The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation announced the nominees for 2022 Induction — with the list including Beck, Pat Benatar, Kate Bush, DEVO, Duran Duran, Eminem, Eurythmics, Judas Priest, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Dolly Parton, Rage Against The Machine, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, A Tribe Called Quest, and Dionne Warwick.
According to the Hall, “To be eligible for nomination, an individual artist or band must have released its first commercial recording at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination. Seven out of 17 of the Nominees are on the ballot for the first time, including Beck, Eminem, Duran Duran, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, and A Tribe Called Quest. This is Eminem’s first year of eligibility.”
Inductees will be announced in May 2022. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2022 Induction Ceremony will take place this fall. The date, venue, and on-sale information will be announced later.
We asked Simon LeBon if the Cure being chosen for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 2019, raised his hopes for Duran Duran and the other English bands they came up with in the 1980's being inducted: “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts seven acts a year, so there must be a very sort of fine process of elimination to get there. One does not presume to be inducted. It's just one of those things that might or might not happen — and if it does, you're very grateful for it.”
Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford told us he's proud to have Priest considered part of the fabric that connects the best of rock: “It's just fantastic to be in the same category of all the other extraordinary talent is a thrill. And it just re-emphasizes the broad spectrum of what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame represents. It's a little bit of everybody, again.”
Beck shed light on his creative life and how it's shifted over the course of his career: “It evolved. I’ve always approached what I do with a sense of humor. Not making a joke out of it, but trying to keep it happening and keep it fresh. Keep it human.”
Before she made it big, Pat Benatar played in cover bands for little or no money in and around Richmond, Virginia, where she lived with her first husband. She told us that it wasn't until she went back to her native New York that things began to fall into place for her: “When I moved back to New York, I did the showcase circuit and hooked up with a lot of songwriters, and I think that was probably the turning point there. Because once you start doing original material and you stop doing cover songs, you find your own voice, your own identity, that kind of thing.”
Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello told us that his main motivation for playing is to try and change the direction of the country: “I need to add my voice and what I do best, which is play guitar, you know. I need to be another link in the chain to start turning this thing around. Y'know, as the great historian Howard Zinn says, you can't be neutral on a moving train, and this train's moving in the wrong direction. And it's not time to be sitting in the dining car sipping martinis, it's time to be mugging the conductor.”
Co-founding MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer told us that breaking boundaries, defining its time, and hipping their community to the world around them was the backbone of Detroit's greatest band: “I think the band was, was part of a unique cultural moment, y'know, when all these currents hit together — y'know, Motown, and James Brown, and John Coltrane, and the Black Panther Party, and war in Vietnam, and marijuana, and the hippie, anti-war movement. And the MC5 was really part of all of everything that was going on, which, y'know, doesn't happen much these days.”
Carly Simon has said that her stage fright springs from her childhood stuttering. Ironically, it was singing that helped her overcome the speech impediment. She says that she can't imagine a life without music: “I can't live without music. It's my main way of expressing myself. And it sounds high-falutin' to say that but I really mean that. Even as a child I would sing most of what I wanted to say. I had a terrible stammer. I couldn't really speak until I was 16. I couldn't speak at all fluently and so my mother would always say, 'Just go ahead and sing it' — because I didn't stammer when I sang.”
Not too long ago, Eminem discussed how fame had left him with a lack of privacy: “Yeah, it gets a little agitating at times, I mean, but, I don't know, you gotta take the good with the bad, the plusses with the minuses, the positive with the negative, y'know? It's a drag sometimes, but, whatever. I just deal with it.”
Dionne Warwick told us why she feels it's still important to keep recording and staying active in the studio: “The audience that has now grown up with me now have children who are having children, and I want them to know who Dionne Warwick is, and that I can be a part of their CD collection now, as they're called, instead of records. Remember vinyl? I loved it. But, y'know, they can now say, 'Yeah,' y'know, 'I know who she is, and I like her stuff, too.'”
Lionel Richie told us that his simple secret for success was keeping his pulse on what was happening in new music and never stop learning from his peers: “How did I get in this business in the first place? I was a little kid over in the corner watching Marvin Gaye record, watching Stevie Wonder record. And the word is called. . . I was learning. My overall philosophy is, the day you ever decide that you know it all is the day you're out of the business. I love the idea of, yes, I'm Lionel Richie, I'm established as Lionel Richie, but what's happening around me?”
The Eurythmics' Dave Stewart recently shed light on his long and successful relationship with Annie Lennox: “Whenever we're together, we realize that as soon as we stand next to each other, people's eyes pop wide — 'Oh! It's Eurythmics!' But when we're apart, we can be, like, separate individuals. So we know the perspective is, we know if we're together something's gonna happen — but that's not always what we want to happen, y'know?”
