When I Attacked the Rock Hall

Cleveland's shrine to a dead art form

I write many opinion pieces, most of which are published on cleveland.com and in The Plain Dealer. My topics have ranged from not finding my perfect calling at work to fear of climate change to opposing assisted suicide. However, none of these garnered the backlash my September 2023 column did when I dared to attack a sacred cow: Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Rock Hall "is a shrine to that which cannot be enshrined: the spirit of rock and roll," I wrote. 

Citing the museum's collecting mission, I said, "I never felt an ‘impactful connection’ with the Rock Hall’s Elvisana, Janis Joplin’s psychedelic Porsche . . . or Michael Jackson’s white glove. These souvenirs left me half-full. Many are lifeless discards that might be at home on eBay.”

Rock and Roll detritus

I also contended that the institution’s mission conflated “the Rock Hall with the Hard Rock Café, the passé chain restaurant that displays similar rock and roll detritus but where you can also get a burger.”

The power of rock and roll lies in its electricity and evanescence, not in assembling dreck. 

I made a good case but was unprepared for the avalanche of attacks on me as a traitor to Cleveland’s top visitor attraction (and the city itself).

The most stupid response stated that I didn't “see the forest for the trees” (huh?), just didn’t get it, and that I am “obviously [not] a fan of music in general and, specifically, of rock and roll.” OK.

Another letter writer noted that I needed to update my observations and that I had not attended any recent exhibitions. This reaction seemed the fairest and least emotional, but I stand by my iconoclasm. The museum’s permanent exhibitions were stale even when I first saw them in the mid-nineties.

Cleveland.com published four letters, stoking resentment toward me. I struck a nerve to elicit these ardent (and personal) attacks, but no nerve was more sensitive than when I took the timeworn position that Rock was a dead art form, long ago supplanted by Hip-Hop. Neil Young was wrong when he sang, "Rock and Roll can never die.”

“Cleveland’s rock glory days belong to the past,” I posited. “Our city may be ‘the birthplace of rock and roll’—[it is not—Memphis is]—but the rock landmarks that once dotted the landscape are lost. Still standing, today’s Agora brings in contemporary acts. Once a viable slogan, ‘Cleveland Rocks’ is now just a horrendous on-the-nose 1979 chant. Our custom of cranking up the radio volume every Friday at 5:59 p.m. as [WMMS] kicked off the weekend with [Bruce Springsteen’s] anthemic “Born to Run” had its heyday in the ‘70s and ‘80s.”

Notwithstanding the uproar I created, I do not regret my “rock is dead” position or stance against the genre's Hall of Fame. Clevelanders need thicker skin.

A major expansion of the Rock Hall is scheduled for completion in mid-2026. When it arrives, it might be time for another visit and another op-ed.

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