Stairway to Heaven at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

by Anthony Medici in Opinion Posts, Uncategorized

Through forces beyond my control, I found myself spending a WEEK in Cleveland a couple of weeks ago. Such a predicament could hardly be anticipated. You know the old joke, first prize is a week in Philadelphia; second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia. The Grand Prize must be a week in Cleveland. But honestly, it wasn’t all that bad. The weather was perfect (thank God my visit did not happen in mid-winter. I can only imagine the cold and snow blowing in off Lake Erie). I had business that kept me–well– busy, and the time eventually came for me to drive away from the affectionately (?) nicknamed “mistake by the lake.” But while I was in Cleveland, I took some time to visit the much-touted Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (hereafter HOF), and this post contains my reflections on that visit, foremost among them: What the heck is the HOF doing in Cleveland!?

I know I’m not the first person to ask that question, but the thought cannot be banished. When I think of R&R, I think of New York, San Francisco, even Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit. I have never associated Cleveland with any signficant development in rock & roll. Purportedly the home to some DJ who also purportedly first used the term “rock and roll” (which I doubt), this is not enough to establish Cleveland as the spiritual home of R&R. My guess is that Cleveland waved enough development funds and tax breaks to win the site. Good for them.

The HOF sits on an esplanade on Cleveland’s downtown lakefront; very pleasant in summer, not recommended in winter. It vaunts the now obligatory radical glass sculpture of all self-respecting postmodern museums. Everyone wants to be Frank Gehry, including, apparently, the architects of the HOF. What they accomplished in this case is a glass pyramidal structure that is intended to be cutting edge but already looks rather tired and, more importantly, seriously compromises the interior display space of the museum.

The largest interior spaces are devoted to the dining area and the gift shop, which tells you something. A member of my group visited the HOF the day before I did. When I asked her which exhibits she liked best, she told me she had not gone into the exhibit area, but just bought some items as souvenirs at the gift shop. I am proposing some enterprising company start a tour of famous museum gift shops; not the museums themselves, just the gift shops. The gift shop has a good selection of CDs by artists who have been voted into the HOF, but in this day of downloads, the CD racks seem rather anachronistic.

On your intial entry into the museum, you are shunted into a movie theater showing a short film on the roots of rock & roll (Cleveland is not conspicuous therein). After this film, you are shunted into yet another film theater featuring a lot of R&R performers singing the praises of R&R. My companions and I started thinking that maybe we would be subjected to a round-robin of films, which would either end up dumping us into the gift shop or Lake Erie. Eventually we won our release, and entered the exhibit spaces, which can only be described as confusing and ill-sorted.

Art museums display art; film musueums show films, science museums show the results of science (planes, lasers, planets, etc). Music museums show…..what? Can’t show the music. Can only listen to it. The HOF does a respectable job of making the music available by providing individual listening stations, concert footage, etc. But most of the listening stations receive only passing use. It is rather difficult to stand at a station for any length of time. The best of these stations was the one devoted to Jimi Hendrix. It offered a vast selection of musical choices, and provided a lot of useful information about the music. I put in about 15 minutes at the Hendrix station; no one else in my group did, nor did most of the other folks wandering by.

What did grab the attention of the museum-goers were the the costumes of their favorite performers: Elvis, The Beatles, Hendrix (again, one of the better ones), etc. In fact, my most vivid impression of the museum’s exhibits was that of one big costume shop, filled with somewhat faded and tattered relics of favorite performers, now looking drab and even rather silly without the animating force that once inhabited them. Like the costume wardrobe of some high school theatrical company.

The HOF was holding a special exhibit on the Doors, a group I had seen several times in the 1960s. Jim Morrison was one of the most compelling performers I had ever seen, especially to my then teenage eyes, so I had marked this exhibit as one I especially wanted to see. The exhibit was lodged on the sixth (top) floor of the HOF; getting to it was no easy matter. The pyramidal structure of the building means the exhibit space gets smaller and smaller as you get to the top. After considerable effort, I found the little winding staircase (to heaven?) leading to the Doors exhibit, housed in an exhibit space smaller than the media room of any self-respecting McMansion. A small-ish flat screen monitor showed a glorious performance of the Doors in their heyday. It was worth the climb.

The best part of my trip to the HOF? Coming down from the Doors, my ears were greeted by the music of a loud, live, rock & roll band, emanating from the central atrium of the building. Loud enough to disgruntle members of my party. Energized enough to inspire some spastic dance moves. Youthful, brash, edgy, swaggering rock and roll. Rock and roll lives!