It's Gotta Be Rock Roll Music - A College Essay about Rock and Roll and The Critera to get into The Rock Hall

This piece is an essay for a class I'm currently taken during my first semester of college. With that said we did have a length requirement, and those who know me know that I could ramble forever on this topic.  Maybe someday I'll expand on this article. All pictures used for this article are photos taken by me unless otherwise noted. Without further adieu, my paper on defining Rock and Roll and what the criteria for getting into the Rock Hall of Fame should be, featuring quotes from the very humble and bright Mr. Benmont Tench.

  "If you ask a musicologist, or look it up in a book, you'll be told that rock & roll is an African American form of music, an intesification of rhythm and blues, another Black musical style, which was quickly adopted by white musicians like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, who mixed in strains of country and western, and brought it to white teenagers, who went crazy for it. Which is pretty much true. But it's so much more than that." - Benmont Tench

 Rock and Roll. It’s a genre of music. It’s an attitude. It’s a lifestyle. It’s an epidemic that came into this world and shook it upside down. It is everything from blues, jazz, skiffle, folk, country, and creole fusion all mixed into one and brought to life through guitar licks, heart-pounding drums, steady bass lines, raw vocals and those crazy enough to get swept up into the mania. When we think of Rock and Roll we often think of The King, Elvis Presley himself, whom most of us identify to be one of the pioneers of this motion. As time evolved rock and roll became stereotyped and immediately thought of as skinny legged, long haired, dress in women’s clothing bands such as Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, or Aerosmith. A lifestyle that was scene through head banging, electrified instruments, drugs, fast lane living and fast women; nonetheless, Rock and Roll.  Rock and Roll is a motion that has progressed and changed with the times but always finds a way to creep back and remember it’s roots. It’s a growing genre that some have said is dying out but Rock and Roll will forever be influencing our everyday culture as long as the world is rotating.
            In 1956 Elvis Presley recorded “Heartbreak Hotel”  which has been said to have inspired a magnitude of musicians turning them on to rock and roll music. Beatles and Wings, Paul McCartney mentioned this track and it’s captivating powers in The Beatles Anthology (2000),

“It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel” I thought, this is it.” 

Microphones at Sun Studios
2015

However, the music had been revolutionizing into this upbeat sensation prior to Sun Records Sam Phillips discover of our hip-shaking King. Mentioned above the foundations of rock and roll came from multiples of genres. The idea of up beat music can be said to root back to swinging nights of the twenties where terms like “Boogie Woogie” started being used . However, it wasn’t until our founding fathers, like Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, and many more shared their talents that the term Rock and Rock was coined.

"There are field tapes of tribespeople in Africa that jump & jive and are filled with the infectiousness of spirit that rock and roll has; there is daring and power and emotion in symphonies by Beethoven & concertos by Bach..." - Benmont Tench

           Throughout this essay you'll quotes of  a high praised man in the industry of music, actually a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who was inducted in 2002 with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. He has worked with multiples of artist, from Roy Orbison to Stevie Nicks,  Mr. Benmont Tench, who was generous enough to lend his thoughts and time to respond to my question. After sharing a quick overview of our assignment, he had lent his thoughts which I have spread out throughout this page, hoping to not take them entirely out of context. The initial question being "Do you mind lending a quick quote or line about what Rock and Roll is to you, for a school assignment?";

 “...rock and roll, to me? It’s swing, drive, emotion, a directness of soul and intensity of expression, absolutely, definitely, indisputably Black in origin, but open to all corners to stretch, squeeze, constrict, expand, revere, despise, revise, blow up and create all over again - and then some. Oh, and did I mention the sexual component?”

            With Rock and Roll came many sounds. From early plays of Doo-Wop bands like The Drifters, to hair raising guitar riffs of Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran that would lead into finger blistering solos of those inspired by their sound like Rolling Stones guitarist and lyricist, Keith Richards. Spurring from the early fifties sounds came pop music and pop-rock, which featured bands and artists like The Beatles, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Electric Light Orchestra and many others. The genre also contains folk singers such as Neil Young and  Bob Dylan, both whom are some of the worlds greatest lyricist of all time and part of two of music’s biggest super groups; Crosby, Stills Nash and Young and The Traveling Wilburys. It’s even the iconic Woodstock period and all the psychedelic bands we think we hear names of certain drugs or even picture tie-dye or brightly colored teddy bears. People like Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Country Joe and The Fish, and The Doors. Rock and Roll also, of course, is the heavily electrified, high frequency  Led Zeppelin and The Who that are stereo-typically thought of.  With all of these recognizable names and various categories throughout decades how do we honor all of them? Some say through The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

         The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a foundation as well as a museum that recognizes and collects memorabilia of those who define rock and roll - or it use to be. The first rock hall inductees included Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, James Brown, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke and Jerry Lee Lewis; all men who rightfully earned their place in a hall of fame for Rock and Roll. Throughout the years we are now seeing musicians whose music isn’t exactly in the realm of rock and roll, for example Rapper Tupac who got voted in during the 2017 nominations.

Benmont Tench, Boston 2014

“I do believe the Hall of fame was a good idea that quickly went sour,” Benmont noted.“They have set it up so that they must induct five acts, or something, every year, and they are now inducting bands that have nothing special about them and passing over groups like The Zombies…”. 

It’s no secret that Benmont is a man who is very passionate about music from all different genres and can see talent in the littlest of things but he has a point. For example (and perhaps maybe a little bias because I adore Peter Wolf), I am just as upset as the next that the J. Geils Band are not inducted into the Rock Hall. Songs like "Centerfold", "Must've Got Lost", even "Love Stinks" are timeless.  Wolf’s animated dance moves, outrageous ad-libs should earn him a spot without questioning it, but yet here we are dismissing the J. Geils Band for the umpteenth time as they have been nominated for a spot in the Rock Hall in 2005, 2006, 2011, 2017, and 2018.

Benmont went on to continue,

“...Sister Rosetta Tharpe is the seminal rock and roll guitar hero; Public Enemy belong in any Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more than easily a quarter of the other inductees; Miles Davis, who couldn’t stand the stuff, was a Rock Star without peer; and Louis Armstrong ABSOLUTELY rock and rolled.”

              So what should be the criteria to secure a spot in the hall? Personally I believe you have to be revolutionizing and inventing, rather reinventing rock and roll to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Your sound should be in the realm of what rock has been through the course of the past few decades, and even creeping quickly on century. I’ll use Tupac as an example. I do not believe he should have been placed in the Rock Hall before other groups and artist. He is a Rapper and a very good one at that, but with that said, I did mention that rock is a variety of sounds, such as folk. However, folk artists were rockers in their own way, and also influenced the rock and roll culture; look at Bob Dylan for example. Dylan's words as well as what he was putting out  inspired the generation and movement in which rock and roll was spiraling and continues to do so. Perhaps if Tupac was part of that generation, my thoughts would be different? Maybe, I’m bias because I can’t listen to eleven seconds of rap without going out of my mind.
           I believe rock and roll is raw talent. You should be able to play in concert what you can do in a studio to be in the hall of fame. For example, The Grateful Dead in my opinion as well as many others I’ve conversed with, are a concert band. To be a band or an artist in the Hall of Fame and the only product that you've produced is all distorted and auto-tuned, I'm sorry, but for me that's not rock and roll and doesn't deserve to be in a Hall of Fame, where's your talent. To use Dylan again because he isn't known for his vocals, but not once did you hear his voice through Auto-tune and he is known as one of the many voices of a century! Look at Janis Joplin who didn't have the most feminine or purest voice, but man, did the people love her. Then we have singers like Mama Cass, who had one of the most pristine voices in music who could sing on key at any given moment, not behind several machines and tapings. That's talent, that's skill. That's Hall worthy.
          To get into the Hall of Fame I think you must also have created something, whether it be an album or a movement, that made a statement. For example if The Beatles didn’t do anything for the eight years they were together but put out Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, absolutely they should be in the hall. That album was iconic on so many levels- but then again, one can argue maybe it only got to the height it did because it was The Beatles. What if hypothetically the album was held off a year, and released by Apple’s first band Badfinger; would it of had the same impact?


           
 There’s many factors on how to categorize who should be in the Rock Hall of Fame, some people you just know should be, like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and Bruce Springsteen. Some you know shouldn’t, for example it’ll be the day I die when Ariana Grande, though she does have talent, I can recognize that, or Nicki Minaj even get nominated. In my humble opinion, I don’t like the new voting system that they’ve put in place since 2012. I think it is now allowing people to just vote on a popularity vote instead of those who deserve the spot. However, I am very pleased that Sister Rosetta Tharpe is finally getting her place in the Rock Hall, because the woman rocked, rolled, jived, when the man who we call The King of Rock and Roll was still in diapers - let that sink in.

In the words of Keith Richards,

 "Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life."

Citations;

• Coye, Lindsey, and Benmont Tench. “Benmont Tench and Rock and Roll.” 16 Feb. 2018. Thoughts and comments on Rock and Roll, as well as the Rock Hall of Fame by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers co-founder, Benmont Tench.

• Inductee Explorer.” Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, www.rockhall.com/inductees
• Richards, Keith. “"Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life." - KR.” Twitter, Twitter, 1 Apr. 2011, twitter.com/officialkeef/status/53864315505221633?lang=en.