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 and, rock, roll, hall, fame and/or controversy:
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock and roll or Christianity.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“You have constantly urged the idea that you were persecuted because you did not come from West-Point, and you repeat it in these letters. This, my dear general, is I fear, the rock on which you have split.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The mode of clearing and planting is to fell the trees, and burn once what will burn, then cut them up into suitable lengths, roll into heaps, and burn again; then, with a hoe, plant potatoes where you can come at the ground between the stumps and charred logs; for a first crop the ashes suffice for manure, and no hoeing being necessary the first year. In the fall, cut, roll, and burn again, and so on, till the land is cleared; and soon it is ready for grain, and to be laid down.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For a hundred and fifty years, in the pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground—old toilers, soil makers:
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“Death makes no conquest of this conqueror,
For now he lives in fame though not in life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“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)