You Sir are a smart man.
He’s addressing the issue again, and this time he’s doing the 'ol “I reject your reality and substitute it with one of my own” move.
“I was also very surprised and honored when the President of the World called me up and asked me to take over his job, and when the Queen of Unicornland came by and offered to become my personal steed”.
Fair points all, but there’s a big difference: In baseball, we can point to very specific numbers to prove that one player was much better than another. And, while there will always be arguments about the Hall-worthiness of very-good-but-maybe-not-quite-elite players, pretty much everybody agrees that Mickey Mantle belongs in the Hall of Fame and Fred “The Chicken” Stanley doesn’t.
But when you’re judging musicians, things get harder. How do you decide which acts belong in the Rock and Roll Hal of Fame?
I think the current R & R Hal voters do a lousy job… but if I were a voter, I admit, I’d frequently drive myself nuts trying to figure out some kind of objective standard. All kinds of acts I hate plainly belong in the Hall, and all kinds of acts I loved plainly don’t.
I hate Madonna, but any artist who’s sold as many records as she has and influenced fashions the way she has is definitely worthy of the Hall of Fame. On the other hand, no matterhow much I love Blue Oyster Cult, I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for them. They were never HUGELY popular or influential.
To me, a band like Rush is the musical equivalent of Gil Hodges. To be sure, there are MANY less deserving acts than Rush already in the R & R Hall of Fame, just as there are MANY ballplayers worse than Gil Hodges in the Baseball Hall. So, if Rush or Hodges is inducted some day, cool… but if they aren’t, I won’t shed any tears.
There are only a FEW musical acts whose absence from the R & R Hall of fame I find genuinely baffling.
It’s fine by me that Guns & Roses was elected to the R & R Hall of Fame… but to me, it’s crazy that they were inducted ahead of MORE successful bands that G & R themselves blatantly imitated.
Slash OBVIOUSLY copied every guitar riff Ritchie Blackmore ever played, and he’d admit that readily. And Axl Rose’s scream (like David Lee Roth’s and many others) was borrowed from Ian Gillan’s.
So, why wasnt Deep Purple (who had many more gold albums than G & R) inducted years ago? Come on, what’s THE most iconic guitar riff of all time? “Smoke on the Water,” of course. For that alone, Purple should have been a first ballot no-brainer.
If Deep Purple ever gets the nod, I can see all the members sending a letter saying, “If Ritchie is showing up, please count me out.” 
No worries- Ritchie will send his own letter explaining that he’s booked up with Renaissance Festivals for the next few years, and he won’t be attending.
It’s a shame that Axl is such an Axhole. We can weep and gnash our teeth until Hell Freezes over discussing the merits of what the qualifications and definitions are and should be, but considering that GNR didn’t do shite for what, a decade, and then released the most overblown, overhyped disc in history, inductance in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should have been humbly and graciously accepted. Axl’s letter was a steaming pile of self-serving dung. Nobody except him cares what he is doing now.
I must be the only person in the world that actually likes “Chinese Democracy.”
Wow. I couldn’t disagree more.
The attitude towards Rush always kind of baffled me a bit. I like Rush but can understand those who don’t. At the same time “Rush’s sales statistics place them third behind The Beatles and The Rolling Stones for the most consecutive gold or platinum studio albums by a rock band.” Link. That stat alone is rather amazing considering that Rush progressed quite a bit over their career.
As far as Axl goes, he is nutjob but I can understand why he isn’t all for the RRHOF.
Personally I think the whole thing is a rather large joke.
Slee
Look, practically EVERY metal band that came along after 1975 was heavily influenced by Deep Purple. Slash is a huge Purple fan, and has never hesitated to admit it. I guarantee teenage Saul Hudson, like every guitarist his age, played the “Smoke on the Water” riff a few million times.
Being influenced by what was available at the time and “copying every riff Blackmore ever made” is a yawning, cavernous gap.
To me they sound nothing alike, and also to me, the “sound” of a guitar player, as defined by the way they play and the equipment they use, is a mark of separating yourself from the pack and I feel Slash did that, especially in the era of shredders he played in where he went back to roots, albeit with a gnarly sound.
Coincidentally, I saw Slash doing a brief guest appearance last night on That Metal Show, during the portion where the hosts come up with their weekly Top Five lists. The subject was, “What’s the best title song from a heavy metal album.”
Slash’s #1 pick was “Burn” by Deep Purple.
That doesn’t make Slash a ripoff artist, obviously. He loved Blackmore, copied his every move, and added a few of his own- just as Blackmore copied earlier guitar heroes like Jeff Beck and put his own spin on what they did.
But it would have been silly to put Blackmore in a guitarists’ Hall of Fame before Beck. And it’s silly to put G & R in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before Deep Purple. And I suspect Slash would agree.
Not to be one of those people who come along to contradict statements like this
…
Oh fuck it, yes, I am being one of those people who comes along and contradicts statements like these.
I like “Chinese Democracy” - which is not to say that I think it’s a masterpiece (I think it’s overblown and incredibly scatty, never really producing one musical narrative thread that unifies it as a coherent piece of work) but I do think it’s an interesting piece (because it’s overblown and incredibly scatty - it basically sounds like, to me, one man’s struggle against writer’s block over the course of a decade plus, in which he has picked up and put down basically every musical trend that has come along in hard rock without committing to any of them beyond one song - in other words, it sounds like what I imagine Axl Rose was going through for all those years and that, to me, makes it quite interesting and, in some senses, a very personal album).
Anyway, you’re not alone. It’s an album that I certainly have quite a bit of time for, even if I can accept that, as objectively as you can ever hold these things with respect to art, it’s not a great album.
Holy Crap. I just realized Tommy Stinson has been in Guns N’ Roses longer (14 years) than he was in The Replacements (12 years). speaking of great bands that’ll never get inducted…
He’s had a lot of experience with dysfunction and substance abuse? 
It really should have been made the soundtrack for “Duke Nukem Forever”
Did anyone notice on that page linked to early, it listed acts that weren’t in the Hall, and you could vote if you thought they should be in? People actually voted for Milli Vanilli.
(I’m feeling old knowing that Nirvana will soon be in.)
The point is, the pretended to. They were basically a parody act – and not in the way that Weird Al is, either. It was a satire of the Beatles. And I’m not knocking the Monkees – I LIKE the Monkees. But I don’t necessarily think they’re HOF material.
(Madonna isn’t pretending to play a guitar)
That occurred to me about a week ago. He’s also been the GNR bassist for longer than Duff was.
Neither is Chicago..
Sad, isn’t it?