If I Had a Ballot for the 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominations

Ballot Overview

So, yes, it is that time again to evaluate the ballot. Let's see . . . Chic is on for the hundredth time. What cruel joke is this? Or is this part of Wenner's game-fixing? "Keep 'em on the ballot until they get enough votes, dammit!" Deep Purple and N.W.A. must have their adherents—both have appeared on the last few ballots. Like your dotty old grandfather visiting during the holidays, the Spinners are back at the table, eligible since 1986—their career began when John F. Kennedy was the president—but never on a ballot until 2012, and then returning in the last two years. Similarly, Nine Inch Nails, the Smiths, and Yes return to the delight of industrial, alt-pop, and progressive-rock fans, respectively.

What is encouraging are the eight acts that constitute this year's fresh blood, on the ballot for the first time: the Cars, Chicago, Cheap Trick, Janet Jackson, the JBs, Chaka Khan, Los Lobos, and Steve Miller. Chicago and Jackson are the big-ticket favorites long considered snubs by their supporters, while the Cars, Miller, and to a lesser extent Cheap Trick have been radio fixtures for decades. Khan and Los Lobos have been just off the mainstream throughout their careers, although Khan has been a constant in the soul-R&B market since her days fronting Rufus in the 1970s.

The most intriguing 2015 nominee, though, are the JBs, which began as James Brown's backing band as Brown was helping to codify funk in the early 1970s but quickly developed a recording career of their own although Brown was still often in the mix in some capacity. In 2012, Brown's backing-vocal group the Famous Flames were retrofitted into the Hall of Fame with him (Brown had been inducted in the Hall's inaugural class of 1986), a surgical incision that focused solely on the Famous Flames (and even then only on specific Flames) while leaving any instrumentalists untouched.

Ballot Criteria

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame states its eligibility requirements and criteria on its website, which are as follows:

To be eligible for induction as an artist (as a performer, composer, or musician) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the artist must have released a record, in the generally accepted sense of that phrase, at least 25 years prior to the year of induction; and have demonstrated unquestionable musical excellence.

We shall consider factors such as an artist's musical influence on other artists, length and depth of career and the body of work, innovation and superiority in style and technique, but musical excellence shall be the essential qualification of induction. [Emphases added.]

Note, however, that the Hall does not define what "musical excellence" is even though it is supposed to be the "essential qualification of induction." In case you ever wondered how the Dave Clark Five or Percy Sledge or [fill in the blank with your favorite undeserving artist] managed to sneak in through the door.

Regardless of what "musical excellence" may actually mean, I have developed what I call Defining Factors to assess whether an artist is worthy of inclusion into the Hall of Fame. These five Defining Factors are:

— Innovation. The artist has invented or refined one or more aspects of the music.

— Influence. The artist has made a demonstrable impact on the music of either contemporaries or succeeding artists.

— Popularity. The artist has achieved an appreciable measure of commercial or critical success.

— Crossover appeal. The artist is recognized and appreciated outside the artist's primary arena.

— Legacy. The artist's accomplishments have lasting impact and appeal.

To be considered a Hall of Fame act, I think that an artist must rate as highly as possible in as many Defining Factors as possible. I developed these Defining Factors during my series of "audits" of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's selections from 1986 to 2013 (the sixth and latest installment contains links to the previous five installments).

Unlike the Hall of Fame, though, I maintain that the "essential qualification of induction" is not "musical excellence"—again, whatever that might mean—but rather legacy. This is implied in the Hall's one unequivocal criterion for eligibility, which is that an artist is not eligible until twenty-five years have elapsed from the release of the artist's first recording. This enables historical perspective, to put the artist into context within the overall continuum of the Rock and Soul Era to assess whether the artist really has had an impact on the music and, to a greater extent, on the culture that fostered the music.

In essence and in fact, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a museum, an institution designed to evaluate and recognize how the past has shaped our present and how it may suggest our future. Simply put, seeing an artist in the Hall of Fame means that the artist had some significant bearing on the music.

In that light, I have used my Defining Factors to assess the fifteen nominees for the 2016 ballot.

The Cars

Background: Roaring off the starting line with a sleek debut album that soon sped into popular culture—can anyone listen to the hypnotic "Moving in Stereo" without thinking of Fast Times at Ridgemont High?—the Cars assembled a showroom-ready sound from post-punk attitudes, a stripped-down and tuned-up musical strategy, and ironic nods to pop music in the witty, self-aware but coolly distanced songcraft of the band's driver, singer-guitarist Ric Ocasek. The Cars (Elektra) seemed to announce the future when it arrived in 1978 (did Quarterflash later filch for "Harden My Heart" the saxophone lick from "All Mixed Up"?), with "Good Times Roll," "My Best Friend's Girl," and especially "Bye Bye Love" executing the sharp, spare, electro-mechanical musical attack as Ocasek and singer-bassist (and resident heartthrob) Benjamin Orr sang with detached, winking amusement about the girls they had, wished they had, or didn't want to have.

It's easy to dismiss Candy-O (Elektra, 1979) as coming off the same assembly line as the debut although the band's sound still had a bit of variety as the title song and "Dangerous Type" demonstrate while the compulsively propulsive "Let's Go" may be the definitive Cars song—how could it not be when it stars a risqué-mouthed 17-year-old who's beautiful when she doesn't wear her shoes? On the other hand, Panorama (Elektra, 1980), despite the disembodied anxiety of "Touch and Go," found the band realizing that it now had a career to support, with Shake It Up (Elektra, 1981) sounding like a retread. However, 1984's Heartbeat City (Elektra) sees the Cars boldly embracing exuberance ("Magic") and even puckishness ("You Might Think") in a pop triumph although the pensive ballad "Drive," sung by Orr, flashed impressive maturity. Alas, the belated follow-up Door to Door (Elektra, 1987) turned out to be—can you guess the automotive reference?—a lemon, and with that the Cars went the way of the Studebaker. But it was a fun ride while it lasted.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. The Cars certainly deserve more consideration than, say, the Fixx, and certainly as much consideration as Duran Duran or INXS—if not more so for helping to popularize the New Wave that enabled them all to flourish in the first place. But despite that popularity, on which they have continued to coast, the Cars' triumphs are stretched too thinly across their relatively short career to stand out to voters as a Hall of Fame act.

Would I vote for the artist? No. I'm tempted for the debut album and for a handful of songs ("Let's Go," "Drive") that followed although it is hard to justify that The Cars was an innovative album that influenced a genre when it was an excellent album that highlighted, but did not define, a period in pop history. Overall, the band's legacy is not distinctive enough to merit inclusion in the Hall.

Cheap Trick

Background: You have to admire Cheap Trick, aesthetically and musically, for having their cake and eating it too. Aesthetically, singer-bassist Tom Petersson and particularly blonde singer-guitarist Robin Zander were long-haired rock-heartthrob types, but drummer Bun E. Carlos (Brad Carlson) seemed more like a tax accountant with dubious deduction schemes while lead guitarist Rick Neilsen looked like the bastard spawn of Don Knotts and the Bride of Frankenstein. Musically, Cheap Trick combined a winking albeit off-kilter pop sensibility (has anyone ever figured out why "Big Eyes" is such a "losing cause"?) with a ringing, sometimes brutal, hard-rock kick—Schedule A's be damned, Carlos could drive a beat while Neilsen brought down Victor Frankenstein's thunder and lightning through his bewildering array of monstrous guitars. And the band's aesthetics and music gelled in sublime harmony with "Surrender," one of the greatest-ever rock and roll songs about the power of rock and roll—if waking up to find your parents stoned and making out while listening to your Kiss records isn't your idea of rock and roll emancipation, you deserve to be enslaved in eternal Quiet Storm hell.

At first, though, the pride of Rockford, Illinois, tried the edgier route as its eponymous 1977 Epic debut used arena hard rock to disguise its slyly barbed songs, most written by Neilsen, about serial killers, pedophiles, and suicides, with "He's a Whore" and a tribute to a friend who killed himself thrown into the mix as well; Cheap Trick straddled both rock convention and the incipient punk and New Wave challenge. In Color (Epic, 1977) may have glossed up the musical attack but that only let the melodic hooks shine through—"Big Eyes," "Clock Strikes Ten," "Hello There," and especially "I Want You to Want Me" became power-pop touchstones. Cheap Trick regained its hard and dark edge while retaining its melodic appeal with Heaven Tonight (Epic, 1978), which, apart from "Surrender," featured the ultimate ode to cock-rock, "Stiff Competition," and a heartfelt cover of the Move's "California Man" before unleashing not one but two more suicide songs, "Auf Wiedersehen" and the title song. Capping Cheap Trick's early glory was At Budokan (Epic, 1979), the greatest live album recorded in Japan by a Western hard-rock band not named Deep Purple, which drew primarily from In Color while Carlos powered a high-octane version of the Fats Domino chestnut "Ain't That a Shame."

Cheap Trick then pulled out the stops for Dream Police (Epic, 1979), which lavished production on the paranoiac's nightmare "The Dream Police" and the faux-Beatles faux-idyll "Voices" while the lengthy stomper "Gonna Raise Hell" quickly became an anthem. But the continuing gloss couldn't disguise the increasing recycling of ideas and attitudes. As the band stumbled through the 1980s, aping the Beatles with "If You Want My Love," it succumbed to pop trends instead of subverting them as "She's Tight" pandered to New Wave while with the monster power ballad "The Flame," Cheap Trick parodied only themselves with what it had become. Speaking of monsters, "Woke up with a Monster" delivered the laughs without any wit (unless you want to count the "Cold Turkey"-like anguish at the end as homage to John Lennon), and by then Cheap Trick's moment had long since passed.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. With Alice Cooper and now even Kiss in the Hall, voters will think that 1970s rockers who sent up the very music they loved are already well-represented. And "Surrender" was never the anthem that "School's Out" and "Rock 'n' Roll All Nite" were, even if it is much smarter than the latter (though more diffuse than the former).

Would I vote for the artist? No. Cheap Trick was a terrific rock and roll funhouse attraction—when it landed properly, the early, cockeyed, yet sometimes dark stuff packed a musical and lyrical wallop—but the band's glory period was a few years in the late 1970s, and its influence was oblique; you could argue that as it was concurrent with punk and New Wave, it was channeling the same zeitgeist everyone else was (cf. the Cars). A thin legacy keeps the band out of the Hall.

Chic

Background: Blending rock and R&B influences into its bouncy disco strategy, Chic offered a grittier, funkier take on dance music, and in the process provided inspiration for hip-hop and rock artists—the hit "Good Times," and particularly Bernard Edwards's rubbery bass line, provided the bedrock for, among others, the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and for Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." Edwards also provided another signature low-register classic for the risqué smash "Le Freak" as he and guitarist Nile Rodgers, both veteran session men, crafted the earthy foundation of Edwards's thick bottom and Rodgers's chicken-scratch guitar—funk elements dating back to James Brown's JBs—that supported the washes of strings and the airy voices of the female singers whose words carried an undertone of social unease even as the overt message was to "Dance Dance Dance," another key hit for the collective.

Chic offered a durable approach for disco, but by the 1980s the genre was getting buffeted, and the band had often been unfairly cast as relics of that period, exemplified by the seeming vacuity of tracks such as "I Want Your Love" and "Everybody Dance." Yet Chic developed a hybrid sound that proved accessible not only to dance styles—Chic's contemporary Sister Sledge bore a literal relationship to Chic's sound—but also to urban, hip-hop, and rock styles, while the rich yet economical production work of Edwards and Rodgers, the hallmark of Chic's success, quickly became in-demand, thus perpetuating Chic's influence. As any number of the anonymous disco bands from that period fade into nostalgia, the impact and influence of Chic becomes more salient.


Will dapper disco dudes and dudettes Chic be hung out to dry on yet another ballot in 2016?

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? Yes. If only because voters are tired of seeing the name on the ballot year after year. True, voters may refuse just out of spite, but somebody seems to be pounding the table on Chic's behalf, and as in Twelve Angry Men maybe enough voters have been convinced this year.

Would I vote for the artist? Yes. Admittedly a borderline pick, Chic nevertheless transcends its primary genre, disco, while influencing various styles. Its impact on hip-hop pioneers Grandmaster Flash and the Sugarhill Gang alone is an indication of Chic's impact on the development of music of the Rock and Soul Era, even crossing over into hard rock (cf. Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust").

Chicago

Background: This hit-radio perennial was initially called the Chicago Transit Authority until the Windy City's transportation system began legal rumblings that forced the band to truncate the name to simply Chicago, an ideal parallel to how this "big band"-styled rock outfit with early pretensions to artistry—Chicago's first three albums were double LPs—learned to pare its arrangements to create radio-friendly soft-rock singles. Beginning in Chicagoland in the late 1960s, the band, which featured singer-bassist Peter Cetera, guitarist Terry Kath, and singer-keyboardist Robert Lamm at its core, relocated to Los Angeles to begin recording as a rock-based outfit augmented by a permanent horn section, an innovation also pursued by the Electric Flag and Blood, Sweat, and Tears, that incorporated elements of funk, jazz, and even classical into its ambitious approach.

Chicago indulged that ambition with various multi-part suites that showcased players such as Kath, trumpeter Lee Loughnane, trombonist James Pankow, and saxophonist Walter Parazaider; the band even flashed a social conscience with allusions to ecology ("Elegy") and the volatile, traumatic 1968 Democratic National Convention held in Chicago (side four of the 1969 Columbia debut Chicago Transit Authority), with the "It Better End Soon" suite from Chicago (Columbia, 1970) a forthright if simplistic political declaration. Following a sprawling live set, the four-LP Chicago at Carnegie Hall (Columbia, 1971), the band continued to flaunt its pretense—Chicago V (Columbia, 1972) tossed off "A Hit by Varèse," name-checking experimental composer Edgard Varèse as if the band were Frank Zappa—although the contents of the first greatest-hits album, Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits (Columbia, 1975), would prove prophetic: "25 or 6 to 4," "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is," and "Saturday in the Park" steered Chicago into the singles charts and to an easy-listening audience as if the band were the Rock and Soul Era equivalent of the Boston Pops.

The mewling ballad "If You Leave Me Now," which conquered much of the civilized world in 1976, had been written and sung by Cetera, responsible for another huge hit the following year, "Baby, What a Big Surprise." That success and the death of Kath from a self-inflicted gunshot in 1978 changed both the fortunes and direction of the band: By the 1980s, Chicago, behind Cetera's burgeoning stardom, had become a hit-making machine leaning on deliberately engineered melodrama and sentiment ("Hard to Say I'm Sorry," "You're the Inspiration"), and when Cetera split for a solo career, his replacement Jason Scheff and especially Bill Champlin, who filled Kath's guitar slot, stepped in for continued chart dominance ("Will You Still Love Me," "Look Away") as Chicago was firmly established as an MOR monolith with its corporate logo and marketing shtick—a string of albums titled either Chicago [Roman numeral] or Chicago [Arabic numeral]—trademarked long before its marginal creative ambition dissolved into professional if hollow craftsmanship.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. Probably not this year—Chicago has been eligible for the Hall since 1994 and has never been nominated until now, although that may be the residual critical disdain the band has endured almost since its beginning; Robert Lamm even wrote his rebuttal "Critics' Choice" back in 1973, well before the Eagles whined out "The Long Run" years later. But if the band makes a strong showing on this year's ballot, don't be surprised to see it back on the next ballot—and don't be surprised if Chicago finds itself in Cleveland one of these years. Like it or not, this aggregation became a chart fixture after proffering its musical bona fides with some early ambition before becoming the longest continually serving horn-based big rock band around, admittedly not a Hall-worthy accomplishment, but it's hard to ignore Chicago's pop dominance.

Would I vote for the artist? No. It is easy to deride Chicago for pandering to the lowest common denominator, but its grasp always exceeded its reach in its early years, meandering on in its various pseudo-profound suites, and when it realized that it could extract the overtly saccharine parts of the extended numbers ("Make Me Smile," "Colour My World," "Free") to make hit singles, Chicago narrowed its focus to shallow sentiment and trite appeal. Chicago is the Thomas Kincade of rock, pretty but vapid.

Deep Purple

Background: Formed in England around the same time as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple began with an eclecticism that seemed like a kid in a candy store, covering Neil Diamond ("Kentucky Woman") and essaying progressive-rock touches that highlighted the counterpoint between guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and keyboardist John Lord (the instrumental "Hard Road [Wring That Neck]") while, pretentiously, aiming even higher—Lord composed a Concerto for Group and Orchestra (album deleted) that was not exactly a classical gas. But when singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover signed aboard, Purple concentrated on hard rock and released a trio of early-1970s albums that exemplified the band's robust early metal. In Rock (Warner Bros., 1970), with the burning rocker "Speed King" and the extended workout on "Child in Time," and Fireball (Warner Bros., 1971), featuring the compact title song and the wry heartbreak of "Strange Kind of Woman," honed an approach that culminated with Machine Head (Warner Bros., 1972), an essential hard-rock album that featured "Highway Star," "Never Before," the molten-metal "Space Truckin'," and the deathless anthem "Smoke on the Water," whose guitar riff became the rock equivalent of Beethoven's four-note opening to his Fifth Symphony. The superlative concert album Made in Japan (Warner Bros., 1973), drawing from these three albums but especially Machine Head, managed to improve upon the studio versions; for instance, the extended version of "Space Truckin'," far from being indulgent showboating, still maintains an impressive cinematic air that is not outside the realm of progressive rock.

However, the glory period was short-lived, as Purple couldn't maintain the inspiration. Who Do We Think We Are? (Warner Bros., 1973) contained the assured "Woman from Tokyo" and maybe one or two other memorable tracks ("Rat Bat Blue"), and then Gillan quit. His replacement David Coverdale (later of Whitesnake) gamely filled in for a few albums before Blackmore departed; the live Made in Europe (Warner Bros., 1976), featuring Blackmore and Coverdale, acutely demonstrated how the band did finally degenerate into onstage showboating. By the mid-1970s Deep Purple was done although the "Mark II" configuration, with Blackmore, Gillan, and Glover, did reform a decade later, to fans' delight but little else. At various times, high-powered American guitarists Tommy Bolin, Steve Morse, and Joe Satriani have stepped in (Satriani did not appear on any official recordings), lending the band a certain amount of cachet while suggesting Purple's stature, but except for Machine Head and Made in Japan, Deep Purple never delivered with demonstrable consistency on the promise it suggested, and it is hard not to see Purple as much more than a period relic even as they continue to chug away.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? Yes. If only because voters will finally bow to the pressure that is growing so strong that it will override the dire threats and imprecations of Jann Wenner.

Would I vote for the artist? No. Deep Purple lacks sufficient quantities of the Defining Factors I use for evaluation. Look, I was a teenage Deep Purple fanatic who snapped up every Purple album I could, but listening to those albums later, I realized that the average Deep Purple album (excluding best-of packages) hit on all cylinders at best three or four times. That does not count Machine Head or especially Made in Japan, but two outstanding albums are not enough on which to hang a Hall of Fame legacy.

Janet Jackson

Background: From overcoming the novelty of being Michael Jackson's kid sister (similar status plagued other Jackson siblings as well) to weathering the stigma of her infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in 2004, Janet Jackson has had a tough hill to climb to become one of the top figures in pop music over the last few decades, not helped by the fact that although she is a dynamic performer she is not an exceptional singer. But by choosing effective musical collaborators, reinventing herself whenever necessary, and, following a phase of self-assertion and social consciousness, projecting an overtly sexual persona buttressed by independence and confidence, Jackson, like Madonna, has succeeded on her own terms. Moreover, her success, which stems initially from her trio of albums from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, has spawned a host of flashy pop thrushes gamely dancing (and by now twerking) in her considerable shadow.

As the youngest of the Jackson clan, Janet Jackson grew up in show business. She was still a pre-teen when she landed her first television role in the Norman Lear series Good Times before moving on to Diff'rent Strokes and Fame; Jackson has also appeared in feature films, notably 1993's Poetic Justice in which she starred with Tupac Shakur. Thus, her first two pop albums, Janet Jackson (1982) and Dream Street (1984), both recorded for A&M, seem like undistinguished vanity projects by a typical Hollywood hyphenate even—or perhaps especially—if said hyphenate had a brother then currently ruling the pop charts.

But then Jackson hooked up with Minneapolis writer-producers Jimmy Jam (Harris) and Terry Lewis for Control (A&M, 1986), whose strident beats and sharp execution, the precursor to New Jack Swing, pointed to the next wave in R&B and pop while Jackson defiantly threw off her past—check the title track—and asserted her independence both emotional ("What Have You Done for Me Lately?") and sexual ("Nasty"). Jackson's follow-up Rhythm Nation 1814 (A&M, 1989) flashed a social conscience, and while the various "Interludes" smacked of concept-album pretense, that didn't stop the power of "State of the World" and especially the funky slam of the anthemic "Rhythm Nation" while "Black Cat" may be a better union of hard rock and R&B than brother Michael's "Beat It" even if Eddie Van Halen wasn't available for the guitar solo. For her next release, janet. (1993), Jackson had moved to Virgin Records—ironic as the album flaunted Jackson's sex-temptress persona in tracks such as "If" and "You Want This," whose video, inspired by the Russ Meyers 1965 sexploitation classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, continued Jackson's influential expression as did the assured musical layers that propelled her songs, epitomized by the steamy languor of the irresistible ballad "That's the Way Loves Goes."

But just as superstardom had affected brother Michael, Janet seemed overwhelmed by the pressure at her now-rarified level of success—fittingly, the pair collaborated on the 1995 single "Scream," a retort to unrelenting media scrutiny. Thus, it was four years before The Velvet Rope (Virgin, 1997), an allusion to the cordon between star and public, appeared, and despite more murky concept-album framing, its rich production and arrangements supported an array of dark, even risqué topics from the scathing self-recrimination of "You" and the exposure of domestic abuse in "What About" to the slinky eroticism of "Got 'til It's Gone" (sampling, of all things, Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi") and the purring kinkiness of "Rope Burn" (certainly Rihanna took notice) while the bouncy disco of "Together Again" belied its elegiac air. But as subsequent albums concentrated on Jackson's portraying herself as a sex goddess, with the panting, grinding Damita Jo (Virgin, 2004) released in the wake of her Super Bowl exposure, Jackson began to see her moment pass—Damita Jo was her last album to sell one million US copies—as the next generation of pop divas, clearly inspired by Jackson musically and visually, began to supplant her. But by now, Janet Jackson, who had supplanted her "King of Pop" brother Michael by the 1990s, had already established her legacy.


Pop superstar Janet Jackson hopes to cut through the Hall's Velvet Rope on her first ballot appearance.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? Yes. Although this is Janet Jackson's first ballot appearance since becoming eligible in 2007, voters are likely to have recognized this oversight and stand ready to rectify it. And even for those dissenters who might claim that Jackson isn't "rock and roll"—although Janet rocked harder than brother Michael ever did—the Hall has already recognized the looming pop titans from past decades from Elton John and Billy Joel to Madonna and Michael Jackson. It is hardly about to stop now.

Would I vote for the artist? Yes. Janet Jackson did more than merely step out from Michael Jackson's gigantic shadow to establish herself as another Jackson sibling with genuine musical talent—an even more remarkable feat when you consider that she lacks the raw singing ability of her late brother. She became a musical innovator who spawned a host of imitators while thriving in the notoriously fickle and chimerical environment of top-tier popular music. It is difficult, if not impossible, to document the impact of pop music in the 1980s and 1990s without Janet Jackson.

The JBs

Background: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has nominated some odd acts as performers, from the collective coverage of Faces/Small Faces and Parliament/Funkadelic to the insistence that Laura Nyro was a performer rather than a non-performer (now eligible for the Ahmet Ertegun Award) best-known for her songwriting. The Hall had also, in 2012, retrofitted a half-dozen backing bands (such as the Crickets and the Famous Flames) to join their more famous lead performers, but this year the Hall is sending the JBs, best-known as the backing band for James Brown during Brown's groundbreaking funk days of the 1970s, onto the ballot as a solo act.

The JBs did record a number of albums as a standalone act, although Brown was usually involved in some capacity, and the band did release a number of singles, largely instrumental unless you want to count recitations of the titles "Pass the Peas" and "Gimme Some More" as lyrics; the best-known single was the definitive 1970 track "The Grunt," which has been sampled numerous times by hip-hop artists including Public Enemy on its landmark 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (Def Jam/Columbia). True, 1974's "You Can Have Watergate, Just Gimme Some Bucks and I'll Be Straight" did express a position although the eloquence came from the spare, loping funk the band had perfected, often with alto saxophonist Maceo Parker and trombonist Fred Wesley in the mix; other notable JBs include bassist Bootsy Collins, an original member who soon left for George Clinton's Parliafunkadelicment stable and was inducted into the Hall with them in 1997, and pianist Bobby Byrd, who had been inducted into the Hall in 2012 as a singing member of the Famous Flames.

The aggregation later incorporated disco into its sound before splintering, with Parker and Wesley leading various incarnations in subsequent years. The JBs' instant appeal can sustain extended vamps such as "Doing It to Death," but they are ultimately an adjunct to James Brown's overall operations even if they did have a separate recording career.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. Even if the conspiratorial-minded may think that the JBs were brought onto the ballot simply to put Chic into bold relief, the band's career, despite its association with James Brown, is simply too marginal for the Hall despite your still hearing these swinging licks sampled on hip-hop tracks today.

Would I vote for the artist? No. The JBs did create an influential sound that fueled the development of funk in the 1970s and survives as an inspiration today, but stripping them apart from the boss, James Brown, only pinpoints how the band was simply one component of an overall sound and attitude. Besides, and although this might smack of contingency, it is hard to justify including the JBs in the Hall of Fame when Kool and the Gang has yet to be inducted—let alone the Spinners, to whom we shall turn shortly.

Chaka Khan

Background: With a distinctive, flexible, expressive voice able to handle styles from rock to R&B to jazz and a musical mind to assimilate it all, Chaka Khan has never fully realized her tremendous potential despite her contributing the whirling disco standard "I'm Every Woman," later integral to Whitney Houston's success, to the pop canon. Khan got her start fronting the funk-rockers Rufus, an interracial and intersexual 1970s act that really functioned as a showcase for Khan's dynamic vocals; when she went solo, the band floundered. (In 2011, Rufus was one-and-done on its only Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ballot to date.) Stevie Wonder penned "Tell Me Something Good" to spotlight Khan; it became the band's highest-charting single in 1974, reaching Number Three, while Rufusized (ABC), also from 1974, is the band's hallmark album, yielding the propulsive disco-funk of "Once You Get Started" while Khan makes Janis Joplin's "Half Moon" her own, and "I'm a Woman (I'm a Backbone)" presaged the gender identity of "I'm Every Woman." The following year, the enticing ballad "Sweet Thing" became Rufus's only other Top Five single, one that Mary J. Blige covered two decades later.

Outpacing her Rufus mates, Khan went solo in 1978, but although her debut album Chaka (Warner Bros.) featured "I'm Every Woman," she and producer Arif Mardin, who had been so instrumental in getting Aretha Franklin on track, settle for generic exercises such as "Life Is a Dance" and "We Got the Love," a duet with George Benson. That trend continued through the tepid follow-up Naughty (Warner Bros., 1980), though What Cha' Gonna Do for Me (Warner Bros., 1981), loaded with session talent from Herbie Hancock to the Brecker Brothers Michael and Randy, struck sparks with an assured cover of the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" and the muscular dance-oriented title track, while with her contemporary take on the jazz standard "A Night in Tunisia," which indeed featured co-author Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet (a move later picked up by Stevie Wonder for "Do I Do"), Khan demonstrated her easy mastery of any style. Certainly her tour de force performance on "Be Bop Medley," the whirling jazz survey course from Chaka Khan (Warner Bros., 1982), launched her into the realm of elite vocalists, as did her rendition of Michael Jackson's "Got to Be There" while she walks all over a still-pretty-decent Rick James on their slinky, funky duet "Slow Dancin'."

Khan's very name became an early hip-hop touchstone when rapper Melle Mel riffed on it for Khan's cover of Prince's "I Feel for You," Khan's highest-charting single, peaking at Number Three, and the highlight of her album of the same name (Warner Bros., 1984). But then Khan all but disappeared into the wilderness for more than two decades before striking gold with Funk This (Burgundy, 2007), which yielded the throwback funk of "Disrespectful," a duet with Mary J. Blige, another duet, this one with Michael McDonald, on the Doobie Brothers' "You Belong to Me," and the ballad "Angel," which found her vocal skyrockets still in scintillating form. From her start with Rufus in the 1970s, Chaka Khan's singular and powerful vocals have pegged her as a remarkable talent, but throughout her career she has struggled to connect with the material and the collaborators to convert her abundant ability into definitive statements.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. Although voters may admire Chaka Khan's obvious technical and even emotional talent as a vocalist, too much of her output has been on the periphery of pop while the bulk of her material has been pop-oriented and difficult to justify as an artistic statement. As a result, voters will likely not consider her to be a Hall of Fame talent.

Would I vote for the artist? No. On talent alone, it is impossible to discount Chaka Khan as one of the great vocalists of the Rock and Soul Era, but evidence of her having put those rich talents to effective use are scattered across her career, from the funk of Rufus to her late-1970s disco efforts and her early-1980s blush of pop stardom. Furthermore, her fiery vocals have been too difficult to emulate, rendering her more of an inspiration than an influence, which may not be a demerit—no one can sing Chaka Khan like Chaka Khan. However, her legacy is too diffuse to be considered definitive.

Los Lobos

Background: After four decades, Los Lobos has become one of the premier roots-rock bands, incorporating vintage and classic rock, blues, country and western, and other myriad influences, all executed with an appealing sharpness and economy that often underplays the inherent prowess of the musicians. Ah, but this long-running act from East Los Angeles has as bajo la manga, or an ace in the hole: As Mexican-Americans, Los Lobos has never been shy about blending in the traditional Mexican music they grew up with, particularly norteño, which tackles plainspoken folk songs with jaunty polka-like tempos and instrumentation. The Rock and Soul Era has seen notable Mexican-American artists before, primarily Ritchie Valens and Carlos Santana, although Valens, despite an early smash with the Mexican folk song "La Bamba," had his career cut tragically short while Santana, though not neglecting his roots, has incorporated his undeniably Latin influences into a heady brew of rock and jazz that strives for an internationalist flavor. By contrast, Los Lobos have assimilated their cultural influences so seamlessly that they simply become another thread in the fabric of American rock, yet it remains a thread that doesn't sublimate its identity.

Formed by singer-guitarist David Hidalgo and singer-drummer Louie Perez, with singer-guitarist Cesar Rosas and bassist Conrad Lozano joining soon afterward, Los Lobos spent the 1970s woodshedding, privately releasing a couple of albums before Slash Records took a chance on a 1983 EP, . . . And a Time to Dance, which contained a cover of Valens's "Come on, Let's Go" along with the norteño "Anselma" and the infectious rootser "Let's Say Goodnight." Encouraged by the response, the band released a full album, How Will the Wolf Survive? (Slash/Warner Bros., 1984), that not only saw Los Lobos, now augmented by L.A. saxophone veteran Steve Berlin, having fully integrated their traditional influences into original songs that flashed that verisimilitude (the propulsive "Corrida #1"), but using them to comment on the immigrants' experience in America (the tender "A Matter of Time," the yearning, metaphorical "Will the Wolf Survive?") while serving up the brawny, brooding rocker "Don't Worry Baby," one of the band's best songs. But while "One Time One Night," another signature tune from the follow up By the Light of the Moon (Slash/Warner Bros., 1987), refined the band's thoughtfulness as the itchy blues-rocker "Shakin' Shakin' Shakes" flexed its muscle, too many of the tracks ("The Mess We're In," "My Baby's Gone") sounded like rehashes.

Still, Los Lobos raised its profile by recording tracks for the 1987 Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba, whose soundtrack album became a chart-topper while the band's rendition of the title song went to Number One on the singles charts. Spurred by the cultural boost, the band released La Pistola y El Corazon (Slash/Warner Bros., 1988), a well-received tribute to Tejano and Mariachi styles, before releasing a pair of albums, The Neighborhood (Slash/Warner Bros., 1990) and especially Kiko (Slash/Warner Bros., 1992), that brimmed with such assurance that it was impossible not to be swept into the dynamic current. With Hidalgo burnishing his reputation as a first-class guitarist, "Jenny's Got a Pony" and "That Train Don't Stop Here" established themselves as rollicking classics while the evocative "Kiko and the Lavender Moon"—check the quotations from "Three Blind Mice"—displayed impressive depth and sophistication. Los Lobos may have overplayed the eclecticism with 1996's Colossal Head as, the mechanical blues of "Buddy Ebsen Loves the Night Time" notwithstanding, Warner Bros. subsequently cut Los Lobos loose from the stable, sending the band shopping for boutique labels as it slipped into emeritus status although still capable of gems such as the metallic crunch of "Good Morning Aztlan" while releasing, of all things, an album of Disney songs, Los Lobos Goes Disney (Walt Disney/DisneySound, 2009).


Roots rockers Los Lobos have been pumping out their heady brew for four decades. Will it get them a spot in the Hall of Fame?

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. This is Los Lobos' first time on the Hall of Fame ballot, and for voters who only remember "La Bamba" they haven't yet taken in the breadth of the band's considerable catalog. It may take a couple of appearances before the groundswell carries the band into the Hall.

Would I vote for the artist? Yes. What is remarkable about Los Lobos is not just the range of music it has assimilated—rock, blues, folk, Mexican—but how the band has synthesized those disparate sources into a distinctive sound that rolls seamlessly with energy and confidence. They soon made the novelty of being a Mexican-American rock band superfluous as they wrote succinct, thoughtful songs about the American experience overall and thus have become an essential rock and roll band.

Steve Miller

Background: Singer and guitarist Steve Miller became a mainstream rock-radio fixture in the 1970s with string of instantly accessible singles that were seamless without being slick and familiar without seeming derivative. Miller's 1973 album The Joker (Capitol) offered little beyond the title song—which became a Miller calling card as it topped the singles chart—but Fly Like an Eagle (Capitol, 1976) and Book of Dreams (Capitol, 1977) packed in so much bright, economical guitar rock garnished with electronic flourishes that both seemed to be greatest-hits packages; not surprisingly, when Capitol did release Greatest Hits 1974–1978 in 1978, easily the best-selling item in the Miller catalog, all but "The Joker" had been culled from those two albums. (Greatest Hits conveniently ignores everything before The Joker, but we'll get there by and by.) Eagle's title song sported a "Space Intro" and leftover-hippie lyrics but the arrangement was cool and contemporary as "Rock 'n Me," another chart-topper, and "Take the Money and Run," seemingly inspired by the Steve McQueen film The Getaway, rocked with straightforward hipness while "Wild Mountain Honey" was how blissful chillout in the '70s used to go. "Jet Airliner," from Book of Dreams, recycled Cream's "Crossroads" riff while a synthesizer blast kicked off the compulsive "Jungle Love" and the infectious "Swingtown" really did swing.

But Steve Miller's 1970s success lies in his 1960s woodshedding, which contains arguably his most creative endeavors. Growing up in Wisconsin and Texas, Miller befriended singer and guitarist Boz Scaggs and keyboardist Ben Sidran, who became collaborators when Miller relocated to psychedelic San Francisco. That influence, along with British blues-rock, informed the lukewarm debut Children of the Future (Capitol, 1968) although that album introduced muscular bassist Lonnie Turner, another key early contributor. Released later that year, Sailor (Capitol) sparkled with prog-rock touches ("Song for Our Ancestors"), winsome ballads ("Dear Mary," "Quicksilver Girl"), and wry trip-out warnings ("My Friend") as it brandished full-bore rockers from Scaggs ("Dime-a-Dance Romance") and Miller, whose brilliant "Living in the U.S.A." remains a manic, Turner-fueled gallop through contemporary Americana ("somebody give me a cheeseburger!"). Scaggs had split by Brave New World (Capitol, 1969) although his influence still lingered (check the delightful nonsense of "Kow Kow") even as Miller delivered his statement of purpose with the coolly swaggering "Space Cowboy"; meanwhile, his cheerfully chaotic "My Dark Hour" previewed the guitar riff he'd later lavish on "Fly Like an Eagle."

The early 1970s were a dry spell for Miller, whose output was thin and uninspired, the social comment ("Jackson-Kent Blues") from Number Five (Capitol, 1970) notwithstanding, before he released The Joker. Then, following his flush of mid-1970s success, he hit another rough patch before releasing Abracadabra (Capitol) in 1982, which wasn't a strong album although it was his last platinum studio album, undoubtedly on the strength of the ubiquitous title song, his last Number One hit and in some ways his most audacious—who else would think to rhyme "abracadabra" with "reach out and grab ya"? That was Steve Miller's last gasp, though, as he faded from the pop front lines and into the boutique and nostalgia markets, his legacy residing primarily in those 1970s hits and, for those willing to dig deeper, his late-1960s experimentation.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. Although Steve Miller ruled rock and pop radio in the 1970s alongside the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, even his smartest hits seemed to echo a safe, surface sentiment that failed to reveal any emotional depth, and thus they lack the resonance of their contemporaries even during a time rife with plastic sentiment. Hall voters will consider Miller to be more of a canny byproduct of the era rather than a sincere architect who helped to shape it.

Would I vote for the artist? No. It is easy to underrate Steve Miller, particularly when you listen to his most satisfying triumphs from Sailor and Brave New World, before he distilled those experiments into a clutch of neatly crafted songs with an easy appeal. However, Miller, even during his most substantial period in the late 1960s, has always been a talented craftsman and not an engaged artist, content to let his informed facility dictate his output without providing much insight into his sentiments and vision.

Nine Inch Nails

Background: Industrial rock had been simmering beneath the punk-rock surface since the late 1970s, and it accrued underground cachet throughout the 1980s, but it took Nine Inch Nails to thrust industrial into the mainstream—no small feat as the band has made few lyrical or musical concessions since its 1989 debut Pretty Hate Machine (TVT). That album featured one performer almost exclusively, Trent Reznor, and although Reznor has used a plethora of musicians on subsequent releases and concert tours, Nine Inch Nails has been the vehicle for Reznor's angst-ridden outbursts incorporating sex, politics, and religion (Pretty Hate's "Sanctified" and "Something I Can Never Have"), even as "Down in It" and "Head Like a Hole" demonstrated considerable pop accessibility. Going the Ministry route, NIN replaced the synth-pop of Pretty Hate Machine with a metal attack on the brutal 1992 EP Broken (TVT/Nothing), with remixes subsequently released as Fixed, as uncompromising tracks such as "Happiness in Slavery" and the hit "Wish" ushered the band into the ranks of influential noise merchants of the 1990s, with Reznor's lyrical and melodic hooks propelling him above the pack.

The Downward Spiral (Nothing, 1994) upped the ante as the concept album about suicide not only kept up the electro-metal assault but drew its inspiration from earlier experimental- and progressive rock (particularly David Bowie's Low); prog-rock stalwart Adrian Belew (King Crimson, Talking Heads, Frank Zappa) supplies distinctive guitar. The album contained the band's signature song "Closer" while the blistering "March of the Pigs" maintained the edgy aggression, and the jarring dynamics of "Mr. Self Destruct" chronicled the clashing social and personal upheaval. Subsequent recordings found Nine Inch Nails working through the implications of the sound it had found with mixed success, although With Teeth (Interscope, 2005) still proffered a catchy thumper in "The Hand That Feeds," and Year Zero (Interscope, 2007) was a full-blown examination of future political dystopia that was ultimately uneven and suggested that Reznor's insights were more effective in concentrated doses.

But as Reznor and Nine Inch Nails have continued to record and tour, their legacy has been established, and at this point it is simply a matter of updating the résumé. Reznor has garnished his reputation by supplying songs for film soundtracks and, with musician and composer Atticus Ross, has scored three David Fincher films, winning an Academy Award for The Social Network (2010), and establishing industrial rock as a mainstream genre—you cannot escape it even in the safety of your MultiPlex cinema.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? Yes. Hall voters may be holding their noses as they check this box, but they also know that few acts have—perhaps no other act has—pushed industrial into the mainstream with such forceful conviction as has Nine Inch Nails.

Would I vote for the artist? Yes. Industrial music has remained murky and anonymous, but Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails have given it both a face and a voice, in turn making industrial a rock genre to be reckoned with as they have inspired subsequent musicians. Moreover, Nine Inch Nails's lyrical and musical contributions have helped to shape the course of contemporary rock.

N.W.A.

Background: Sometimes the history of the Rock and Soul Era is punctuated by artists whose moment was brief but enduring, altering the course of the music irrevocably even though the artist's presence was fleeting. Bill Haley, the Sex Pistols, and Grandmaster Flash were such artists, and so was the hip-hop group N.W.A. Short for Niggaz wit Attitudes, N.W.A. wasn't the first gangsta-rap act—Schoolly D delivered the first truly graphic street-level vignettes (such as "PSK—What Does It Mean?"), although Hall of Fame recognition for him is non-existent; first is not always lasting—but N.W.A. did deliver the definitive tract for the genre, Straight Outta Compton (Ruthless/Priority/EMI, 1988), N.W.A.'s second album, which has influenced countless acts while spawning the solo careers of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, and Ice Cube. "Straight Outta Compton" is a gripping statement of purpose while "Gangsta Gangsta" details inner-city life in ambiguous terms and the notorious "Fuck tha Police" is a landmark challenge to authority that eerily presaged the 1991 Rodney King beating in Los Angeles and the subsequent rioting following the acquittal of the four L.A. police officers charged with the beating.

And that was it for N.W.A. Its first album was a tepid exercise that could hardly predict the impact Compton would have, and its releases subsequent to that quickly became uninspired and parodic. Furthermore, internal disputes ensured that N.W.A. would not last long, with Dr. Dre and Ice Cube embarking on substantial careers while Eazy-E, who also went solo, died in 1995. By that time, gangsta rap had become the dominant hip-hop genre while exerting a fascination throughout contemporary music and pop culture in general. N.W.A. had ratcheted up the stark storytelling of Grandmaster Flash and Run-D.M.C. while echoing the bluntness of rock's hardcore underground, and it pushed the Rock and Soul Era into a graphic, profane existence. Like it or lump it, you cannot ignore it.


Is N.W.A.'s landmark album Straight Outta Compton enough to land them in the Hall of Fame?

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? Yes. With a commercially and critically successful biopic, Straight Outta Compton, hitting theaters earlier in 2015, N.W.A.'s legacy has received a heady dose of Hollywood legitimacy that might convince those voters who have seen this definitive hip-hop act on their ballots for the last three years in a row that there may be something worthwhile here after all.

Would I vote for the artist? Yes. Although N.W.A.'s legacy amounts to only one album, its impact is what matters, and the band redirected the course of hip-hop, with a corresponding ripple effect on other musical and cultural forms, as a result of it. N.W.A. is the hip-hop equivalent of the Sex Pistols, and it will be interesting to see, if it is elected, if the group regards its election as a "piss stain" as well.

The Smiths

Background: Hugely popular in Great Britain, the Smiths straddled the mainstream and the underground, the former through a shimmering, gorgeous jangle-pop approach that glided on ball bearings, and the latter through the singular, idiosyncratic, immediately distinctive voice and lyrics of lead singer Morrissey (first name Steven), whose keening, vulnerable persona and mannered air make Brian Ferry look and sound like Wilson Pickett. The Smiths' atmospheric mopery initially brooked comparisons with the romantic gloom of acts such as Depeche Mode and Spandau Ballet, although the Smiths parted company right away starting with their ordinary-sounding name—a direct repudiation of such pretentious appellations as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark—to their shunning of synthesizers; instead, the band wedded the chiming, melodic, often multi-tracked guitars of Johnny Marr and the sturdy rhythm team of bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce to Morrissey's warbling, winsomely self-absorbed ruminations and rode them to post-punk glory.

Amazingly, the Smiths accomplished all this in the space of about five years in the mid-1980s, the band's output totaling four full-length studio albums and a passel of non-album singles. The first single, "Hand in Glove," memorably told us that the sun shines out of our behinds but made little initial impact; however, the follow-up "This Charming Man" struck gold while introducing the coy, teasing themes of homosexuality that helped to inform Morrissey's outlook, which came to encompass asexuality, celibacy, and the effects of child abuse among other deliberately non-commercial subjects. The Smiths' 1983 self-titled debut album for Rough Trade elaborated further with a remixed version of "Hand in Glove" while "Reel around the Fountain" was a lovely if ravaged ballad, and the elliptical, equivocal "What Difference Does It Make?" became another hit. The engaging single-only "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" sharpened the Smiths' appeal as it became one of the band's signature songs (reference to Caligula notwithstanding); another non-album single, the compulsive, gently propulsive "How Soon Is Now?" made inroads in the United States. However, the band's second album Meat Is Murder (Rough Trade, 1985), although overtly political and bravely confrontational, seemed too strident despite—or because of—its condemnation of corporal punishment ("The Headmaster Ritual") and its support for depressives ("That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore") and vegetarianism (the title song).


The Smiths take a sullen break before resuming a career that could land them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The band rebounded with The Queen Is Dead (Rough Trade, 1986), which sharpened Morrissey's mordant wit into sardonic humor—if you believe that, in "Bigmouth Strikes Again," he is pulling our leg about knowing how Joan of Arc felt—and also sharpened Marr's guitar-driven hooks into sonic candy. "Cemetery Gates" and the unabashed "Never Had No One Ever" dared you not to cherish them as bruised and vulnerable plaints, as did the ethereal "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side," while the driving, U2-like title track was an oblique, fascinating rail covering personal and social politics, and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" is the wryly winsome ballad that should have conquered America. It didn't, but Louder Than Bombs (Rough Trade/Sire, 1987), a compilation aimed at the US market, came fairly close with its lode of choice singles ("William, It Was Really Nothing," "Sheila Take a Bow," "Shoplifters of the World Unite"). The Smiths' final studio album, Strangeways, Here We Come (Rough Trade, 1987), tried to broaden the band's musical attack, but despite a standout or two ("Girlfriend in a Coma," "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before") it ended the Smiths' career on a disappointing note. Morrissey went on to a substantial solo career; the other Smiths, not so much.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. The Hall loves British bands, but with its American bias, it all but demands that those bands have had significant success in the States—how else to explain the induction of the Dave Clark Five? Unfortunately, the Smiths' American success amounts to a strong cult following and a couple of singles (particularly "How Soon Is Now?") that somehow stumbled onto the American dance chart.

Would I vote for the artist? Yes. Not only did the Smiths encapsulate bracing 1980s attitudes with an appealing, accessible sound topped by a truly distinctive frontman in Morrissey, but those yearning, mournful emotions, spiked with an acid wit, proved to be influential on the next wave of alternative navel-gazers and social misfits, echoed in the emo movement and elsewhere. The Smiths carried the banner for latchkey kids, secondary school outcasts, the sexually confused, and the socially awkward everywhere.

The Spinners

Background: You may be forgiven for thinking, "Wait a minute—aren't the Spinners already in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" With a career that stretches back to the early 1960s, this soul singing group has been a fixture of the classic rock and soul period, and, with lead singer Philippé Wynne and songwriter-producer Thom Bell, a hit-making machine in the 1970s, the group's heyday; thus, their inclusion in the Hall seems a foregone conclusion. Yet the Spinners may have been too polite to attract serious attention: Lacking the brooding melodrama of the Four Tops, or the lean, sharp moods of the O'Jays, or even the histrionics of Percy Sledge, the Spinners, particularly during the Wynne-Bell years, made their sentiments seem too effortless, as if they came too easily and thus eluded appreciation.

The Spinners tasted their first singles success in 1961 with the doo-wop-inflected "That's What Girls Are Made For," recorded with lead singer Bobby Smith for Harvey Fuqua's Tri-Phi Records. The group failed to chart a follow-up, but the Fuqua connection got them a spot on the Motown roster, where their 1965 single "I'll Always Love You" snuck into the lower reaches of the Top 40, but the pleasant if unexceptional plaint was easily overshadowed by the label's heavyweights (a fate similar to the Isley Brothers), and it took another five years for another hit, writer-producer Stevie Wonder's "It's a Shame," which featured the game falsetto of lead singer G.C. Cameron.


Just as they sang "I'll Be Around," the Spinners haven't given up waiting for their call to the Hall.

Signing to Atlantic but losing Cameron, the Spinners picked up singer Wynne and producer Bell, and under Bell's tutelage the group released the low-key, heavily arranged "How Could I Let You Get Away" in 1972. It failed to dent the Top 40, but then Bell and the group, with a pair of charismatic leads in Smith and Wynne, sharpened their approach—and the floodgates opened: the engaging "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love," "One of a Kind (Love Affair)," "Mighty Love," the funky "I'm Coming Home," "Love Don't Love Nobody," and the relaxed, swinging confidence of "I'll Be Around" were unabashed ear candy that all made the Top 20 between 1972 and 1974, culminating with their chart-topper recorded with Dionne Warwick, the swirling, incandescent "Then Came You." Even the de rigueur social commentary of "Ghetto Child" was appealing enough to chart. By the mid-1970s, Bell's formula was losing its luster—"Sadie," "Wake up Susan," "You're Throwing Good Love Away," and "Heaven on Earth (So Fine)" all missed the Top 40—although the instant charm of "Games People Play" and the hilarious funk of "The Rubberband Man" were both undisputed hits. Moreover, the Spinners' albums Spinners (Atlantic, 1973), Mighty Love (Atlantic, 1974), and Pick of the Litter (Atlantic, 1975) were substantial works in and of themselves—not merely hits-plus-filler packages.

Wynne left the Spinners in 1977, and the group parted company with Bell by 1979; the Spinners managed a pair of hits at the turn of the decade with the disco-inflected medleys "Cupid"/"I've Loved You for a Long Time" and especially "Working My Way Back to You"/"Forgive Me, Girl" before they moved onto the oldies and nostalgia circuit, their legacy already established.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? Yes. Although this could be wishful thinking on my part. The Spinners have been eligible since 1986—the same year of the first Hall of Fame elections—but never got onto a ballot until 26 years later. At least they returned last year and are back again this year, this after Bill Withers was elected last year and the Spinners were not.

Would I vote for the artist? Yes. Percy Sledge is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—and the Spinners are not. In case that needs elaboration, the Spinners were among the top hitmakers of the 1970s, with an irresistibly engaging ensemble sound that helped to define the period. The Spinners have been long overdue for the Hall. Hell, even Bill Withers got in last year—do Hall voters need to elect the JBs this year before they consider the Spinners? God, I hope not.

(By the way, I have nothing against Bill Withers personally or professionally although I do not consider him to be a Hall of Fame talent, as I noted last year when I examined his case.)

Yes

Background: There is no doubt that Yes epitomizes progressive rock: big ideas, even bigger musical execution of those ideas, the instrumental firepower to drive that musical execution, and, every now and then, the accessibility to appeal to listeners beyond the band's fervent fan base. And don't forget those Roger Dean album covers, evoking Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and Heavy Metal magazine to illustrate the mythical, mystical, science-fiction thrust of Yes's best-known material. Yes was truly the band whose albums were ideal to play Dungeons and Dragons by—and given the length of the band's greatest conceits, those albums could sustain a long night's worth of abstract treasure hunting and Orc slaying.

It would take a couple of albums for the band's formula to coalesce. Late-1960s psychedelic folk informs the eponymous first album (Atlantic/WEA, 1969), which features covers of the Beatles and the Byrds, but orchestral backing on much of the second album, Time and a Word, (Atlantic, 1970) signaled the band's elaborate constructions to come in the 1970s. The Yes Album (Atlantic, 1971) featured lengthy, multipart songs drawing from Lewis Carroll ("I've Seen All Good People") and Robert Heinlein ("Starship Trooper"); this set the stage for the keynote set Fragile (Atlantic, 1971), which saw keyboardist Rick Wakeman join singer Jon Anderson, guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, and drummer Bill Bruford to form the most instrumentally accomplished version of Yes. Yet despite some notably accessible moments ("Long Distance Runaround," "Roundabout"), the album began to make a fetish of virtuosity at the expense of emotional connection, a trait that mushroomed on the next album, Close to the Edge (Atlantic, 1972) and prompted Bruford's departure to King Crimson—an eyebrow-raising move as Yes was now a commercial success and Crimson definitely was not; Alan White replaced Bruford.

Tales from Topographic Oceans (Atlantic, 1973), a double album with just four side-long songs, exemplified the elephantiasis that gripped the band for the next few years (Wakeman too left Yes—only to make his own overblown series of solo albums before returning to the fold), and while the later 1970s found Yes with occasional accessibility (the cheerfully chaotic "Going for the One," the wistful "Wondrous Stories"), individual divisiveness and a fading audience spelled the end of the band. Or did it? Having weathered personnel conflicts, Anderson, Squire, and White regrouped with original keyboardist Tony Kaye, guitarist Trevor Rabin, and producer Trevor Horn for the 1983 album 90125 (Atlantic, 1983), which spawned a pair of power-pop hits, "Leave It" and the chart-topping "Owner of a Lonely Heart," that really reflected the influence of Horn and Rabin more so than the "classic" Yes.

The band continued in the commercial vein with diminishing returns before affecting a transition back to its roots in the 1990s, with Howe, Wakeman, and even for a time Bruford returning. But Yes's legacy remains centered on its prominence as a progressive-rock icon of the 1970s, and that is where evaluation of its inclusion in the Hall of Fame will remain focused.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. Yes has made the ballot in alternate years since 2014, suggesting that as far as progressive-rock acts go, this is the horse favored to cross the finish line. On the other hand, Yes, with celebrated excess marking much of its output, makes for a suitable prog-rock straw man to illustrate how bombastic the genre had become—and thus why it does not deserve a spot in the Hall.

Would I vote for the artist? No. Yes embodies too many of the negative traits of progressive rock, which is one of the most promising genres in rock but which is also the most prone to excess in pursuit of that promise. In Yes's case, intellectual pretense and obfuscation overwhelm lyrical inquisitiveness, and instrumental indulgence overpowers musical invention.

Voting Summary

The table below summarizes the 15 nominees for 2016 by how I think the Hall voters will vote and by how I would vote were I eligible to do so.

2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees
Nominee	Hall Vote		My Vote
	Yes	No	Yes	No
The Cars		X		X
Chic	X		X
Chicago		X		X
Cheap Trick		X		X
Deep Purple	X			X
Janet Jackson	X		X
The JBs		X		X
Chaka Khan		X		X
Los Lobos		X	X
Steve Miller		X		X
Nine Inch Nails	X		X
N.W.A.	X		X
The Smiths		X	X
The Spinners	X		X
Yes		X		X
	6	9	7	8

Compared to Hall voters, or at least what I think Hall voters will do, I'm a bit more optimistic with my own hypothetical votes, selecting seven nominees instead of the six I think will get the nod. Of course, of the six candidates last year that Hall voters actually chose, I picked one right—and Green Day was hardly a difficult pick.

What is interesting this year is that time is truly marching on. For 2016, the "deep historical" candidate is the Spinners, whose career began in the early 1960s but who didn't hit their prime until a decade later. Chicago, Deep Purple, Steve Miller, and Yes all began later in the 1960s before they too hit their prime in the 1970s, with the JBs just a tick behind them. The Cars, Cheap Trick, Chic, and Chaka Khan got their starts in the 1970s, as did Los Lobos although unlike the other four they didn't attain recognition until the 1980s. Entering the 1980s, Janet Jackson and the Smiths found their initial fame, with Nine Inch Nails and N.W.A. getting launched at the end of the 1980s.

This ticket is still heavily weighted with acts from the classic rock and soul period, a period that began to yield to newer styles and genres by the late 1970s though of course the earlier acts continued on while some—Chaka Khan and to an extent Chicago and Yes—even adapted those styles and genres. Conversely, Los Lobos thrived in the modern period by building much of their sound on those earlier styles and genres.

With no common baseline or criteria to evaluate candidates for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who will be elected in any given year is a crapshoot, and observers can be forgiven, if not quite excused, for thinking that the dice used to shoot those craps are loaded—many times, the selections do not feel random, done with an equal probability of selection, as much as they feel arbitrary, that there is an unseen judge or arbiter who is exercising discretion upon the final result. Granted, music carries with it intense emotional involvement, and adverse results affecting those whom we like and dislike feel as if they are not "fair"—how can the artist I like be snubbed while the artist I do not like gets inducted into the Hall of Fame?

In the past, I have written about this extensively, for instance, for the 2015 Hall of Fame ballot and for the 2014 Hall of Fame Ballot, and as the weary cynicism at the start of this article may suggest, I'm getting tired of writing about it. But to paraphrase what Winston Churchill is reputed to have said about democracy, it is the most ineffective and inefficient form of government ever devised. Except for all the others. Similarly, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame may suck, but what would suck more is not having one in the first place. It is a museum that celebrates legacy, and if you accept that the Rock and Soul Era began sometime in the mid-1950s, then that Era is entering its seventh decade and shows no sign of disappearing. Therefore, there is a lot of legacy to celebrate—and to debate and declaim and despair over too.

The Class of 2016 will not be a great class but it can be a diverse class with a broad range of genres and periods from which to choose. I've made my choices, and I've hazarded a foolish guess as to what the many voters will chose. Who are your choices for the 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Or do you not give a fat rat's ass any more?