CLEVELAND _ The rock stars were out in Cleveland, despite the actual stars in the sky being obscured by rain clouds that mercilessly drenched the fans waiting for a glimpse of their moistened music heroes as they entered the 33rd annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony Saturday night.
Of the class of 2018 _ the Cars, the Moody Blues, Bon Jovi, Nina Simone, Dire Straits and Sister Rosetta Tharpe _ most of the surviving inductees showed up at Cleveland Public Auditorium, with Mark and David Knopfler of Dire Straits being the notable absentees.
As always, the sold-out show was a mix of performances and speeches, with alt-rockers the Killers opening with a previously unannounced, energetic rendition of the late Tom Petty's American Girl.
Surprisingly, Bon Jovi was first up, with a typically profane and also quite funny 15-minute speech by radio host Howard Stern. It took Rolling Stone founder and Rock Hall Foundation bigwig Jann Wenner to task for waiting a decade to induct Bon Jovi, and compared the Jersey band's 130 million records sold to the number of deaths during the bubonic plague, while also finding time to warble nearly all of Wanted Dead or Alive with help from numerous fans in the cheap seats.
Band members, including estranged guitarist/songwriter Richie Sambora, gave relatively short speeches before Jon Bon Jovi took the audience on a very detailed, nearly 20-minute history lesson. He called Stern "the only man I know who thought you needed a passport to come to Cleveland," then joined an expanded band, the classic lineup playing alongside their replacements.
They performed four songs, including You Give Love a Bad Name, It's My Life and a post-Sambora song, When We Were Us, on which Sambora gamely strummed along on his double neck acoustic guitar. It was the first time he'd played with them in five years.
Backstage, a reporter asked Bon Jovi if, now that everything was smoothed over, Sambora would be on the band's next album, and the singer flatly replied, "Richie has his own career, you'd have to ask him." The same question was asked of Sambora, who paused, gave a big shrug and said awkwardly "If he asks me, sure ... yeah!"
For reasons no one seemed willing to clarify, Dire Straits was inducted by its own bassist and founding member John Illsley. He referenced singer/songwriter/guitarist Mark Knopfler's absence and lack of public acknowledgment of the honor, merely saying it was "a personal thing."
Early-influence inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe was feted with a video montage, and Alabama Shakes singer/guitarist Brittany Howard gave a rousing, bluesy rendition of Tharpe's That's All, followed by longtime Late Night with David Letterman guitarist Felicia Collins ripping through Strange Things Are Happening Every Day.
Howard said she was first introduced to "the godmother of rock 'n' roll" about five years ago when someone compared Howard to Tharpe. Besides her powerful voice and music, "I just loved her story. She was a rule breaker," Howard said backstage.
The Cars were inducted by an exuberant Brandon Flowers of the Killers, who talked about the band's wide influence on a generation of rockers. The surviving members talked lovingly of late bassist/singer Benjamin Orr, and shouted out both the Drive singer's and the band's Cleveland roots.
They haven't played together much since they broke up in 1988, and the rust was pretty evident in their performance, as Ric Ocasek's underused singing voice took a while to warm up during My Best Friend's Girl, Moving in Stereo and You Might Think.
The In Memoriam montage seemed particularly brutal, with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and Linkin Park's Chester Bennington alongside Petty and AC/DC guitarist/songwriter Malcolm Young. The mood stayed somber as Seattle rockers and Cornell friends Ann Wilson of Heart and Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell played an acoustic take on Black Hole Sun.
In a first, the Rock Hall inducted important, influential singles. The six songs introduced by Steve Van Zandt: Rocket 88 by Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm; Chubby Checker's dance craze The Twist; Steppenwolf's thumping Born to Be Wild, which inadvertently gave the "heavy metal" genre its name; Link Wray's Rumble; the Kingsmen's once controversial Louie Louie; and Procol Harum's soulful ballad A Whiter Shade of Pale. Van Zandt, who called the new category "a kind of Rock Hall jukebox," noted that all of those artists have yet to be inducted.
Mary J. Blige gave an emotional induction for singer/songwriter/pianist Nina Simone, before Simone's brother Sam Waymon gave a rambling but effective speech. "They told me I had three minutes," Waymon said at the beginning of his speech.
"I said, 'No I don't'," and then Waymon took three minutes plus another 10..
Simone's two-part musical tribute began with Andra Day, who sang the hell out of I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free, and dropped to her knees in her fancy dress while belting out a powerful take on I Put a Spell on You, with help from the Roots.
Part two saw Lauryn Hill perform Ne Me Quitte Pas, Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair and an extended Feeling Good, with a machine-gun rap verse thrown in to bring Simone's influence full circle.
Finally, the Moody Blues were inducted by Ann Wilson, who gushed backstage before the ceremony about the band's huge influence on her desire to make music.
The Moodies deftly wrapped the evening with relatively short speeches.
"I'm not going to make a long speech," drummer Graeme Edge began. "I'm 77 years old, I haven't got time," he joked, drawing laughs and hoots from the audience.
Publicly ambivalent about the award in the past, they praised the honor and the loyal fans who implored and voted for the band's induction.
The septuagenarian trio closed the evening with a charging take on I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band), followed by their MTV-era hit Your Wildest Dreams, the indelible Nights in White Satin, and sent everyone home with the 1968 hit Ride My See-Saw.
Starting this year, the induction will be in Cleveland every other year. If 2018 is any indication, the 2020 ceremony should be in good local hands.
