Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 1, 1994 TAG: 9403010039
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MANUEL MENDOZA DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Welcome to the Grammy clubhouse, where mainstream pop is the rule, and rappers need not apply for the top awards. Call them the Grannies.
But the 36th annual Grammy Awards, to be broadcast Tuesday from 8 to 11 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7, will probably admit one new member this year: Whitney Houston, who has won two Grammys in lesser categories but was denied a nomination as best new artist in 1985 because she had some minor credits on other artists' albums.
"This is the year of Whitney's revenge," says Thomas O'Neil, author of the unauthorized "The Grammys for the Record," who predicts Houston will take record of the year honors for her chart-busting remake of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You."
"She's now the biggest-selling female solo artist in history, and she's going to be crowned officially the queen of pop music at the Grammys," says O'Neil, whose book chronicles the history of the music-industry awards, including year-by-year lists of all the nominees and winners. "At the same time, she sings `I Will Always Love You' to the NARAS [National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences] crowd who snubbed her nine years ago. It'll be a great love fest."
Along with Houston, the acts scheduled to perform at the Grammys include Aerosmith, Clint Black, Natalie Cole, Digable Planets, Gloria Estefan, Billy Joel, Itzhak Perlman, Sting, Wynonna, Neil Young and Pinchas Zukerman. Garry Shandling, the hilarious star of HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show," will host.
The 6,000 voting members of NARAS - musicians, producers, engineers and others on the creative side of the business who have contributed to at least six pieces of music during the year - are considered a conservative bunch. They did not give rock its own categories until 1979, with hard rock and rap added 10 years later (right after the arch-rival American Music Awards did it).
The idea of the Grammys as a club is supported by at least three patterns:
The same people win year after year.
The most extreme examples are in older genres like jazz, blues and classical. "Why did Ella Fitzgerald win 13 jazz awards and Sarah Vaughan win one?" O'Neil asks. "These kinds of enormous discrepancies tell you who's in and who's out of the club. . . . Leonard Bernstein has won classical album of the year every year since he's been dead. If Solti is nominated, he wins."
Even in the big three - record, album and song of the year - repeat honorees are not uncommon. For instance, Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra and Stevie Wonder have each taken three album of the year awards. And Sting, including his days with the Police, has 10 Grammys. He is the odds-on favorite to win album and song of the year, though Billy Joel, with five previous Grammys and the huge Sony voting bloc behind him, could also snag those awards.
Winners, especially in the top categories, are typically nonthreatening, mature artists who have either outgrown their rebellious nature or weren't rebellious in the first place.
"It's a perfect NARAS song," O'Neil says of "I Will Always Love You." "It's a safe, mainstream ballad."
Neil Young and Donald Fagen, neither of whom has won a Grammy, are both up for top awards this year (with Fagen a dark horse for album of the year) - just as their music has become more mellow. "These guys didn't have a prayer for Grammys in their younger days," O'Neil says. "It's the same reason Eric Clapton got an armload full last year, and that is, these guys are no longer mavericks. They no longer rock the house. So the Grammy crowd will let them in."
Team players, especially if they're well-connected and participate in NARAS events, win a lot.
As a longtime writer, producer and arranger, Quincy Jones is the ultimate insider - he has won 25 Grammys, second only to Solti's 29. Vince Gill, though not nominated this year, usually does well in the country categories because he's a major NARAS schmoozer, O'Neil says. And Bonnie Raitt's upset album of the year victory in 1989 for "Nick of Time" gets credited to her years in the trenches, jamming with other musicians and touring as an opening act.
"It was one of those rare moments that you say to yourself, `Yeah, this can happen at the Grammys. This can be an exciting show-biz award,' " O'Neil says. It can also be a moneymaking award, especially when the winner was a long shot whose sales were not overwhelming to begin with. For Raitt, that translated into millions of units.
Rock bands have typically fared poorly at the Grammys. Once in a while, one will slip through based on popularity or, again, maturity. R.E.M. joined the club in 1991 with top nominations for its "Out of Time" album and "Losing My Religion" single - both laid-back affairs - and returns this year with an album of the year nomination for the equally mellow "Automatic for the People" (which also happens to be a great record and is another dark horse).
U2 pulled an upset in 1987 when "The Joshua Tree" won album of the year. But noisier rock outfits like Pearl Jam (which failed to be nominated for best new artist in 1992) and rap acts of any kind are considered too dangerous for record, album or song of the year nominations. In fact, last year, no rock music was up for record or song of the year, and no rap performer has ever been nominated for one of the top three awards.
Even as popular as they were in their day, bad-boy and bad-girl acts like the Rolling Stones and Madonna have been too scary for NARAS. The Stones, joined by The Who, Little Richard, the Grateful Dead, Elvis Costello - even the Beach Boys - have never won Grammys. And Madonna has been honored only in the video competition.
This year, the big battle is between Sting and Billy Joel. While Houston is expected to take record of the year, O'Neil picks Sting for album ("Ten Summoner's Tales") and song of the year ("If I Ever Lose My Faith in You"), while Entertainment Weekly predicts Joel's "River of Dreams" LP and "The River of Dreams" single will take those honors (he should be docked just for creating a potential title mix-up).
But Sting is surging, and sweeps are the latest trend in the Grammys. O'Neil believes the former Policeman could even edge out Houston for record of the year and keep her out of the club.
"He's now a safe rocker, the same way the Grammys said to Eric Clapton last year, `You can join the inner sanctum now.' "
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by CNB