho, way to go, Ohio”–they cheered as if the lyrics were high compliments. One got the impression that Hynde would have been given the same reception had she argued in song that Cleveland should be bombed back to the Stone Age. Then again, she’d hedged her bets with the Indians-mad crowd by yelling, “How about that Tribe?” as she strode onto the stage.
This moment, which came sometime during the first half of the almost-seven-hour-long Hall of Fame bash, was indicative of a show that rewarded anyone who came to it with suitably low expectations. Its accomplishments were due in part to structuring. Because of the size and scope of the soiree (and because this was, in essence, a TV show), performers couldn’t simply play with whatever musicians they chose; they had to keep things relatively tight. But what was lost in spontaneity was made up for, about half the time, by the music itself.
For proof, you had to look no further than John Fogerty and Al Green. They pretty much had the spotlight to themselves during their solo moments, but they were so charismatic that any intrusions from others were utterly unnecessary. Aretha Franklin, too, didn’t need assistance, but she got some anyhow from Green, whose ecstatic wailing during “Freeway of Love” motivated some of her best singing in years. George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic (joined by the Family Stone’s Larry Graham) also excelled, making covers of “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” and “I Want to Take You Higher” sound as vibrant and ebullient as ever. And while mini-sets by John Mellencamp, the Allman Brothers, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Booker T and the MGs, Sam Moore, the duo of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, and Bruce Springsteen weren’t exactly startling, they were solid enough to prevent most of those at the stadium from staring at their watches.
Younger acts didn’t fare nearly as well. From a musical standpoint, Bon Jovi, Natalie Merchant, Sheryl Crow, the Gin Blossoms and Melissa Etheridge aren’t interested in pushing rock into fresh territory; they prefer to operate in zones where the genre’s already been–and that’s precisely what they did. With the exception of Soul Asylum, which chose to back up Reed and Pop rather than play a set of its own, there wasn’t a single band on the bill that came close to 1995’s cutting edge. This does not bode well for the museum, which needs to keep up with the times in order to avoid ossifying into dated, unintended camp. If new artists refuse to participate in hall functions–or, worse, see the entire thing as an embarrassment–it will become nothing more than a monument to the past, not a harbinger for the future.
The past, then, had the concert pretty much to itself, and sometimes it showed its age. During his version of “The Weight,” Robbie Robertson reminded everyone why he let the other members of the Band sing the song; his vocals ran the emotional gamut from A to A-. Bob Dylan (the only unannounced performer–rumored appearances by everyone from Led Zeppelin to Neil Young never materialized) was ambulatory, but his performance could hardly have been flatter. As the years pass, Jackson Browne seems to be getting even more boring. And Chuck Berry, who opened the show with “Johnny B. Goode” and closed it with “Rock & Roll Music,” seemed not to care about anything other than getting on and off the stage as quickly as possible. Berry treated Springsteen and his E Street Band no differently than he did the pick-up combos he used when touring the hinterlands during the Seventies and Eighties; he coasted through the tunes, then walked out of sight without a second thought.
Who cares about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? he seemed to be saying. The only thing that matters is getting paid.
All the little kids growing up on the skids
Know Cleveland rocks.
–from “Cleveland Rocks,” by Ian Hunter, 1979
Cleveland got paid, too. Tourists aplenty piled into the city and swapped a lot of their hard-earned green for Hall of Fame shirts, Hall of Fame hats, Hall of Fame jackets and, yes, Hall of Fame snowballs. HBO and VH1, the music-video channel that most baby boomers recommend, devoted huge chunks of airtime to the museum and to Cleveland in general; it was the kind of free, unquestioningly positive publicity that virtually any community would love. Other reporters–unaffiliated with sponsors and presumably more objective–were generally kind as well. Those anticipating a disaster often turned into the biggest advocates. And although Yoko Ono heard some tittering when she suggested, during the ribbon-cutting, that her music-loving friends would only be flying to New York City from now on in order to catch shuttles to Cleveland, the suggestion that people might actually enjoy visiting northeast Ohio no longer seemed as kooky.
Of course, the city was lucky. The weather was lovely, the atmosphere was festive, the nightlife (most notably in the Flats, a nest of clubs along the Cuyahoga) was entertaining, the shopping (at downtown complexes such as Tower City, which almost wound up housing the hall) was equal to that of most cities, and the people were, for the most part, incredibly deferential. Practically every local who learned I was from out of town wanted to know, “Are you having a good time? Are you enjoying herself?” It was downright poignant how desperate they were to please and to vindicate the place where they lived. Cleveland, like Sally Field, just wanted to know that someone liked it.
It’s too soon to tell whether the love affair between Cleveland and the hall will continue to grow. Perhaps the somewhat snooty attitudes, organizational faux pas and lack of accountability demonstrated by some museum personnel toward the general public and the press during the opening will moderate as time goes by; after all, the hall can’t afford to alienate the very Clevelanders who will have to keep it going during the slow periods that are sure to come. Likewise, hall management will have to convince corporate sponsors to continue major funding. Otherwise, the bright and shiny new museum may seem shaggy and irrelevant as early as the turn of the century.
On the other hand, the city has successfully established its importance in the history of rock and roll. Not many other locales can say the same: If the hall had landed in Colorado, curators would have had one hell of a time coming up with any timeless local exhibits at all (John Denver’s driving record? The six-pack the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson grabbed from an area convenience store? Some bad reviews of records by Firefall?). Cleveland, on the other hand, has a long and memorable rock-and-roll background. And now it has what Rolling Stone’s Wenner called a “jewel-like tent” in which to crow about it.
Jim Morrison very well might have loathed the idea of thousands of strangers gawking at his Cub Scout uniform. But at least his bones are safe–for now.
end of part 2
