Genesis, 1972
Swedish super stars ABBA and ska and reggae legend Jimmy Cliff will join The Stooges, Genesis, and the Hollies as inductees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the shrine’s 25th annual ceremony on March 15 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Also getting the nod are David Geffen and a slew of songwriters — Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, Ellie Greenwich & Jeff Barry, Jesse Stone, Mort Shuman and Otis Blackwell — who will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award for non-performers.
The ceramony will be broadcast on Fuse TV this year.
Tony Banks, keyboardist with Genesis, told Billboard.com that it’s an honor to be the second British progressive rock band, after Pink Floyd, to join the Hall. “I suppose it being American-based and all that it just concentrates slightly more on that type of music,” he said.
A Genesis performance with the complete band at the ceremony is still up in the air due to Phil Collins’ recent back surgery. “Phil’s got a few physical problems at the moment which means I don’t think he’d be able to play, so…I don’t really know what that means,” Banks says. “We’ll face that particular hurdle when we get to it.”
Hollies veteran Graham Nash is thrilled with his groups’ induction and calls it “well-deserved,” noting that “they were a very large part of the British Invasion. They were a very large part of early, you know, English rock. They had a couple of dozen Top 10 hits (in the U.K.), and hits over here (in the U.S.), and why not?”
Carrie Ann, The Hollies, 1969
One can expect a performance by the Stooges, who in the wake of founding guitarist Ron Asheton’s death in early January, have already been planning a 2010 tour with “Raw Power” era guitarist James Williamson. The group has a total of seven Hall of Fame nominations in the bag already.
Surprisingly absent from the inductees list were KISS and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were thought to be front runners when the short list of nominees was announced in September.