Meet the Rock and Roll hall of Fame class of 2006

By MALCOM X ABRAM
Knight Ridder Newspapers

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation must see the trouble ahead.

They've had it relatively easy for the past 20 years, filling the Cleveland museum with classic rockers, influential blues and R&B performers and a dash of punk.

But as the years of eligibility reach the '80s (artist are eligible 25 years after their first recording), the pickings are going to get slim. They will be forced to consider bands such as Duran Duran and Motley Crue, both eligible since 1996, and more hip-hop and heavy metal for their future VH1 telecasts.

For years, music fans who care have been complaining that the foundation is a music industry good-old-boys club, and as the pool of obvious inductees becomes shallow, some omissions have become more glaring. The class of 2006 rectifies several of these slights, but also lends the proceedings an air of desperation.

The inductees will be welcomed on Monday in New York, in a ceremony to be simulcast live at the hall. Tickets are $10 through Ticketmaster. A heavily edited version of the ceremony will air on VH1 March 21.

Here is the class of 2006:

BLACK SABBATH

Nearly every strain of metal -- and there are many -- has this quartet at the root of its genealogical tree. Sabbath's worthiness has been a no-brainer since they became eligible in 1995, and their exclusion has only made the voters look petty and vindictive over singer Ozzy Osbourne's disparaging comments about the hall.

There were heavy bands before Sabbath, such as Blue Cheer, but Sabbath took the term "power chords" to a new level. Guitarist Tony Iommi's slowed-down mutant blues riffs, drummer Bill Ward's big grooves, Geezer Butler's throbbing bass and dark lyrics (which occasionally espoused the virtues of love and God) and of course Osbourne's signature high-pitched whine, all crystallized by a macabre image and subject matter, sparked controversy and became the de facto image for much of the genre.

Bred in the English industrial wasteland of Birmingham in 1969, the four members started as a jammin' electric blues band called Earth, playing songs by Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters and others (for a taste of the band doing relatively straight blues, check out the 10-minute Warning from their debut). After realizing there was already a more popular band with the same name, they redubbed themselves Black Sabbath after one of Iommi's songs.

Their debut, released in 1970, charted in both the UK and the States, beginning a four-album genre-defining streak -- Paranoid, Master of Reality, Volume IV and the keyboard-augmented Sabbath Bloody Sabbath contain the bulk of the hits still heard on radio. Intra-band problems fueled by the usual drug and alcohol excess, plus two lame records in a row (Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die), drove Osbourne from the band in 1979 to start a very successful solo career.

He was replaced by Ronnie James Dio, who co-wrote and recorded two successful albums (Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules) before being replaced in 1983 by Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gilliam. Both Butler and Ward would also leave the band and return, which soldiered on with Iommi and various replacements until 1997, when the original quartet reformed for a live recording. Since then the group has headlined Osbourne's wildly successful Ozzfest four times.

LYNYRD SKYNYRD

They're the quintessential Southern rock band, one whose influence can still be felt in hip bands like Kings of Leon and mainstream ones such as 3 Doors Down. While many folks (including, obviously, some rock hall voters) find their Stars and Bars-waving pride provincial and offensive, their music is embedded in contemporary Southern culture and classic rock radio, and thousands of people, Southern and otherwise, were raised on their songs and attitude.

Whereas the Allman Brothers were essentially a blues-rock band that frequently dipped into jazz and country, Skynyrd took blues, country, rock and a hard-drinkin,' hard-livin,' proud redneck attitude and turned it into a marketable lifestyle and a string of hit singles and albums. Their initial run ended in a tragic 1977 plane crash that took the life of charismatic singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister, backup vocalist Cassie Gaines.

The group formed in Jacksonville in 1965 as My Backyard, around the core of Van Zant, guitarist Gary Rossington, guitarist Allen Collins, bassist Leon Wilkeson and drummer Bob Burns. They renamed themselves in tribute to their high school gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, who was infamous for being tough on longhairs.

The band's debut, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd in 1973, contained Freebird, an ode to Duane Allman and a song that touches as many people as it offends. The album went gold and garnered them an opening spot on The Who's "Quadrophenia" tour. Their second album, 1974's Second Helping, contained the radio staple Sweet Home Alabama, a declaration of their Southern heritage and answer to Neil Young's "Southern Man." The band would record three more albums before the plane crash, each one adding more tunes to classic rock radio, including the funky Saturday Night Special, That Smell, the epic live version of Freebird, the humorous Gimme Three Steps and What's Your Name, among others.

After the crash the band dissolved, and the surviving members embarked on various projects but never found the success they had as Skynyrd. In 1987 the band reformed with Ronnie's little brother Johnny on vocals to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the crash, and they've been active ever since.

BLONDIE

Much less a slam dunk for induction than the Sex Pistols, Sabbath or Skynyrd, the New York quartet was the most commercially successful and musically friendly band to come out of the legendary CBGB's/Max's Kansas City punk and new wave scene of the late 1970s.

Blondie didn't carve out a unique musical niche like the Ramones or Talking Heads, or force rock fans to reconsider their ideas of a guitar hero like Television, or scare people like Patti Smith and Richard Hell. They were a pop band, fronted by Debbie Harry, a glam and sexy bottle blonde who, even when she was affecting a pretty, vacant stare (as in the Heart of Glass video), always seemed a bit smarter and more streetwise than other singer/bombshells of the day. She inspired many young women, including Madonna, who would adopt and expand on the pose to make herself a star.

The band's sound was relatively open, mixing strains of '60s girl groups, new wave, disco and some new thing from the Bronx and Queens called hip-hop. Both their 1976 debut and follow-up Plastic Letters were met with little fanfare stateside but their third record, Parallel Lines, broke them worldwide.

That 1978 album was pure pop, with the disco hit Heart of Glass and the tough-chick rock anthem One Way or Another as well as fan favorites Hanging on the Telephone and Sunday Girl. Eat to the Beat featured Dreaming and the new wave spaghetti western-tinged Atomic.

Blondie was always strong singles band, and Autoamerican contained their cover of the Paragons' reggae classic The Tide is High and Rapture, one of the first rap/pop crossover hits. That would prove to be the band's peak; guitarist Chris Stein grew ill from a genetic disease, forcing the dissolution of Blondie in 1982. Harry, his lover, cut her budding solo career short to take care of him.

But like most of the other inductees, the group reformed in the '90s to ride the nostalgia wave and has been periodically active since.

SEX PISTOLS

In their roughly three-year existence, the Sex Pistols became the gob spat around the world, inspiring a generation of aimless, angry Brits, Americans and others to pick up instruments and raise a ruckus; actual musical talent was not required. The rock hall voters first chose the more eclectic and political Clash and the more tuneful Ramones before acknowledging the Pistols' undeniable influence.

In retrospect, the band's lone album and punk manifesto, Never Mind the Bollocks, doesn't adhere to the stereotypical "louder and faster" ethos of much of the punk that followed. Musically, it sounds more like angrier, elemental takes on glam rockers Slade and the New York Dolls, but singer Johnny Rotten's bitter, nihilistic lyrics, sung with his patented sneer, are what turned them into the scourge of Britain.

The band began in the early '70s when guitarist (then vocalist) Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook started a band called the Strand. Both Jones and Cook hung out at a hip boutique called SEX, run by bon vivant and budding manager Malcolm McLaren, where bassist Glen Matlock was an employee. The young band needed a singer and when John Lydon appeared, wearing a homemade "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt, he was asked to audition. He sang Alice Cooper's Eighteen and became the band's front man.

With McLaren pulling strings and inventing a mythos (he famously once said he wanted them to be the Bay City Rollers) the band's first single, Anarchy in the U.K., featuring lines such as "I am an antichrist" and "Your future dream is a shopping scheme," caused a big stir and got them dropped from their label, EMI. Virgin released their next single, God Save the Queen, in time for the Queen's Jubilee celebration. Its "God save the Queen, she ain't no human being" lyrics and "No future!" chant cemented the band's status as Public Enemy No. 1 even before the album was released.

By this time Matlock had been ejected and replaced by Rotten's friend John "Sid Vicious" Ritchie, and the already barely floating ship began to sink. Not only could Vicious not play a note, he quickly succumbed to the burgeoning punk image, preferring to shoot heroin and act up with girlfriend Nancy Spungen rather than learn how to keep time.

The band attempted a train wreck of a U.S. tour in 1978, adding to their mythology, and the group finally tore asunder with Rotten uttering another famous line: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" After the breakup Vicious continued his downward spiral, culminating in the mysterious murder of Spungen and his own eventual overdose at 21.

Rotten went back to Lydon and formed Public Image Limited, the other band members tried their hands at various solo endeavors, and their legend grew. In 1996, the band (surprise!) reformed, ostensibly to celebrate their 20th anniversary, and toured with Matlock back on bass.

In typical Sex Pistols style, Lydon has already told the rock hall that the band won't be attending the ceremony, adding a few cutting opinions of the whole concept in a note posted on his Web site.

MILES DAVIS

Just about any museum dedicated to honoring musicians should have a spot open for Miles Davis. One of the jazz icons who only needs one name, along with other innovators such as Bird, Dizzy and Pops, the music icon's 50-plus years in music included most of the major movements in jazz, and his sprawling 1970 double album Bitches Brew is widely credited (for better or for worse) as the birth of fusion.

Presumably, it's that controversial magnum opus and his subsequent melding of rock, funk, R&B, pop and improvisation that has him included as an inductee. The 1970s albums such as In a Silent Way, A Tribute to Jack Johnson and On the Corner got him branded a sellout by jazz purists, but also made him a mainstream star and a hip cat to have in your record collection.

Rather than the complex structures and virtuoso playing of later fusion bands such as Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever (which both feature former Davis band members), Davis' early '70s albums are made up of lengthy jams seemingly formed more around musical concepts than chords, with dirty funk rhythms inspired by pop artists such as James Brown and Sly Stone while band members work in, around and through the grooves following Davis' lead.

Decades later these albums are still discussed and dissected by those who love and hate them.

JERRY MOSS AND HERB ALPERT

Alpert is best known as leader of the Tijuana Brass, but when he and Moss teamed up with to form A&M Records in 1962, it became one of the most successful artist-begun labels ever. Among its successes are the Carpenters, Carole King's massive Tapestry, Quincy Jones, Janet Jackson, Cat Stevens and briefly the Sex Pistols. Moss and Alpert will be inducted in the non-performer category. Source>>>

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