The 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class includes Judas Priest, Dolly Parton and John Mellencamp
Two weeks after the rousing induction of Duran Duran, Dolly Parton, Eminem and Lionel Richie and many others into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the ceremony will air Saturday night at 8 p.m. on HBO. It’s also available to stream on HBO Max. If past shows are any indication, the 6 1/2 hours is roughly cut in half for television audiences. Here are a few memorable moments from the show that might be neglected on TV.
A moment for metal
Many of this year’s Hall nominees have had more fame than Judas Priest. Nobody had rock ‘n’ roll anymore. The heavy metal mainstays delighted a roomful of pop-leaning Lionel Richie fans and Duran Duran stans who may have shunned them in their 1980s heyday.
Judas Priest showed they can still bang their gray heads when they lit up the Microsoft Theater on November 5 with a set that included “Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight” and brought back former members including the original guitarist KK Downing and ex-drummer Les Binks.
Priest’s ensuing acceptance speeches left the metal warm and fuzzy, particularly the face and band’s frontman Rob Halford, who left last.
“Hi, I’m the gay guy in the group,” Halford began, bringing cheers. When it came out in 1998, he was the first.
“We call ourselves the heavy metal community, which is all-inclusive no matter what your sexual identity is, what you look like, or what you believe or don’t believe,” he said. “Everyone is welcome.”
Halford later wowed the crowd again by singing part of a verse to Parton’s song “Jolene” during the evening’s All-Star Jam, the kind of bizarre pairing these indoor moments are made for.
Or maybe it wasn’t so strange that night. Parton, who temporarily turned down the honor because she thought she should go to a rockier artist, played up her new status and turned up for her performance in as much black leather as the boys in Judas Priest.
Mellencamping at the microphone
New members whose careers have been played behind the scenes rarely make headlines at the Rock Hall or get big minutes on television. But sometimes those doing the induction give them a big boost, like three Hall of Famers did this year.
Janet Jackson (class of 2018) dressed as on the cover of her groundbreaking 1986 album Control to pay tribute to the men who helped her in the making and were the key collaborators of her career, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
Bruce Springsteen (born 1999) praised Jimmy Iovine, who rose from a pure studio engineer to one of the most important music managers of the last 30 years as the founder of Interscope Records on his 1975 album “Born to Run”. “Happy birthday, little brother!” Springsteen yelled as he invited Iovine onto the stage.
And John Mellencamp (born 2018) gave perhaps the most memorable speech of the evening, a long, rambling, occasionally awkward but always heartfelt tribute to a lawyer.
He introduced Allen Grubman, a co-founder of the Rock Hall and advocate for many current and future members.
“Allen is Jewish and I mention that for a reason,” Mellencamp said. “I am a non-Jew and my life has been enriched by countless Jewish people.”
Mellencamp made the threat of anti-Semitism his topic, and while he never mentioned recent comments from Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, he definitely remembered them.
“I urge you, as an artist, to speak out against anti-Semitism, against all forms of fanaticism, against all forms of hatred,” he said.
He added: “I don’t care if you’re Jewish, Black, White, Tutti-Frutti. I do not care. Here’s the trick. Silence is complicity. Can I say that again? Silence is complicity.”
“I knew he was going to make me cry,” Grubman said when Mellencamp finally got him on stage.
Springsteen and Mellencamp couldn’t resist getting involved in the music, too, and took the stage to close the show with a medley of Jerry Lee Lewis (class of 1986) hits eight days after his death. “For the murderer!” said Springsteen.
A duran duran do-over do-over
In its early days, before it was televised, when the likes of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were recorded, the Rock Hall ceremony was a loose and chaotic affair. It’s now run with the neat efficiency of a sitcom set.
It was all the more exciting when Duran Duran opened the night with a major technical glitch. After a spirited introduction by Robert Downey Jr., they took the stage and burst into 1981’s Girls on Film. Type of. They were inaudible without the voice of singer Simon Le Bon. They stopped and started over.
“We just had to prove to you that we weren’t lip-synching,” Le Bon said.
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