The Stooges, Genesis, ABBA, the Hollies and Jimmy Cliff will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the shrine’s 25th annual ceremony on March 15 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. They’ll be joined by David Geffen and a cadre of songwriters — Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, Ellie Greenwich & Jeff Barry, Jesse Stone, Mort Shuman and Otis Blackwell — who will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award for non-performers.
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The ceremony will be broadcast live on Fuse TV.
Surprisingly not making the cut were KISS and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were thought to be frontrunners when the short list of nominees was announced in September.
Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks tells Billboard.com that the induction is “nice to happen” and that it’s an honor to be the second British progressive rock band, after Pink Floyd, to join the Hall. “I suppose it being American-based and all that it just concentrates slightly more on that type of music,” he says. Which members of Genesis might perform at the ceremony is somewhat up in the air due to Phil Collins’ recent surgery to repair dislocated vertebrae. “Phil’s got a few physical problems at the moment which means I don’t think he’d be able to play, so…I don’t really know what that means,” Banks says. “We’ll face that particular hurdle when we get to it.”
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Hollies veteran Graham Nash calls the group’s induction “well-deserved,” noting that “they were a very large part of the British Invasion. They were a very large part of early, you know, English rock. They had a couple of dozen Top 10 hits (in the U.K.), and hits over here (in the U.S.), and why not?” His longtime colleague Stephen Stills was “so happy” for Nash and cracked that “now he can quit feeling inferior” because Stills and David Crosby have each been inducted into the Hall more than once. But, Stills adds, “I thought (the Hollies) was a great band, and we all wanted to sing like that. The fact I ended up with one of their singers is one of the luckiest things in my life.”
ABBA is unlikely to regroup for a performance at the March ceremony, but the Stooges, in the wake of founding guitarist Ron Asheton’s death in early January, have already been planning a 2010 tour with “Raw Power” era guitarist James Williamson. The group has been nominated for the Hall seven previous times.