ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150100
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOWN & COUNTRY\A Hearst Magazine
John Lennon's Rickenbacker guitar, Grace Slick's white leather costume from Woodstock and Janis Joplin's funkily painted Porsche are on display among unrelenting sounds and light at the $92 million Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.
The museum overlooking Lake Erie, Thomas Hoving wrote in an article in the current issue of Town & Country, offers compelling films, interactive television, sensational records, interviews, costumes, instruments, diaries and musical compositions.
The project was largely orchestrated by Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder of Atlantic Records, and Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone magazine.
Architect I.M. Pei's pyramidal building, set back on a broad entrance plaza, is a big white-and-glass circus tent supported by a huge 162-foot white tower decorated with square white tiles and decked out with chandeliers. The structure occupies 150,000 square feet, of which 50,000 is for exhibitions and theaters.
The truly mesmerizing element is the music. You can punch up on a console virtually any recording in the genre worth anything and listen through earphones, learn about the artists and discover who influenced him or her. There are the 500 songs that helped shaped the movement, going back to country, blues, New Orleans, Motown, bluegrass and folk.
On display are a series of black-and-white photographs, original manuscripts showing the first thoughts of the artists and their changes, flamboyant costumes, some on loan from London's Victoria and Albert Museum. A section showing on television monitors the detractors of rock, from preachers to politicians to self-proclaimed morals watchers, and two gripping orientation films by Susan Steinberg.
The first of these films is in black-and-white and in 12 minutes takes a youngster on a train trip across the country in the 1950s, discovering the roots of rock-and-roll. Flashing by to the tempo of the Rolling Stones doing ``Love in Vain'' and Elvis Presley singing ``Mystery Train,'' are glimpses and sounds of Woody Guthrie, Nashville, Fats Domino, Dizzy Gillespie and Chuck Berry's ``Roll Over, Beethoven.''
Film two, ``Take It To The Limit,'' features Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Who, and uses well-selected quotes by some of Rock's biggest stars. Joe Strummer of the Clash, ``Pure rock it's like a howling moment,'' Bruce Springsteen, ``It's your physicality, your sexuality and your spirituality;'' Mick Jagger, ``Energy is what you need - energy and three chords.''
The dark side of rock is there, too - scenes of drug overdoses, sound bytes of ignorant stars and some deceased stars, laughing about cocaine, frank discussions of the commercial sleaze, stark portrayals of exhaustion and burnout.
After the orientation films, the visitor moves to the exhibitions, which include some 3,500 artifacts. Accompanied by ear-blasting levels of sound and eye-popping lights, sections include ``Whole Lottta Shakin' Goin' On,'' Memphis, 1948-1958; ``Somebody to Love,'' San Francisco, 1965-1969, including the Haight-Ashbury movement, the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane, and mini-extravaganzas on such giants as Elvis, the Beatles, the Who and U2.
At a guest radio studio, famous disc jockeys from around the country come in and do a day's gig. There also is one period room - the actual studio used by Sun Records in Memphis.
The newly arrived director of the museum-hall of fame, Dennis Barrie, who has a Ph.D. in American cultural history and rich mainstream art-museum experience, says that rock music ``has never had the worldwide influence that it has now. Sixty percent of the music sold all over the world is rock. The movement has had an awesome influence around the globe, and that's gaining.''
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB