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Hall of Shame:
Why Aren't Alice Cooper & Mark Farner in the Rock 'n
Roll Hall of Fame?
By Ron Brown I spent a day earlier this year at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cleveland's pantheon to our vinyl heroes is interesting, but not as overwhelming as you'd expect.
I was interested to see this year's
inductees, most notably U2, Buddy Guy, and Percy Sledge.
The four lads from Dublin and their track record as record salesmen,
musicians, and social commentators speak for themselves. If "Clapton is
God," as 60's graffiti screamed through the streets of London, then
Buddy Guy is God's big brother. Ask Clapton himself.
Then there's Percy Sledge - a
one-hit wonder, albeit a wonderful one hit, "When a Man Loves a Woman."
I would argue that this isn't even the best version of the song - dig up
an old copy of "The Rose" movie soundtrack and listen to Bette Midler's
take.
If Percy Sledge is in the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame, then doesn't that open the doors for just about anyone?
More importantly, isn't it time that the Hall gave serious consideration to two of our own, acts whose trails lead them in and out of mid-Michigan: Grand Funk Railroad and Alice Cooper. Our boy Alice and the trio from Buick City have one important thing in common - both were slagged ferociously by critics throughout their career.
Rolling Stone magazine
issued one of the harshest commentaries ever printed when they called Grand Funk "the world's largest car radio and one of the
most simplistic, talent-less, one-dimensional, unmusical groups.what
they do is to play - with great energy and apparent excitement, music
which really isn't very exciting at all. Grand Funk plays to a young
and not especially sophisticated audience."
In the wonderful tome on Mark Farner,
From Grand Funk to Grace, Kristofer Engelhardt wrote, "You just
couldn't earn your stripes as a rock music journalist if you didn't
hate Grand Funk Railroad. When the press was done attacking the
band, they questioned the credibility of their fans. It became
fashionable in the media to tar and feather anyone who enjoyed or even
related to the band."
After all, what rock icon - from Elvis to
Eminem - hasn't suffered at the hands of know-it-all, narrow-minded
voices from the media?
Thankfully, most fans are smarter than
most critics. The only barometer that really matters in the music
business is how many discs make it from the record store shelf to the
turntable at home.
Grand Funk delivered to the tune of
nearly 25 gold and platinum records, and two number one singles - two
more than Percy Sledge!
Growing up in Saginaw in the '60's and
'70's, I would wonder about you if you didn't have any Grand Funk
records. The same was true in Detroit, Cleveland, and many other major
markets where it mattered when energy and commitment met with screaming
guitars, soaring vocals, and a thunderous rhythm section to form rock
and roll bliss.
The only other issue that the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame need consider is an artist's legacy - what is left
behind when all the records are left to die at rummage sales and flea
markets.
Mark Farner hit the nail on the head with one line - rock and roll soul. Grand Funk took the trio format from Cream, turned it up to "11," and sprinkled in more than a measure of rhythm and blues sent up I-75 from the studios of Motown to create a sound all their own. Farner was, is, and always will be one of rock's premiere vocalists, along with Peter Wolf, Darryl Hall, and the Righteous Brothers as the greatest white soul singers. "Closer to Home" was, is, and always will be one of those anthems thats moving both musically and philosophically - a song that still gives me chills every time I hear it.
Critics be damned - and Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame be damned if the boys from Flint don't soon find their way
into Cleveland's landmark without having to pay to get in. They've been
paying us for years.
Les Paul gets in for the solid
body electric guitar. Bill Graham gets in for creating the rock
and roll show as a spectacle of lights, images, and sound. Even if the
music of Alice Cooper wasn't good - and it was great - Alice
deserves to get in the Hall for virtually inventing the concept of a
rock concert as theatre, complete with heroes, villains, props and a
moral to the story.
Kiss. Marilyn Manson. Bowie.
The Sex Pistols. Parliament-Funkadelic. So many more - all are
indebted to Alice for making a rock concert more than just three chords
and the truth. Freelance journalist and rock critic Jeffrey Morgan wrote on Alice's website, "Face it: there
are few trends in modern music that Alice Cooper didn't anticipate;
fewer still that weren't incorporated by this innovative showman into
one of the most bizarre and entertaining rock attractions of all time."
In their infancy, the only people who
seemed to get the sick and twisted mind of Alice were the sick and
twisted youth of Detroit and further points north. One of the pivotal
moments in early Alice history was when the band was so disgusting that
it cleared a room of 2,000 fans in Los Angeles a few songs into the
set. One that stayed, Shep Gordon, figured an entity that could
evoke such a negative reaction had something going for it. Gordon
remains Alice Cooper's manager to this day.
When Alice came back to his Detroit
hometown to jump start his career, he let the blood and guts of the
Stooges, the MC5, Grand Funk, and others drip all over him. Alice
once said, "The reason our music changed when we got to Detroit was
because the audiences there were literally raising their fists at us
instead of making peace signs."
He then took it up several notches by
adding snakes, dancing teeth, wonderfully chopped up dolls, guillotines,
and electric chairs over the years. Alice sought and achieved his
desired effect - he wanted everyone coming out of each show to look at
one another and say, "What the hell was that?"
And the former Mr. Furnier will never get
enough credit for writing words and building music into mantras of
disenchanted youth. Bob Dylan even once said, "I think Alice
Cooper is an overlooked songwriter." "I'm Eighteen" - more punk than
the Pistols - in fact, it was the same song young John Lydon sang when
auditioning for the part of Johnny Rotten. Alice took a line from a
Dead End Kids/Bowery Boys movie and came up with "School's Out," a
beautifully produced record that has to be listened to at full volume,
and contains possibly my favorite line in any song: "We got no
class.and we got no principles.and we got no innocence.WE CAN'T EVEN
THINK OF A WORD THAT RHYMES!"
Ironically, the Rock Hall has "Eighteen"
listed as one of the 50 most important songs in the history of rock and
roll. For the music and the mayhem, for theatrics not seen before or
since, Alice Cooper must be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Let's you and I agree to get the Hall to
induct Grand Funk and Alice in the same year. We can get together a few
bus loads of old rock and rollers, stop in Flint, Hamtramck, Lincoln
Park, and Toledo and pick up some more, and show these idiots in
Cleveland what real rock and roll is about.
Maybe we can even invite Percy Sledge.
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