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digital music distribution companies.

Jane’s Addiction: Frontman Perry 
Farrell (nee Bernstein) has been in the 
news lately for a lot of wrong reasons, 
but there’s no denying the importance 
of this original of alt.rock quartets — 
which was nominated in 2017 and 
this year. Jane’s Addiction was notable 
for its influence as well as its musical 
achievements, a formidable blend of 
styles from heavy and progressive 
rock to world musics and jazz. Farrell’s 
other accomplishments, including 
co-founding Lollapalooza and his 
other musical entities, make him a 
candidate in his own right, but Jane’s 
Addiction is overdue for its induction. 

J. Geils Band: The rabble-rousing 
Boston outfit, which made a second 
home in Detroit — where it recorded 
all or part of all three of its live 
albums — has been nominated five 
times before without result, to the 
great chagrin of a loyal fan base that 
turned albums such as Bloodshot, 
Sanctuary, Love Stinks and Freeze-
Frame into gold and platinum. The 
namesake guitarist was, ironically, 
the only non-Jewish member of the 
sextet, which has been inactive since 
2015. 

Lenny Kaye: Patti Smith’s 2007 
induction was not for the Patti Smith 
Group, of which guitarist Kaye 
(nee Kusikoff) is still a part of. He’d 
merit a Rock Hall honor just for his 
work there, but he’s done a great 
deal more as a songwriter, producer, 
musician and author, with credits that 
include R.E.M., Suzanne Vega, Allen 
Ginsberg, Soul Asylum and the famed 

Nuggets compilation that was issued 
in 1972. 

Disturbed: The heavy rock outfit 
fronted by David Draiman — a 
onetime yeshivah student who also 
attended the Wisconsin Institute 
for Torah Study and trained to be 
a cantor — will become Rock Hall 
eligible in 2025. The organization has 
not been particularly welcoming to 
acts of this ilk, and Draiman would 
certainly be among the first to say 
his band should not be inducted 
before, say, Iron Maiden and some 
others. But its output and impact as 
one of this century’s strongest rock 
bands, up to and including an eight-
times platinum cover of Simon & 
Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence,” 
makes for an impressive resume for 
consideration. 

Lenny Kravitz: Nominated for 
the first time this year, the son of 
television producer Sy Kravitz and 
actress Roxie Roker (and second 
cousin to NBC personality Al Roker) 
brought a certain brand of rock back 
to prominence with his 1989 debut 
Let Love Rule. He’s been a ubiquitous 
presence ever since (his latest album, 
Blue Electric Light, came out in May), 
winning four Grammy Awards and 
branching out into acting and design 
work — the latter including the 
Temple Detroit hotel. 

Bette Midler: Dolly Parton, Cher, 
Brenda Lee ... so why not the Divine 
Miss M? Midler certainly has the 
moxie and the attitude, and more 
than a few of her songs are as rock ‘n’ 
roll as those of others who have made 

the Hall. She’s an EGOT, too, with 
three Grammy Awards as part of that 
pile.

Mountain/Leslie West: The late 
Leslie West (nee Weinstein) was one 
of America’s great guitar heroes, 
starting with the Vagrants and also 
in the ’70s supergroup West, Bruce 
& Laing as well as a solo career. 
Mountain was his summit, however, 
a formidable trio that produced eight 
solo albums, one bona fide rock 
anthem (“Mississippi Queen”) and 
planted its flag as a pulverizing live 
act with few equals.

The New York Dolls: The part 
glam, part punk band from — guess 
where? — got its heschsher courtesy 
of late guitarist Sylvain Sylvain (nee 
Mizhrahi), who was born in Cairo 
to a Syrian Jewish family that moved 
to France and then New York. The 
Dolls’ androgyny was a bit ahead of 
its time and off-putting in the mid-
’70s, but its first two albums were 
strong — and for that matter so were 
the three that came in the wake of its 
2006-2011 reunion. The group’s been 
nominated three times and seems a 
good bet to get in one day, though 
Sylvain, who passed away in 2021, 
will be there only in spirit. 

P!nk: Like Disturbed, Alecia Moore 
will become eligible for induction 
next year and would seem to fit in a 
lineage that runs from Billie Holiday 
to Madonna and Mary J. Blige. P!nk 
is a rocker at heart with a defiant 
attitude that hails from her forebears 
in the genre. And those death-defying 
ariel stunts she pulls of in concert 

should score her a few points for 
consideration. 

The Turtles/Flo & Eddie: While 
the Turtles’ Mark Volman and 
Howard Kaylan showed pop genius; 
as Flo & Eddie they added humor 
— of the irreverent counter-culture 
variety (they were also part of Frank 
Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, after 
all). Surely they’d be — how can we 
resist — happy together to be induct-
ed for any of their rock ‘n’ roll entities. 

Amy Winehouse: Surely to be a 
conundrum when she becomes eligi-
ble in 2028. The British singer, who 
passed away in 2011 at the age of 27, 
only released two albums, but 2006’s 
Back to Black was a stone classic that 
won all sorts of awards, including 
five Grammys. Stylish and (on the 
surface, at least) unafraid, Winehouse 
also fostered a mythology that’s kept 
her a relevant part of any present-day 
discussion, which could bode well for 
Rock Hall consideration. 

Warren Zevon: One of the Rock 
Hall’s great omissions, nominated just 
once so far. The late Zevon was one 
of rock’s most intelligent, provocative 
and iconoclastic songwriters, with 
a wry, sometimes caustic sense of 
humor but a great sense for melo-
dy and arrangement — as biting as 
“Werewolves of London,” as sweet as 
“Hasten Down the Wind” for Linda 
Ronstadt. His two Grammy Awards, 
for his posthumous album The Wind, 
were indicative of how under-appre-
ciated he’s been, but it’s beyond silly 
that he’s not in the Rock Hall yet. 

Amy Winehouse at 
the Eurockéennes 
of 2007

RAMA

P!nk at 

Tottenham 
Hotspur 
Stadium 
June 16, 
2024.

BY RAPH PH-PINKSPURS

1978 press photo of Warren 
Zevon issued to the media 
by Asylum Records

NUȚĂ LUCIAN-FLICKR

Lenny 
Kravitz at 
Untold 
2024.

