The time apparently has come to put a glass case around rock and roll and set it out on display.
Rock is about 35 years old. Many in the music industry think a commemorative museum is long overdue, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation is set to build it. But where?
Chicago says Chicago deserves it. New York says New York. San Francisco says San Francisco. Philadelphia says Philadelphia. Cleveland says Cleveland.
These five are in the running to become the Cooperstown of rock. The winning city will be allowed to build a national shrine that some believe could attract up to 3 million visitors a year.
City of Chicago officials are talking with representatives of the business community, recording companies and the Illinois Office of Tourism about drafting a proposal that would finance a hall of fame museum on Navy Pier.
As envisioned by the New York-based Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, the museum would include a large exhibition hall filled with memorabilia and other exhibits; an archives and education center; collections of videos, tapes and records; and an auditorium with 1,200 to 1,500 seats.
The auditorium would be the site of annual induction ceremonies. The first 10 members of the hall were inducted Jan. 23 at a dinner in New York;
they include Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry.
The idea for a museum to honor one of the nation`s most popular forms of music has been kicking around for years, but it got momentum in 1984 when Ahmet Ertegun, president of Atlantic Records, called together a host of music industry bigwigs, including other record company presidents, Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner and musician Quincy Jones, and formed a board of directors for the foundation.
The foundation then hired its only full-time employee, director Suzan Evans. She began ”getting the right people involved with all the little details” and sampling the opinions of recording industry leaders worldwide.
It was a quiet effort, but last April Cleveland caught wind of the fact that the hall of fame was looking for a home city and began an early and vociferous lobbying campaign. Mayor George Voinovich, Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste and numerous business and civic leaders lent their enthusiasm to a 660,000-signature petition drive, and the city`s residents wore out their fingers to win USA Today`s recent telephone poll on where the museum should be located.
Cleveland also has promised the hall of fame a reported package of development funds and financial endowments that could reach $35 million to $40 million.
The other contenders, including Chicago, have been left in the dust. The hall of fame foundation has never made a general announcement that it`s looking for a museum home and has not supplied interested cities with a detailed outline of its organizational structure, plans or needs.
”Word has sort of gotten out through deejays at radio stations,” Evans said.
”First I heard of the museum was in the article in the current Rolling Stone,” dated Feb. 13, said Linda Simon, managing director of the Illinois Office of Tourism. ”The idea has a lot of potential.”
She said she would have to check with Gov. James Thompson before she could say whether the state would support such a museum.
Simon has discussed the museum idea with Nick Rabkin, deputy commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
”We want it,” said Rabkin, who has been hot on the case for six weeks.
”It would be a feather in our cap and an important economic stimulus for the city. It would probably end up drawing more than the Cubs and the White Sox combined.
”But we don`t have $40 million to give away. We`re looking hard right now in the private sector to see what they can do for us.”
The hall of fame board has said it is looking for a centrally located city that is willing to provide building space and operating funds for the museum. It is also looking for a city with ”community enthusiasm” for the project and ”some logical connection to rock and roll,” Evans said.
Here is where the posturing begins.
”Throughout the history of rock music, Chicago has been actively involved,” said WGN-AM radio host Steve King, who has started a petition drive to bring the museum to Chicago. ”Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley recorded here. Styx. Earth, Wind and Fire. The first record company in the United States to feature the Beatles was in Chicago.”
Chicago pop-soul artist Jerry Butler, a member of a local rock museum committee, said, ”This city is the home of the blues, and the blues is the mother of rock and roll. We have the roots right here. All of the major record labels had studios in town at one time.”
Cleveland sees it differently:
”Alan Freed, the disc jockey who coined the term `rock and roll,` first used it on WJW Cleveland,” said Mike Benz, who is spearheading the museum drive for the Greater Cleveland Growth Association. ”We are also the home of the first rock concert–March 21, 1952. It featured the Dominos.”
Pshaw, says Philadelphia:
”Live Aid was here,” said Diane Semingson, a member of Mayor W. Wilson Goode`s Cabinet and leader of the city`s effort to land the museum. ”American Bandstand started here. Chubby Checker. Bill Haley and the Comets. Fabian. . . .”
San Francisco has its own arguments:
”We are already the home of the oldest, largest rock and roll collection in the world,” said Paul Grushkin, curator of the Bay Area Music Archives and point man for San Francisco`s museum push. ”We`re also the home of the Grateful Dead and the whole psychedelic, underground rock movement.
”But the fact is that rock and roll has a very diverse background and no one birthplace,” Grushkin said. ”You might as well say Ypsilanti, Mich., is its home as anywhere else.”
New York City is not making a strong pitch for the museum, though it remains on the list of contenders. Rolling Stone`s Wenner says New York has been all but ruled out because ”it would be lost among all the other attractions” there.
Los Angeles, home of the recording industry today and another seemingly likely place for the hall of fame, has never been in the running.
The board of directors has spurned the solicitations of Memphis, the home of Presley; New Orleans, where Little Richard began his career; and Nashville, ”Music City USA,” where radio station WLAC was the first major outlet for rhythm and blues and where the Country Music Hall of Fame draws an average 400,000 visitors a year.
Representatives of all three rejected cities said in interviews that their written proposals to the hall of fame board have been ignored.
”We felt other cities were able to offer us more,” Evans said.
Philadelphia has presented the hall of fame board with a list of possible sites, a financial incentive that Semingson says matches Cleveland`s and the promise that the museum could be opened in 18 months if the city gets the go- ahead.
San Francisco is conducting a $60,000 museum-feasibility study, funded in part by a grant from the city`s hotel tax fund. The study`s results, which will likely include the recommendation of a waterfront location, will be forwarded to the hall of fame foundation.
”All of Cleveland`s hype is going to make it hard for the foundation to say no,” Grushkin said. ”But I`m sure the board realizes that Cleveland is not a very attractive city. It has a very small tourist base. Cleveland wants the museum because it wants people to come to Cleveland, but no one goes to a city to see just one thing.”
Wenner said he is ”impressed with the depth and intensity of Cleveland`s effort–I have a special place in my heart for them.”
But Ertegun, of Atlantic Records, said the site search committee will not be bulldozed by petitions and the results of telephone votes. ”This is not an auction or a popularity contest,” he said. ”We want to be fair and let everybody else make their pitch. We expect to make a decision in about two months.”
The hall of fame initially planned to name its museum site during the first induction ceremonies in late January. The delay is seen in some quarters as bad news for Cleveland, which would have been the obvious choice at that time.
”We obviously have something to offer in Chicago that money can`t buy,” Rabkin said. ”Otherwise, they wouldn`t still be talking to us.”
