IRON MAIDEN, FOO FIGHTERS, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE and NEW YORK DOLLS are among the nominees for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame‘s class of 2021. The top vote-getters will be announced in May and inducted in a Cleveland, Ohio, ceremony in the fall.
To be eligible for this year’s ballot, each nominee’s first single or album had to have been released in 1995 or earlier.
“This remarkable ballot reflects the diversity and depth of the artists and music the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame celebrates,” Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Foundation chairman John Sykes says in a statement. “These nominees have left an indelible impact on the sonic landscape of the world and influenced countless artists that have followed them.”
According to the Hall Of Fame, the IRON MAIDEN members that would get inducted would include the current lineup of singer Bruce Dickinson, bassist Steve Harris, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Adrian Smith, Dave Murray and Janick Gers, along with former singer Paul Di’Anno, former drummer Clive Burr, and former guitarist Dennis Stratton.
The FOO FIGHTERS members to be inducted would include the current lineup of Dave Grohl, drummer Taylor Hawkins, bassist Nate Mendel, keyboardist Rami Jaffee, and guitarists Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett.
As for the NEW YORK DOLLS, it would be frontman David Johansen, bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane, guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain, and drummers Jerry Nolan and Billy Murcia.
A voter pool of more than 1,000 artists, historians, journalists, and members of the music industry will select the new class. Starting Wednesday, fans will also have a chance to take part in the process by voting at Rockhall.com or at an interactive kiosk at the museum in Cleveland. Their selections will count as a single “fan ballot” that gets tabulated along with the others.
Nominated artists:
Mary J. Blige
Kate Bush
DEVO
FOO FIGHTERS
THE GO-GO’S
IRON MAIDEN
Jay-Z
Chaka Khan
Carole King
Fela Kuti
LL Cool J
NEW YORK DOLLS
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
Todd Rundgren
Tina Turner
Dionne Warwick
Two years ago, IRON MAIDEN bassist Steve Harris said that he didn’t care that his band has yet to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame despite the fact that it has been eligible since 2004.
“I don’t mind that we’re not in things like that,” he told Rolling Stone. “I don’t think about things like that. It’s very nice if people give you awards or accolades, but we didn’t get into the business for that sort of thing. I’m certainly not going to lose sleep if we don’t get any sort of award, not just that one, any award. I don’t think we deserve to have this or that necessarily. With what we do, whatever comes of it is great. Whatever doesn’t come of it is great, too.”
Even though artists are eligible for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame 25 years after the release of their first album or single, iconic hard rock and metal groups like MAIDEN, JUDAS PRIEST and MOTÖRHEAD have yet to be recognized by the institution, which inducted GUNS N’ ROSES in that band’s first year of eligibility.
MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson made headlines in 2018 when he referred to the Rock Hall as “an utter and complete load of bollocks” during a spoken-word gig in Australia, insisting that the Cleveland-based institution is “run by a bunch of sanctimonious bloody Americans who wouldn’t know rock and roll if it hit them in the face.”
Bruce later told The Jerusalem Post that he was “so annoyed with that coverage because they took my statement out of context to make it seem like I was upset that we weren’t in the Hall Of Fame.
“I’m really happy we’re not there and I would never want to be there,” he continued. “If we’re ever inducted, I will refuse — they won’t bloody be having my corpse in there.
“Rock and roll music does not belong in a mausoleum in Cleveland,” Bruce added. “It’s a living, breathing thing, and if you put it in a museum, then it’s dead. It’s worse than horrible, it’s vulgar.”
Harris previously said that he wasn’t concerned about whether IRON MAIDEN will eventually be inducted into the Rock Hall. “I don’t really think about it, to be honest. I think awards are things that are nice to have when you get them, but it’s not something you’re really striving for — it’s not what it’s about it,” he said. “It’s never been about that. It’s aways been about just trying to make good music and go out and play good live shows, and that’s it, really. Hopefully people will appreciate it. It’s probably nice when people give you awards — don’t get me wrong; I think it’s great — but it’s not something that you would lose sleep over if you didn’t get any.
“It’s the way that I am,” Harris added. “I don’t know. Maybe the rest of the guys [in the band] might think differently to me, but that’s the way I think. It’s not that I don’t care about [awards]. It’s just… And it’s not that they’re not meaningful when you do get ’em — it’s nice. But I certainly don’t worry about it or anything like that. I think other people are the ones that make a bigger deal out of it than us, about whether we got one or not.”
Having been eligible for induction for a decade and a half, IRON MAIDEN is one of the biggest bands on the planet. Since the release of their self-titled debut album, the British heavy metal legends have released a further 15 full-length studio records, and sold over 100 million copies.
Rock Hall rules state that artists become eligible a quarter century after their first records were released, but the Hall also claims that other “criteria include the influence and significance of the artists’ contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock ‘n’ roll,” which is, of course, open to interpretation.
The Nominee ballot has been released and the fan vote is now open at vote.rockhall.com
