Vote for the 2017 Nominees for the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame

The nominations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2017 are in, and the list includes Pearl Jam, Tupac Shakur, Depeche Mode, Electric Light Orchestra, Jane's Addiction, Janet Jackson, Journey, the Cars, the Zombies and Yes. The rest of this year's hopefuls are Bad Brains, Chaka Khan, Chic, J. Geils Band, Joan Baez, Joe Tex, Kraftwerk, MC5 and Steppenwolf. The top vote-getters will be announced in December and inducted next April at a ceremony at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. HBO will broadcast the ceremony later in the year.

For the fifth consecutive year, the public will have the opportunity to vote alongside the more than 800 artists, historians and music industry insiders of the Rock Hall voting body. From now until December 6th, fans can vote on RollingStone.com for the nominees they'd like to see inducted. The top five acts will comprise a "fan's ballot" that will count as one of the ballots that determine the class of 2016. Voting is available below.


To be eligible for this year's ballot, each nominee's first single or album had to be released in 1991 or earlier. Some of the nominees have appeared on previous ballots, but this is the first appearance for Bad Brains, Depeche Mode, Electric Light Orchestra, Jane’s Addiction, Joan Baez, Journey, Pearl Jam, Steppenwolf, and Tupac Shakur. It's Pearl Jam and Shakur's first year of eligibility, while Chic earned a Hall of Fame record with 11 ballot appearances. It's the fifth for Joe Tex, the fourth for the J. Geils Bands and Kraftwerk and the third for Yes.

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Devil Ledbetter said:

It's nice to see my buddies Pearl Jam getting so much love here.

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dolores haze said:

Definitely Chic is overdue. Massively influential. Is there anything of theirs that HASN'T been sampled? Is Nile Rogers in already?

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Eddie Trunk has never been shy about sharing his opinions, so if something gets under his skin he’ll be the first to tell you. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame chose to induct acts like ABBA and Madonna over heavy metal bands like Def Leppard and Dio, Trunk didn’t hold his tongue and went as far as calling it the “Hall of Shame.”


“How can you have a Hall of Fame where it takes Kiss, Rush and Alice Cooper twenty years to get in, but Green Day and Guns N’ Roses go in on first ballot, and Deep Purple doesn’t get in,” Trunk said in a 2014 blog post on his website.


Pearl Jam – “Here’s my comparison: Van Halen didn’t go into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the first year they were eligible. Does Pearl Jam need to? If Van Halen had to wait — I think they waited like 10 years! As great as Pearl Jam is and as relevant as Pearl Jam is, really, first time, first ballot? No, not in my book, not when you have countless iconic bands still on the sidelines.”
Electric Light Orchestra – “Absolutely a case can be made for them going in because, again, I always defer to seniority [and] who’s been waiting forever. ELO’s probably been eligible 25 years! The sound of their records, their hits, what Jeff Lynne did and went on to do after ELO. Absolutely ELO, certainly worthwhile, certainly deserving and should’ve probably gone in a long time ago.”
Yes – “Disgusting that they didn’t go in 20 years ago. Essentially the pioneers of progressive music. Not only did they in a lot of ways pioneer it, but they broke down the walls to make progressive music accessible. Yes maintained their credibility as a pioneering progressive band, but they also had a couple bonafide hits and crossed over and that’s very tough to do. Yes should’ve gone in a long, long time ago.”
Tupac Shakur – “If you’re going to include hip-hop and rap, as the Hall of Fame clearly has decided they are with N.W.A. going in, then yes. If that is your mandate — and again, a lot of people pound on how is that rock and roll and that’s a whole other argument — but regardless of that, the Hall of Fame has said and proven that hip-hop and rap are going to be part of its makeup. If that’s the case, Tupac was a god in that world, so I get it.”
Joan Baez – “The most I can tell you about Joan Baez is that Judas Priest covered one of her songs. Priest fans maybe don’t even know this but the song Diamonds and Rust, which is a huge song Judas Priest song in their catalog that they play live still to this day, is a cover of a Joan Baez song… But I can’t comment one way or the other on Joan Baez because it’s subjective to if you’re into that kind of music, and I don’t know enough about folk to be honest.”
Journey – “Finally, they’re on here. I’d say of every band that I read, Journey is far and away my A-1 that I would put on here.”

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Rolling Stone has a somewhat heartbreaking interview with Rodgers today, in which he repeatedly tried to split the difference between gratitude for his award and disappointment that the rest of his band has been left out. “I want to be happy, but I'm perplexed at the same time,” he said. “How do you pluck me out and say I'm worthy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but this band of mega players is not?


One of the likely suspects for why the hall keeps rejecting the creators of “Le Freak” and “Everybody Dance” is the the endurance of the “Disco Sucks” attitude: Some voters’ late-’70s genre/tribal allegiances may be so strong that it keeps out a group of accomplished instrumentalists and songwriters even as the hall’s definition of “rock” expands to include the likes of Madonna and NWA. This despite the fact that, as Rodgers pointed out to Rolling Stone, Chic recorded lots of music that wouldn’t have played at Studio 54. The unavoidable truth is that gatekeeping institutions have arbitrary biases—as seen in the fact that it took until 2014 for Rodgers to win a Grammy, and it was for a song recorded with two French guys nostalgic for Chic’s heyday:

I am very, very grateful and honestly shocked every time I win an award. When I won the first Grammy with Daft Punk [for "Get Lucky"], I said to the guys, "This is amazing. This is it." They looked at me and thought I had a whole closet full of Grammys. As we were sitting in the audience they kept saying, "You didn't get a Grammy for 'Let's Dance?' You didn't get a Grammy for 'Like a Virgin?' They started naming all these songs. "You had to get a Grammy for 'We Are Family!'" I'm actually very accustomed to not winning stuff. So it's fine with me when I don't win stuff. It's actually shocking when I do.


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