In an interview with The New York Times, the West Coast legend said Simmons is way off about rap music being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and did a stellar job of explaining why.
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The 2016 ceremony will be broadcast on HBO later this month (April 30).
Rock acts Cheap Trick, Chicago, Deep Purple and Steve Miller were also inducted. “Every hard rock band in the last 40 years, including mine, traces its lineage directly back to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple”, he says. Ice Cube credits the success of the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton with getting them into the Hall of Fame.
“Rock n roll is not conforming, rock in roll is outside of the box, and rock n roll is N.W.A”.
The inductors were a who’s who of musical royalty.
“Rock and roll is not an instrument, rock and roll is not even a style of music”.
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich described seeing the night’s first inductees, the UK’s Deep Purple, when he was nine years old and taken to their concert in Copenhagen.
Friday night, after officially being inducted into the Hall, he stepped up his criticism of the institution, angrily telling reporters backstage that his experience that evening was “so unpleasant”, and snapped at a publicist who attempted to cut his rant short. Meanwhile, Linda Ronstadt and Hall & Oates are firmly in the Hall of Fame, while your own favorites might still be standing scruffily in the doorway waiting to be ushered in.
“I want to thank all my ex-wives for making sure I have to keep working, ” he said, triggering a burst of laughter from the crowd. A nostalgic Simon took 10 minutes to read a list of his inspirations, from the first record he bought to “those two girls from Covington, Kentucky”.
Rick Nielsen and Cheap Trick perform on June 9, 2015 in Saratoga, California.
N.W.A will reunite at the ceremony but they won’t be performing, according to founding member Ice Cube.
The most bittersweet moment came when Eazy-E’s mom joined the group onstage.
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NEW YORK All you need is love. I’m from Brooklyn, so this is not a complaint, but why do you host the ceremony in Brooklyn when the hall is actually based in Cleveland? .
