Where? At the bottom of the Marianas Trench?
The Sex Pistols prove once again that Death (and in this case, a murder-suicide) makes any artists (in this case, I use that term loosely) appear about 900 times better than they really are.
Hell, Clapton was inducted three times!
I bet the Pistols would show up for the ceremony if the Hall of Fame paid them $50 plus lunch money.
Well, he is God after all.
How about all the Beatles except Ringo being induced as both a group and solo?
Now this I’m not so sure about. After Malcolm McLaren had been managing the Dolls for a stint, he realized that as great as bands like the New York Dolls were, they were a nightmare to attempt to get on the road. Who wants to babysit a bunch of broke junkies around the eastern seaboard, let alone any farther?
It’s my understanding that since he knew he could never get them to England, he had to take the image and the attitude instead. He thought that this music and style was going to be huge there, and he was right. With visions of Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine, and David Johanssen dancing in his head, he did manufacture the Sex Pistols as a vehicle for this new musical/fashion rebellion. Luckily, real bands, like the Clash, the Damned, the Jam and the Buzzcocks took it from there and made the first wave of English punk something worthwhile.
Why aren’t manufactured bands “worthwhile”?
There was, it was in the men’s room at CBGBs. I hear the Smithsonian is interested.
Isn’t that the title of the Pistols box set, An Insult to Everyone in the History of Popular Music?
Well, I sort of agree they’re pretty overrated for a band with essentially 3 great singles and not much else, but I think those 3 singles are really great, better than the Righteous Brothers even, and I don’t give a hoot about this or any Hall of Fame, really. I’m not so sure that Rotten still thinks he’s “relevant”, whatever that means (are Sabbath and Skynyrd relevant?), but he does have a role to play even in his dotage, and that (thankfully) doesn’t include fawning all over Jann Wenner and Seymour Stein and playing dinner-theater gigs to billionaires. So good for him. (And honestly, if there was anyone is the history of 20th-century music who was a bigger asshole than Rotten, it’s Miles Davis, and he probably wouldn’t have shown up either if he was alive.)
It would be really rock and roll if they would induct Pete Rose.
Except that REM (up to 2000 or so) played this thing they call music.
Sorry if I implied that the Pistols weren’t “worthwhile”, however given their brief history and rather abbreviated recording output I think that if they hadn’t been as inspirational as they were, perhaps English punk could have fizzled out as a flash in the pan. I certainly believe that the effect on the Punk movement from the Pistols is far greater than anything they personally accomplished as a whole.
Cluricaun, I think you have it backwards, although now we’re way before my time. The Dolls took their style from British glam, was what I understood. I also have this from the author of Rip It Up and Start Again
and I think that would be '71.
Quite possible that I do, I’ve gotten much of my understanding from Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s " Please Kill Me. If that’s somehow horribly distorted, then I’m working from faulty information, but it would seem to me that based on the depth of the interviews that they conducted to write that book that this version of events is at least partially acceptible.
Interesting. I believe Michael Stipe and Peter buck met at the Pistols show in Atlanta.
What does whether they had musical talent have to do with whether they deserve to be in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. I’m glad they told the Hall to stuff it and I am actually a little surprised there haven’t been more bands/artists do the same.
If Legs says it’s so, it certainly bears double checking. I can fire off a couple e-mails to clear this up.
I’m so tired of this nonsense that rock was anti-establishment stick-it-to-the-man rebellion in jeans. It wasn’t. Never. Not at any time.
Rock was about playing music because real jobs sucked. And about getting laid. Especially the latter.
Nobody who ever picked up a guitar and played in a club for money sold out. The paychecks just got bigger, that’s all.
Attitude sells, sure, but attitude doesn’t last. Music lasts. Never Mind the Bollocks was fourth rate music. At the time and today. I get that.
Music is about talent. All music, everywhere, every time. If you don’t like it or get it, I’m sorry for your ears, but that’s the reality behind the music business. No amount of teenage posturing can change that.
The adults who grew up and decided to attend the inductions at the Hall of Fame - a really cool place to visit, BTW, and you’re missing out if you boycott it for attitude reasons - understand this. They’re proud of their music, not their attitude.
Steve Jones, who now does bits on Craig Ferguson as a teenage girl writing in her dairy, gets this too. So John Rotten Lydon doesn’t. Nobody cares. Or nobody should care.
Now, if you want to induct a manufactured band for its music, induct the Monkees. Seriously. Steve Jones can sit in on drums while Mickey sings. And he’d probably do it. 
Absolutely. It was also never about getting inducted into a Hall of Fame. This is like a lifetime achievement Grammy. It is meaningless and just as contrary to the idea of rock as the idea that a musician should be “pure” or not “sell out” or engage in a “swindle.”
…and playing music because real jobs suck isn’t anti-establishment stick-it-to-the-man rebellion how?
Please remind me to never trust your judgement, or your arguments.
People deal drugs because real jobs suck. People prostitute themselves because real jobs suck. Playing music because real jobs suck says something about the person, but very little about the establishment.
Likewise.