Norm N. Nite - The House That Rock Built: How it Took Time, Money, Music Moguls, Corporate Types, Politicians, Media, Artists, and Fans To Bring the Rock Hall To Cleveland

How It Took Time, Money, Music Moguls,
Corporate Types, Politicians, Media, Artists,
and Fans to Bring the Rock Hall to Cleveland

NORM N. NITE AND TOM FERAN

The Hall of Fame logo and award statue are registered trademarks of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

2020 by Norm N. Nite and Tom Feran

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-60635-399-8

Manufactured in Canada

No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Cataloging information for this title is available at the Library of Congress.

24 23 22 21 205 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to my late father, Jim, and mother, Jean, and also to my sister, Carolyn, and brothers, Richard and Don, whose love and inspiration enabled me to develop my interest in music.

NORM N. NITE

Youll never get the real history.
Youll get the history according to
somebody. Everybody has their
own theory about how everything
happened.

ALBERT RATNER

CONTENTS

Before you get into this excellent book about how the Rock Hall came into existence, I want to just spend a few minutes explaining the reason why it came into existence.

My generation, people born from the mid-40s to the mid-50s, is described as the baby boom generation. What is not said often enough, and what we should be called, is the luckiest generation.

As World War II ended, we in America found ourselves Kings of the Earth.

Our economy was as friendly as it would ever be.

Our currency had about the highest value it would ever have.

The concepts of leisure time and a middle class were really expanded. The discussion at the dinner table was not if but when we would go to the four-day work week!

And on top of all that, we grew up in the middle of what we recognize now as an artistic renaissance.

Every couple of hundred years or so the greatest art being made also becomes the most commercial.

Thats what we were lucky enough to be born into.

Keep in mind it was only in the 1950s that a new alien life-form called the teenager had just come into existence. Before that, the human species stages of development were considered infancy, then adolescence, then a couple of awkward years, then adulthood.

In the 60s, those couple of awkward years expanded, giving birth to teenagers, which meant a new demographic, a new market, andAmerica being Americanew industries popping up to service them.

Rock and roll was one of them.

It turned out to be an unexpectedly satisfying means of expression, as Chuck Berry institutionalized the teenage lifestyle in song after song, giving the adults a glimpse into a world they knew nothing about, while simultaneously half-describing, half-inventing the template that defined the teenage identity, too new and hopelessly inarticulate to ever define itself. (Much as Mario Puzos Godfather supplied the Book of Rules for all Mafia generations that followed!)

But while rock and roll itself was busy frightening parents to death because of its real and imagined association with juvenile delinquency, the purveyors of this new form of pop music were not taken seriously at all.

They were considered novelty acts.

The freak show in the teenage circus.

Society saw them as attention-getting gimmicks with no substance whatsoever.

A-wop-bopa-lu-bopa-wop-bam-boom! declared Little Richard!

The mother of all future Millennial acronyms?

Nah, novelty!

Bomp-bab-a-bomp

ba-bomp-a-bomp-bomp-bomp

bab-a-bomp-bab-a-bomp

a-dang-a-dang-dang

a-dinga-dong-ding Blue Moon

Whats to take seriously?

Jesters. Minstrels. Thats all they were. Traveling town to town to keep the kids amused until they grew up and got jobs and took their expected places in society.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the status quo.

It was called the 60s.

Yes, the 50s kids did mostly, if reluctantly, grow up and become part of normal society.

The 60s kids did not.

In fact, we would be the only generation in history to not grow up to be our parents.

Music wasnt incidental to us. There was nothing casual about the soundtrack of our lives. It was orchestrating our every emotion and we took it quite seriously.

And so did the artists who were collectively about to become known as the British Invasion of 1964.

These groupsthe Beatles, Dave Clark 5, Hermans Hermits, Animals, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Yardbirds, Searchers, Who, Hollies, and othersaccidentally, unknowingly, brought three new elements that would change popular entertainment forever:

1) They introduced the band as the new vehicle of teenage communication, which had a very different message intrinsicallycommunitywhich would have an unexpectedly profound and lasting effect.

2) The performers became integrated into our lives not just for the music and entertainment the way the 50s guys did but as a source of information and education and mentoring and companionship and, potentially, nothing less than enlightenment.

3) They took those 50s rock-and-rolling freaky misfit novelty performers very seriously! Even more than we did.

Yeah, OK, they all had an actit was still show biz, after allbut these British guys picked up on something the Americans hadnt, based on an appreciation for all things Americana we will never have.

They recognized the 50s innovators had created a very simple-touse platform of expression that could be easily adapted and built on.

Little Richard, who invented and embodied the rock idiom as we know it, had crazy hair and crazy clothes, rolled his eyes skyward like a possessed demon, screaming incoherent lyricsall exaggerated to become the Act, but it wasnt an act when every time he opened his mouth out came LIBERATION!

And Jimi Hendrix was listening.

For his gimmicks, Bo Diddley had homemade guitars, a maraca player, a female guitarist, and crazy moves, while inventing self-promotion at the same time.

But he made the rhythm of sex commercial.

And the Rolling Stones would use it.

Chuck Berry duckwalked and clowned around.

But he brought storytelling to pop music and made his guitar innovations look like fun.

And what would soon be the two biggest bands in the world, the Beatles and Stones, became his loyal disciples.

Jerry Lee Lewiss long, pomaded hair hung down in his face as he kicked the bench over, pushed the piano across the stage, and was obviously possessed by the devil. But he represented the southern white guy as satyr, using his religious guilt thing as his source of power.

Power that the Who would harness.

Gary U.S. Bondss name was his gimmick.

But he and sax player Daddy G taught the world what a party sounded like.

Bruce Springsteen was paying attention.

Dion and the Belmonts were white doo-wop in a black doo-wop world singing horn parts. They introduced the attitude of the street.