Rock and Roll Elitism

I remember as a kid during the 1960s when the Grammy Awards would be shown on TV...and acts like Frank Sinatra, Barbara Streisand, and Henry Mancini would walk away with the awards while the wildly popular rock and roll musicians of the time would be uniformly snubbed...it wasn't until 1967 when the Beatles were finally honored for their song Michelle and the Sgt. Pepper album the following year's ceremony.  But in subsequent years a funny sort of reversal would happen...corresponding to the rise in rock-oriented criticism in magazines like Rolling Stone...in which elitism stemming from music critics would invade this genre itself.  So while progressive groups like the Moody Blues, King Crimson, Yes, and Rush would be making history with their groundbreaking music and other acts like Journey, the Doobie Brothers, the Cars, and Bon Jovi were capturing the allegiance of masses of Americans, they have been largely shunned from admission to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, located in Cleveland, Ohio, was founded in 1983 and began inducting members two years later.  It appropriately took very little time for the musical innovators from the 1950s and earlier like Chuck Berry and Little Richard to gain admittance as well as supergroups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones.  Over the years the membership list has swelled in number...yet several of the inductees do not enjoy anything approaching general popularity and many of those refused entrance were important and extremely popular during their time.  Of the bands I mentioned before, only Rush, Journey, and Yes were inducted...and only just recently, almost as afterthoughts.  True, the Moody Blues are on the list of next year's nominees put out just four days ago, a list also including Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, the Cars, Bon Jovi, Kate Bush, J. Geils Band, Depeche Mode...among others.  The final inductees will be announced in a couple of months, but should I even care whether the Moody Blues, one of my all-time favorite bands, is selected?  And what about the Doobie Brothers, not even nominated...I just don't get this elitism...

To me, the essence of what rock and roll is all about is young folks listening to the records of their music idols and copying out and practicing the songs on their guitars and other instruments until they can completely cover them...and then coming up with their own original music...that's how the Beatles and the Stones got started and it has absolutely nothing to do with professional critics and music historians, noses upturned, sitting on their high and mighty thrones pronouncing their judgments on what is influential and artistic and what isn't.  Rock and roll is the people's music, belonging to the masses, not to an exclusive club of insiders who think and act like they know better than everyone else...