From PEOPLE Magazine
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Indeed, the hordes of musicians and fans who converged on Cleveland during Labor Day weekend for the museum's opening let it be known that they had come to hail rock and roll, not to bury it. "Just because they've put up the bricks and mortar doesn't mean the music has been interred," said John Fogerty, whose rare performance of two Creedence Clearwater Revival classics was one of many highlights in the 7-hour concert that capped the opening celebrations. Backstage, Brown greeted rock luminaries in his dressing-room trailer, and Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen stood in the wings watching their fellow rock icons work out onstage. While Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora and wife Heather Locklear smooched and cruised the backstage compound in a golf cart, other rockers gathered in reception rooms to schmooze and ogle. "There were a lot of legends sitting right next to you," marveled Guns n' Roses guitarist Slash, who had flown in to perform one Jimi Hendrix tune with Boz Skaggs. "I was like, 'Wow!' I mean, I got to meet Aretha Franklin!"
The event was the culmination of an idea hatched 12 years ago by Atlantic Records' Ahmet Ertegun and Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner, among others. "My concept was that this would be a noncommercial endeavor to recognize the people who were responsible for what became the most popular music in the world, of all time," says Ertegun, 72. But early predictions that the museum would be opened by 1989 proved optimistic. "Doing it half-assed wouldn't have been right," says Wenner, 49. "We could have done this as a commercial venture, and it would have been up years ago. It would probably be in Orlando."
Chosen instead was Cleveland, where the term rock and roll was reputedly coined by famed deejay Alan Freed. Inspired by a grassroots movement of Cleveland rock fans, a delegation led by Mayor George Voinovich, now Ohio's governor, traveled to New York City in 1985 to strike a deal with Ertegun's Hall of Fame Foundation for the museum, beating out Memphis and 20 other suitors. "They made this fantastic offer of money, demonstrated enormous local citizen support, and they kept after us," says Wenner. "The Rock Hall was really a feather in the cap for this city," says Cleveland deejay Jeff Kinzbach, who urged listeners to support a massive fund-raising effort eventually joined by local and state governments and major corporations. "We never gave up," says Kinzbach. "We always kept pushing."
So it was little wonder that the city greeted the museum's opening last week with a frenzy not seen here since 1954, when Cleveland's perennially bedraggled Indians—now, coincidentally, in the throes of a splendid revival—last reached the World Series. Large crowds gathered outside the museum on Friday night, Sept. 1, as rockers including Robbie Robertson, Aretha Franklin and the Supremes' Mary Wilson arrived for a black-tie gala. The following day more than 10,000 fans showed up for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony and gave John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, one of the few standing ovations she has ever received. "Wow, Cleveland," she said, before she snipped, "you did it!"
Despite the museum's obvious flaws—including the tacky department-store mannequins used to display costumes—many of the exhibits are, in fact, quite moving. Visitors, who paid a maximum $10.90 admission fee, crowded around a glass case containing Jimi Hendrix's 1968 lyrics to "Angel," written in lovely script on hotel stationery when he woke from a dream about his dead mother, Lucille. Displayed nearby is part of the fuselage of the plane in which Otis Redding crashed outside Madison, Wis., in 1967. It was recovered from the city dump a month later by construction worker Larry Allen.
Early on, curator Jim Henke decided the museum couldn't compete with the big-spending Hard Rock Cafe and other collectors for rock memorabilia, so he campaigned to persuade artists to donate or lend artifacts. One prized acquisition is the control room at Sun Studios where Elvis Presley recorded his first songs—which was shipped from Memphis and re-created on the second floor. Elvis's producer Sam Phillips, who had saved the equipment, was wary at first. "He wanted to make sure that it was not the Disney World of rock and roll," says Henke.
Other initially skeptical musicians had similar reactions. "Don Henley was here with a disposable camera, going crazy," says museum director Dennis Barrie. "Michael Stipe [of R.E.M.] was touching every wall. Art Garfunkel went around shaking all the construction workers' hands." So persuaded, artists and their families responded with enthusiasm. Yoko loaned the museum John's wire-rimmed glasses and his Sgt. Pepper uniform. A friend of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious, who died of a heroin overdose in 1979, donated a stage outfit so soiled that staffers wore gloves to handle it. ZZ Top offered fur-covered drum sets from their own artifacts warehouse. "I don't think these people really thought they were making history or that their stuff would end up in a museum," says Henke, a former managing editor at Rolling Stone. "But they kept their stuff, just like I saved every concert ticket stub I ever had."
Now that the doors are open and his dream to erect a lasting tribute to the creators of the world's liveliest art form has come true, Wenner looks somewhat relieved as he stands outside the building Clevelanders call the Rock Hall. "Now," he says, "we just have to figure out how to run a museum."
STEVE DOUGHERTY
BRYAN ALEXANDER and KEN MYERS in Cleveland and KIMBERLY DAVIS in Chicago
- Contributors:
- Bryan Alexander,
- Ken Myers,
- Kimberly Davis.
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