The Supertramp List: A Means of Judging Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Candidates

Cafe Society
1

It occurred to me years ago I should do this but I kept forgetting. This is a long setup but bear with me.

Baseball fans love to argue about players deserving (or not) to be in the baseball Hall of Fame, and many years ago a writer named Bill James devised The Keltner List. It’s a list of simple questions you can ask that can help frame the debate. There’s no passing grade, it’s just a bunch of questions to help talk about it. I don’t remember the exact list but my version looks like this:

  1. Was this player ever the greatest player in baseball? Did people seriously suggest that?
  2. Was this player ever the greatest player at his position?
  3. Did this player do well in Most Valuable Player Award voting?
  4. Was this player named to many All-Star teams?
  5. Was this player the best player on his team on a regular basis?
  6. Did this player contribute to many championship teams?
  7. Did this player play regularly after passing his prime?
  8. Is this player the greatest player ever who is not in the Hall of Fame? Best at his position?
  9. Are this player’s overall numbers typical of Hall of Famers or non-Hall of Famers?
  10. Is this player better or worse than his stats suggest?
  11. If this guy was the best player on his team could that team win a championship?

Again, no passing grade, but it’s interesting to note that if you do this for an inner circle Hall of Famer like Willie Mays, every answer is yes; if you do it for someone who has his moments but really isn’t a Hall of Famer most answers are no - for Bo Jackson, say, every answer is no.

So I am devising a list for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I’ve come up with the Supertramp List:

  1. Was this artist exceptionally popular in their time, as measured by record sales/downloads, concert tour popularity, and presence on top hit lists?

  2. Was this artist, even by professional standards, exceptionally talented as a musician(s)?

  3. Did this artist have significant, lasting influence on other artists and the development and creation of popular music?

  4. Assuming enough time has passed to say, does this artist have songs that remain in the popular consciousness?

  5. Assuming enough time has passed, does this artist remain popular well after the primary body of their career ended?

  6. Did this artist remain popular for a long period of time?

  7. Did this artist remain popular after the type of music for which they were first known passed from popularity?

  8. Did this artist perform music that is or was regarded as being unusually musically sophisticated or innovative?

  9. Did this artist have some specific historical impact on the music industry?

  10. Is this artist clearly a better candidate than other eligible artists of their specific genre? Time period?

What questions an I missing?

2

Was the artist primarily a Rock and Roll artist?
If so, did the artist’s music actually Rock?

I do not think that Rock and Roll needs to be innovative or sophisticated to be good and to have a lasting impact on the genre. But it seems like they like to nominate a lot of acts that are not primarily Rock artists.

3

I’m afraid that in its current state, Rock and Roll can’t afford to be too exclusive.

4

Is the artist now, or has ever been Big in Japan?

5

Yes, I think this is the main problem that some people have with many inductees. “It’s not Rock’n Roll”. But, it’s much more diffcult to define what “Rock’n Roll” is, as opposed to, say, baseball. There are ingredients. Perhaps. But no rules.

Personally, I find it rather silly to get all worked up about what is and what isn’t “Rock’n Roll”. It’s just popular music. I care more about originality, quality and influence than about adhering to a subjective set of criteria. I’d rather focus on the best and be inclusive than nominating third-tier also-rans who happen to fit someone’s narrow definition of “Rock’n Roll”.

So, let’s call it The Popular Music Hall of Fame if that makes purists feel better.

@RickJay Well thought-out list, by the way.

6

Yes, or something lik Popular Culure that Rocks Mueseum. Most of the old guard Rock and Roll bands are already in there, so changing the name to reflect the acts that they are activily inducting would make sense. It could also perhaps open up the inductees to non-musical indivuduals who rock, like say Robin Williams who was as much a pop icon as anyone back in the day. Then we could argue over wheter said indidual rocked or not.

7

I’m going to decline to add these questions; the idea behind the list is to ascertain if an act should be IN, not if they should be ELIGIBLE. I mean, in your own questions, you confuse two different types of music. “Rock and roll” is a subgenre within rock music. Bill Haley and the Comets were a rock and roll act; AC/DC, technically, is not.

We could add a more generic question like “Is this artist broadly within the categories of music honored by the Hall of Fame?” but 99.9% of the time the answer will be yes, when it’s not Dolly or Willie.

If the music is in the area of popular music, it’s eligible; that is a well set precedent. I also think it would make the R&R HOF a much more boring, limited, and exclusionary thing if you started pushing out pop, Motown, and hip hop acts. Let’s just accept that and move on.

I agree. Again, this isn’t a list an act needs to get 100% on. That’s not the idea.

8

I wanted to run through the list for an artist to give everyone an idea as to what I was aiming for, and Supertramp - who to my endless suprise are not in the RRHOF - is a great test. Hence the name.

Supertramp’s album sales are well above the average for an enshrined group; most sources put them over 50 million sales, possibly as many as 75 million. (These numbers are surprisingly hard to pin down.) “Breakfast in America” was an enormous commercial success and was the #1 album for over a month.

Supertramp were an awfully skilled band; I think this is a yes, though a soft one. No one in the band was a famed virtuoso.

I don’t think so.

There are some pretty famous and lasting Supertramp songs; “Give A Little Bit,” “Fool’s Overture,” “Logical Song,” and “Dreamer” are well known songs. Supertramp is honestly before my time, but those are instantly recognizable.

The idea behind this question can be illustrated by, say, a comparison with Duran Duran. In their heyday, Duran Duran was fucking HUGE. They were a massive, massive musical act. They are, however, not really talked about at all any more. I honestly cannot recall the last time I heard a Duran Duran song anywhere. You still hear Supertramp, though. Supertramp gets a yes; DD doesn’t.

Clearly, yes. Supertramp had a reasonably long run of popularity and success before breaking up, and they kind of broke into two warring factions, with Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson going off and doing their own things, but still mostly playing Supertramp tunes.

So the idea here is; was this act made really popular by virtue of riding a wave of popularity of a type of music? You had acts that just exploded when disco was big and then vanished; there were grunge bands that sold ten million albums between 1991 and 1994 and swiftly faded thereafter.

Supertramp started off as a prog rock band and kind of morphed into mostly pop, though it’s not a very clear division. So I’d say yes. I’m not sure when prog rock started falling by the wayside.

Supertramp music was quite sophisticated and varied, that’s pretty clear. I’m not sure how innovative it was.

No, none I am aware of.

I cheated in naming the list - well, they just popped into my mind - because to my way of thinking Supertramp is CLEARLY way deserving of enshrinement and it’s probably the single biggest oversight the RRHOF has ever made so far. They were an absolutely huge act, talented, and their music has stood the test of time; I can’t think of a better choice from the 1970s, that’s for sure.

9

Another question for the ballot:

  • Did this band’s songs typically feature whiny, annoying vocals?

One can debate Supertramp’s status accordingly.

10

Has the band ever gotten lost trying to find their way to the stage?

And you call yourself A Straight Doper??? :grin:

11

I can’t think of anything to add to your list – it seems pretty comprehensive.

I think I’m a couple of years older than you; I was 14 when Breakfast in America was released. As you note (from the statistics) it was their biggest success, but I just want to note that, from a popular culture standpoint, it (and by extension, the band) was huge that year. It seemed like everyone and their dog owned a copy of that album, and those singles were getting constant airplay.

It’s also worth noting that, in 1979, disco was incredibly dominant on the charts, and for a rock/pop album to break through like that is even more impressive.

12

By the OP’s list, Boy George fits the bill.

13

“Does the band have an album cover that is instantly recognizable?” would be a pretty huge affirmative.

I suppose another question could be

Did this artist have an influence on popular culture outside of their music?

The answer would be no for Supertramp, but would certainly give a little extra credit to the likes of the Beatles, Lady Gaga, Elvis, Madonna, Leonard Cohen, and a few others.

14

I’m not sure what you mean, but we might want to create separate threads for discussing particular artists. Boy George is an interesting case (I would assume in considering him we are collectively considering Culture Club along with Boy George as an independent artist.)

15

That’s not a bad addition, though I think it might overly benefit performers who also had significant acting careers (e.g., Cher), or were just ubiquitous as celebrities (e.g., Madonna).

16

I think that has to be hashed out in the discussion. Again, it’s not a scoring system, but I do think this needs to be considered at least a little. I do now realize, though, that all the artists I can think of are pretty clear cut Hall of Famers anyway so it might not be a huge factor.

17

Definitely agreed. They were big cultural influencers because they were major music stars.

18

For better or worse, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has a real bias in terms of the English language, and skews heavily toward US based acts, followed by UK based acts, with Canada and others a very distant third place. Look how long it took Rush to be added.

I don’t think the Tragically Hip will ever be nominated or inducted, though their influence and impact on the Canadian scene is unmatched.

Supertramp are not to my taste, but I’m not going to deny for a second that they should have been nominated ages ago. I don’t remember how much airplay ‘Crime of the Century’ got, but I remember my brother played that album once a day for a few months when it came out.

19

They had the double-whammy of both being (a) Canadian, and (b) progressive rock, for which there was a well-documented lack of representation in the Hall for many years, and which was widely believed to be a function of Jann Wenner (founder of the Hall, and founder of Rolling Stone) hating prog. That’s changed in recent years, with Rush, Yes, the Moody Blues, and (arguably) ELO finally making it in.

20

I think your list is overall pretty comprehensive, but this example falls down because it is clearly based on your personal experience.

I have heard Duran Duran more recently than Supertramp, for example. (I don’t own any of their music, so I’m not talking about my personal library). I believe Duran Duran are currently touring and playing large arenas, so it seems they are still pretty popular, 30+ years after their heyday.

Not to get lost in the weeds of individual and subjective choices, but that question may need some refinement or it could be not useful to your “test.”