Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 31, 1995 TAG: 9508310004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHUCK MELVIN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CLEVELAND LENGTH: Long
Rock 'n' roll has endured long enough to deserve a museum all its own.
Now it has one.
``It's art,'' said Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine and vice chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. ``And like all art, it evolves, and the older art gets put in a museum, which is great and natural.''
But when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum opens this weekend, visitors won't mistake it for any art museum they've seen before.
The building designed by I.M. Pei looks as rebellious as the music it celebrates, with bold geometric shapes flanking a glass pyramid-shaped central structure. Portions of the multimillion-dollar building are anchored in the waters of Lake Erie.
Inside, the collection of rock artifacts will be brought to life by interactive exhibits featuring films, video, audio and computer displays. Museum officials hope to make it much more than just a place to see John Lennon's Rickenbacker guitar or Jimi Hendrix's handwritten lyrics to ``Purple Haze'' - although plenty of those items will be on display.
Among them:|
Buddy Holly's high school diploma.
Grace Slick's dress from Woodstock.
Wilson Pickett's guitar and jumpsuit.
Keith Moon's report card (the future Who drummer ``shows promise in music'').
Little Richard, one of the first rockers to be inducted, in 1986, will perform Saturday in the hall's grand opening concert.
The museum, he said, ``is going to let them see the roots and where it came from. I say that as an originator who played with all of these guys. I'm the architect of rock 'n' roll.
``It's going to humble a lot of people. It's going to give respect and credit to the originators of rock 'n' roll.''
Part of the challenge, museum Director Dennis Barrie said, was to make the museum interesting enough to attract fans who already know the material intimately. Patrons of an art museum, for example, may never see an original Rembrandt or Picasso anywhere else; patrons of the Rock Hall, in contrast, may be familiar enough with the music to recite the lyrics word for word.
``What we have is an audience who believes they know the subject matter, because they've loved it, they've purchased it, they've danced to it, they've sung along with it, they've had a beer with it,'' Barrie said. ``What we try to give them ... is some understanding of where the music came from, why this artist was important, how she influenced someone else - the kind of thing they may not know.''
Technology makes that job easier.
``You will see a screen of Bob Dylan saying how much Woody Guthrie influenced him, and you'll push his face and hear Guthrie singing, and you'll say, `Wow, he really did influence him!''' said Peter Arendt, design and construction director. ``I don't think people are prepared for it.''
The concept of a museum dedicated to rock 'n' roll had been floating around since at least the early 1980s. Atlantic Records chairman Ahmet Ertegun headed creation of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 1983, after getting the idea from a company that wanted to put the annual induction ceremony on pay-per-view television.
``We got them to agree that we wouldn't do a television show, for starters,'' Ertegun said. ``The kind of event it turned out to be, the induction ceremony, everyone liked and came to because it was not commercialized.''
The foundation, made up of record company executives and other music industry professionals, began choosing Rock Hall inductees in 1986. The class included some of the biggest names of 1950s rock: Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis.
This year's inductees - The Allman Brothers Band, Al Green, and Martha and the Vandellas - represent several rock 'n' roll styles.
``I like the diversity,'' said Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks. ``It's a broad spectrum, and it's a valid part of the genre.''
Trucks recognizes that some of what passes for rock 'n' roll is, and always has been, bad. The part that qualifies as art is rare.
``As H.L. Mencken said, you'll never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public,'' he said. ``The more inane you make it, the bigger it gets.''
At the time of the first inductions in New York in 1986, the Hall of Fame had no permanent home.
Later that year, the foundation picked Cleveland, partly because of its history as an influential radio market but more importantly because residents and city and state officials lobbied so hard.
Artist support was instant. In a 1986 letter to the music industry titans, Michael Jackson wrote: ``Let me cast my vote for Cleveland - the city that means rock 'n' roll.'' Bruce Springsteen told Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, ``Man, I want it in Cleveland. I got started here.''
Trucks, though, backed his native Florida as a hall site. When Ohio got it, ``My initial reaction was, `You've got to be kidding,' '' Trucks recalled.
But even the skeptics conceded there was a compelling historical reason to put the hall in Cleveland.
Disc jockey Alan Freed, who insisted on playing the music of black artists - rather than covers recorded by white performers - is credited with coining the term ``rock 'n' roll'' in the early 1950s. The ``Moondog Coronation Ball'' Freed promoted in Cleveland in 1952 is widely recognized as the first rock concert.
At the June 1993 groundbreaking, Pete Townshend and Chuck Berry played air guitar on their shovels while Billy Joel admitted that he, too, had voted for building the hall in Cleveland.
The road to rock 'n' roll heaven, though, took some detours. On-again, off-again financing, legal disputes and resignations dogged the project. Construction was delayed until mid-1993. The project's original estimated price, $65 million, skyrocketed.
The museum, finally financed by a combination of public money and donations from corporations and foundations, projects an annual attendance of 1 million - a potential infusion of tourist dollars big enough to offset any government uneasiness about paying tribute to a business so wrapped up in sex, drugs and anti-establishment causes.
The museum will deal directly with rock's history.
To be sure, museum director Barrie won't be shy about it. When he was director of The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, he and the center were indicted, and subsequently acquitted, on obscenity charges for a 1990 showing of the works of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
``I like the fact that we deal with drug issues and those types of things,'' Barrie said. ``We try to do it mostly through historical footage and the films that we've done. The films ... cover all the issues, whether it's race relations or changes in social structures and social mores - Elvis being too dangerous to put on television from the waist down.''
The museum will have a full-service library and database for those doing scholarly research on rock music. There will be a 200-seat indoor theater, an outdoor concert area and a working studio from which visiting disc jockeys can broadcast.
The opening weekend will be highlighted by a concert at Cleveland Stadium featuring a variety of rock styles ranging from Chuck Berry to Johnny Cash to Snoop Doggy Dogg.
``If anybody thinks it's a dead art form, then turn on your radio and realize it's the most powerful art form in the world today,'' Barrie said.
by CNB