The 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees are Duran Duran, Pat Benatar, Eurythmics, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, and Eminem. This year's Musical Excellence Award will go to Judas Priest along with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
Early Influence Awards will go to Harry Belafonte and Elizabeth Cotten, with Ahmet Ertegun Awards going to recording engineer, producer, and executive Jimmy Iovine, R&B singer and Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson, and attorney, Allen Grubman.
The 2022 Rock Hall nominees that did not make the final cut are Beck, Kate Bush, Devo, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, A Tribe Called Quest, and Dionne Warwick.
The 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be held on November 5th at L.A.'s Microsoft Theater and air at a later date on HBO and stream on HBO Max.
Several of the inductees have taken to socila media regarding the announcement:
Judas Priest: “We are thrilled and honored to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame 2022. This is also a great moment for British Heavy Metal, Metal worldwide and our amazing fans who support us and keep flying the flag for Metal and Judas Priest!”
Duran Duran's John Taylor: “We are so honored and thrilled and happy. We really want to thank our fans, the people that have been voting for us, really, really pushing, giving us the people’s vote. We’re very proud of that. Nick (Rhodes) is working on his speech. We’ll see you in Los Angeles.”
Lionel Richie: “Being elected to the rock hall is an incredible honor. I would like to say THANK YOU to all of the voters, to all of my wonderful fans and to everyone at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Congratulations to all of my fellow 2022.”
Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo: “We are thrilled and humbled to become part of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame family. Thank you to everyone who voted especially the fans and congratulations to all the other inductees.”
Eurythmics: “We are beyond delighted to announce that Eurythmics have been inducted into the legendary Rock Hall.”
Dolly Parton: “I am honored and humbled by the fact that I have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Of course I will accept it gracefully. Thanks to everyone that voted for me and to everyone at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I will continue to work hard and try to live up to the honor.”
Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford told us a while back that Priest wouldn't have sustained such a lengthy career without the support of their fans: “It's an ongoing metal love affair that's been solid and kept us going and motivated, quite frankly. Bands don't exist without the people that support them, and so it is with Priest, y'know? Without our fans we're nothing, so we love our fans dearly, and we do as much as we can to keep that bond strong and solid.”
Duran Duran won this year's fan vote and bassist John Taylor admitted to us that he's never once taken his life and career with the band for granted: “The kind of fortune that Duran Duran was sort of happens once in a lifetime, really. It's just like kids that come together that happen to, like, be into the same thing — they just happen to go to the right place, the right time, meet 'Mr. Big' and da-da-da-da; and suddenly, it's a snowball effect.”
Pat Benatar told us that persistence and a firm belief in one's art is fundamental in creating and maintaining a career in rock: “Sometimes you're up against a brick wall, and you have really good intentions, and you just can't get there, y'know? That's why it's not plumbing (laughs), y'know? That's why it's art. So you have to go with the ebb-and-flow that sometimes, those are the kinds of records you have to make, and then every once in a while you get lucky, and you actually get one — y'know, the intention that you wanted to do actually comes to fruition.”
Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox spoke candidly about what the group means to her: “It's just part of my history and part of my life's work and it's a special thing, I think, looking at it from this distant point of view. I think the songs we've written and recorded together span quite a long period of time, and they're beautiful songs. It's a certain kind of sound. It's a certain kind of identity, I guess.”
Rapper Eminem told us that his ability to keep people guessing about his lyrical intention is crucial to who he is as an artist. “A lot of people ask me, 'You joke so much. You say so much f–ked up s–t, it's like, when do we know when you're joking and when do we know to take you seriously?,' and you don't. Y'know what I'm saying? It's your guess. Am I serious or am I not? When am I serious? When am I kidding? When am I joking? When am I not? It's kind of like that mystique that I want to leave about me. It's the only mystique that I got.”
Carly Simon told us that even though most of her work is in the pop and rock fields, she was reared on the “Great American Songbook” as much as she was on classic Top 40 radio: “I'm quite familiar with that genre, having grown up in a family that went to musical comedy openings and closings, and my father published books by Oscar Hammerstein and George Gershwin, and we were very much music lovers in a wider sense. We loved all kinds of music. There was always music in my house.”
Dolly Parton told us that it's her songwriting that she values most out her numerous talents: “Every time I get in a creative mood, I get excited because I feel like good, bad or indifferent I feel like I'm gonna leave something in the world today that wasn't there yesterday. So, I love writing songs, being able to express myself and hopefully be able to speak for other people, too.”
Producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis made their bones in Minneapolis as part of the Time and under the tutelage of Prince. Although responsible for countless era-defining records on their own, they've never forgotten how Minneapolis became the music mecca for a short period of time: “The record companies started descending. It was like anybody that could hold a guitar would try to put a band together. And yeah, they'd get these deals and their whole thing would be, 'Oh yeah, we're from Minneapolis,' and we'd be going, 'They ain't from Minneapolis.' We knew everybody from Minneapolis because we were part of it. Man, it was crazy. It was a crazy time.”
Lionel Richie, who currently serves as one of the judges on ABC's American Idol, told us that one of the best parts of performing on the road is getting to see the various generations out together for the night all in one place — something you usually don't see these days: “It is a beautiful thing, I'm so enjoying it. Only one line I have to get used to when I get the new school kids is, 'My mom. . . (laughs) My mom and dad played your records all the time, Mr. Richie.' 'Cause the question I kept asking is, 'How do you know the Commodores so well? And all of my back catalog?' And they were saying, 'You were taught in the family.'”
