Rock Hall Chairman Pulls Back the Curtain on Nominating Process
by Best Classic Bands Staff
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland (Photo by Jeff Tamarkin, used with permission)
The Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation has revealed quite a bit about the institution’s traditionally tight-lipped nominating process. In an interview with Vulture that was published on December 31, 2024, music industry veteran John Sykes—who has held that role for five years since his predecessor Jann Wenner stepped down at the end of 2019—explained the Byzantine process in which the roughly 30 members of the committee put forth the names that appear on the official ballot that is ultimately presented to the 1200 some-odd official voters each year.
Sykes was very transparent on a variety of topics that fans have long been curious about, addressing such topics as the call to change the Hall’s name from Rock & Roll to the far more generic “Music,” given how many of its inductees are not what first comes to mind when identifying rock acts. (Think Dolly Parton, the Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, and more.) He also weighed in on specific acts that have been long-overlooked by the Hall like Phil Collins (“there’s no excuse for not putting [him] in”) and even “Weird Al” Yankovic (“he’s a genius… [but] he’s never made it close to the ballot”).
Interviewer Devon Ivie offered great questions. Of the annual nominating meeting that’s held in January, she asked, “Is it kind of a Conclave situation [referring to the 2024 feature film about the Cardinals’ selection of a new Pope], where everyone is slyly stumping for their favorite artists and trying to curry favor for their picks?”
“It goes on for hours,” Sykes said. “The committee is very passionate about who they want. This is not something they just think about in the taxi ride over to the meeting. They really come prepared with their artists and why they deserve it. It’s not about just record sales or the amount of hits.
“These are not people who give in easily. I guess what I’m saying is that this is a democratic process. There are no backroom decisions. People fight it out.” He specifically identified Dave Grohl, Tom Morello, and Questlove. 2023 inductee Sheryl Crow just joined.
As for the topic of the Hall’s name, Sykes said, “I think it’s because some people don’t understand the meaning of rock and roll.” He shared a story of a conversation he had with Jay-Z, himself a 2021 inductee. “We’ve got to do a better job explaining it,” he said he told the star. “Little Richard, Otis Redding, Chuck Berry — these artists were the cornerstones of rock and roll. If you look at the sounds over the years, those artists ended up influencing hip-hop.”
Ivie asked, “Do artists who are outspoken about wanting to get in, and are pissy that they haven’t yet been recognized, diminish their chances?”
“You make a few artists happy and a lot upset every year because there’s just not enough room,” Sykes said. “But we always say to artists who get upset that it’s not over yet. There’s always a chance they could get inducted in the future. It’s in no way disrespectful to them.”
His predecessor, Wenner, the legendary founder of Rolling Stone, had been Chairman since fellow Rock Hall founder Ahmet Ertegun died in 2006. (Ertegun was the influential founder of Atlantic Records.) In a statement when he stepped down as Chairman of the Foundation, Wenner said, “I was a lucky man to be given this once in a lifetime mission to honor the history of the music I love. I am delighted to have John Sykes to take over.”
John Sykes (photo via iHeartMedia)
Sykes, 69, is President of Entertainment Enterprises for iHeartMedia. The longtime music and entertainment industry veteran was one of the co-founders of MTV and later served as President of Chrysalis Records and in an executive role for EMI’s music publishing division.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, published in 2019, the well-respected Sykes addressed changes for the Hall, noting that the Class of 2020 induction ceremony would be broadcast live on HBO, for the first time in years. The 2024 event streamed live on the Hall’s new partner, Disney+.
In that same interview, Sykes also tackled the subject of choosing artists for induction, which is always debated among rock fans. “The most important mandate is to rebuild our board; we have to modernize the way we think and create a more diverse board to reflect the artists who are becoming eligible,” he said. “It’s no longer the artists of the ’50s and ’60s, and we have to have a board with knowledge that speaks to that.”
“We are constantly looking at evolving the committee,” he continued. “Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine came in one time and stood up and said ‘Heavy metal is a category of music of the people. Why aren’t bands like Kiss and Rush in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?’ He was very persuasive. You have to credit Jon Landau [head of the nominating committee], because he said ‘I get it.’ We have to reflect what fans truly love.
Wenner started Rolling Stone in 1967 and its influence grew enormously from a counter-culture paper to what was long considered the most important music journalism publication. He expanded Wenner Media over the years to include such publications as Us Weekly and Men’s Journal.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Foundation are not one and the same. The former includes the museum itself, which opened its doors in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1995, and includes thousands of items in its impressive collection of rock ‘n’ roll and artifacts. The Foundation is run by music industry insiders, a list of whom has not been published. The small, tight-knit committee annually selects the recording artists who will be on that year’s ballot.
The list of nominees is then presented to a much broader voting body to determine who will be in the next class of inductees. Other institutions are far more transparent, such as the National Baseball Hall of Fame, which sets 75% as the required percentage of the vote for admission on its annual ballot for the baseball writers to choose from, and then reveals the detailed results. The Rock Hall doesn’t reveal its voting totals.
When the nomination list is publicly revealed, it’s become a parlor game, of sorts, for music fans to pore over the list, debating the artists’ merits and lamenting the worthy candidates who are again missing from the list.
[Best Classic Bands has compiled two vast lists of artists we’ve deemed worthy. Our first list covers acts from the ’50s-’70s such as Bad Company, Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, who are still on the outside looking in. Our second list continues with many more deserving acts. All of these artists require an admission ticket to the Rock Hall.]
The debates continue when the selections for the new class are revealed, for their selection the following spring.
In recent times, thanks to a multi-year commitment from HBO and now Disney+/ABC to broadcast highlights from the induction ceremony, the Rock Hall has been choosing many artists it had previously ignored.
Artists are deemed eligible 25 years after the release of their first recording. Yet, it was only in recent years that such classic rock legends as Chicago, Steve Miller, Cheap Trick and Deep Purple (all Class of 2016), ELO, Journey and Yes (all Class of 2017), Bon Jovi, Moody Blues, the Cars and Dire Straits (2018) Def Leppard and Roxy Music (2019), the Doobie Brothers (2020), Pat Benatar (2022), and Foreigner and Peter Frampton (both Class of 2024) were inducted… decades after they were eligible.
Those acts, and countless others, had been overlooked while many other influential, though decidedly non-rock artists, were selected. These included such performers as ABBA, Donna Summer, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Janet Jackson, Madonna, N.W.A, and Public Enemy, among them.
Wenner himself was inducted in 2004 via the Ahmet Ertegun Award. He was ousted altogether from the Foundation in 2023 due to comments he offered in an interview with The New York Times when he was plugging a new book.
- Radio Hits of January 1965: British Invasion - 01/03/2025
- Butch Cassidy, ‘Raindrops,’ and the Bicycle Scene - 01/03/2025
- Wayne Osmond of Family Singing Group, the Osmonds, Dies - 01/02/2025
7 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationWake me up when ELP is even nominated. Until then, don’t bother me with the Rock Hall.
Who died and put the RRHOF in charge of deciding what rock ‘n roll is? Seriously. How come the entitled jerks at the HOF committee get to determine the definition of rock ‘n roll and who deserves to be considered a rock ‘n roller? Those HOF people make me sick. They have made some extraordinarly bad choices for entry in the HOF, and they have made a gazillion equally horrible choices about who doesn’t get in. The RRHOF is and always has been a pathetic, exclusivist joke and a good ol’ boys club. I despise that “organization.”
This committee is so biased. Why were the beastie boys entered into the hall in 2012, then look at the bands left out from 2016 till present, like ELO, Deep Purple, Steve Miller, etc. If you know ANYTHING about rock and roll, you Cannot tell me the beasties get put into the hall before all these other acts. No bias here? Crap.
Until Meat Loaf is inducted, I will never respect this Hall! He was the ultimate Rock n Roller!
Good explanation but it still does not help those that should be in, Gordon Lightfoot for example, who have passed away and should be in by now.
As talented as he was, Gordon Lightfoot was not a Rock act.
Changing the name from R&R HOF to Music HOF will only introduce new problems. Should it then include classical performers, not to mention all forms of jazz, folk and world music? Maybe “popular music” HOF, but that would potentially exclude niche/cult artists?