THIS DAY: ROCK HALL SAYS HELLO CLEVELAND!
Though Memphis, Cincinnati, and New York all pressed their cases, it was Cleveland, on May, 5, 1986, that finally won out as the home of The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.
Most insiders believe that The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation did not choose Cleveland based on history – it was the where DJ Alan Freed gave radio life to the genre! it was the site of the first real rock concert! – but on dollars. Cleveland politicians and city big-wigs reportedly promised $65 million in public funds.
Cleveland also won out in early 1986 in a USA Today poll, and a petition drive that proposed Cleveland was a better location than Memphis for the Hall, earned 600,000 signatures.
The building itself opened with huge fanfare in 1995. And what a building. Nothing rock and roll about it.
The first batch of inductees was actually named four months earlier, in January 1986. This group included venerable rock names Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Elvis Presley. There was much speculation that the “voting” that first year was fixed.
Also fixed, seemingly, has been the odd decision to host the induction ceremonies each year in New York instead of Cleveland. After years of tension over the issue, the induction ceremony moves to Cleveland (temporarily) in 2009.
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Mark Holman says
I just love commenting on all these blogs. The staff writer at Music Nation are cranking it out. I have been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Nice open and wonderful to go back through the early years all the way to the present. Oh yeah, there is this singer songwriter, Mark Holman from that band Holworks, some sort of Higher Order Language. At 48, what are his chances of getting in there?http://musicnation.com/music/holworks/blue-opal