Paul McCartney Celebrates 71st Birthday
Fresh off a headlining, nearly three-hour set at the 2013 Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Paul McCartney celebrated his 71st birthday on June 18.
As one of the principal songwriters in the Beatles, McCartney helped the band rack up more than four dozen Top 40 US singles, while his prolific solo output – more than 20 studio albums since the Fab Four parted ways – has netted Macca more than 50 Top 10 singles. Given that, McCartney stands among the most successful pop-music composers ever and one of the greatest hitmakers – trailing behind Elvis Presley. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has major exhibits devoted to both Elvis Presley and the Beatles.
His songs often celebrate the mundane pleasures of everyday life. As a songwriter who delights in the quotidian, as opposed to edgier rock and rollers steeped in mystique and risk-taking, McCartney has rarely been a favorite of rock critics. However, his body of work – some of it admittedly lightweight, much of it unjustly dismissed – has given boundless pleasure to the music loving public. Having been the primary melodist within the Beatles, it is not surprising that McCartney’s knack for ...
Chef Jam + Michael Symon's Ultimate Summer Menu Playlist
The recipe for the 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Chef Jam is as follows: Take cuisine from more than 20 of the Midwest's best chefs and restaurants, add live performance from award-winning act Asleep at the Wheel and blend all into lively party atmosphere inside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Now in its fourth year at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the once-a-year Chef Jam event takes place this Sunday, June 9, 2013, and promises to be the loudest dining experience of the year. Fittingly, the Rock Hall caught up with celebrity chef and Cleveland native Michael Symon, whose B Spot Burgers restaurants will be among the eateries dishing up an eclectic sampling of food at Chef Jam. With summer around the corner, and food and rock on his mind, Symon shared his ultimate summer playlist – a list as diverse as this year's Chef Jam menu and the Hall of Fame itself, with cuts from Beastie Boys, Heart, Metallica, Public Enemy, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Van Morrison and more. "There is nothing like the grill and the tunes cranked up on a nice summer's evening," says ...
Johnny Cash Now on Stamp and Exhibit
Today, the United States Postal Service officially made available a new Johnny Cash stamp, honoring the American music legend and 1992 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee as part of the Postal Service's Music Icons series. The stamp features a portrait of Cash taken by famed photographer Frank Bez, who captured the image of "the Man in Black" during photo sessions for 1963's Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash.
Although present at the genesis of rock and roll as one of the earliest signings to Sam Phillips' Sun Records in 1955, Cash recorded for nearly three decades with Columbia Records, a fruitful period that produced an estimated 1,400 songs. Cash's 16th album, Ring of Fire did, in fact, feature some of his best material, and on the week of January 11, 1964, it became the Number One album on Billboard's new Country Album chart. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's collection features a number of Johnny Cash items in the Memphis section of the Museum's Cities and Sounds exhibit. Among the featured items are a suit worn by Cash and a 1943 Martin acoustic guitar he played ...
At the Library and Archives: Roy Orbison’s Final Interview
For the past year and a half, the staff of the Rock Hall’s Library and Archives has been working to digitally preserve and catalog thousands of hours of footage of performances, interviews, education programs, oral histories and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies that have taken place over the past few decades. Making this footage and other resources available to researchers and music fans for the first time is one of the things that already makes our jobs exciting, but one recent donation really captured my interest.
It was the original VHS cassette containing the very last interview with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Roy Orbison ever recorded. The interview was done at the Front Row Theater in Highland Heights, Ohio, after Orbison’s final show on December 4, 1988, and this was the tape that was there in the room while the interview took place. It was recently donated by Tony Weber, who conducted the interview for his public access television show that ran from 1987 to 1989. Some low-quality dubs of the footage (likely captured from the television broadcast) can be seen on YouTube, but this is the original tape, so it is ...
Behind the Scenes: "Rolling Stones: 50 Years of Satisfaction"
An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's new exhibit highlighting 50 years of the Rolling Stones. The exhibit, Rolling Stones: 50 Years of Satisfaction, opens to the public on May 24, 2013, and will span three floors, more than 4,000 square feet and feature hundreds of items -- instruments, clothes, handwritten correspondence, art, photographs and more -- from the Rolling Stones' amazing history as the "World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band."
Watch the video below for a sneak peek at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's new Rolling Stones exhibit.
War's Lonnie Jordan Talks Music, Playing with Eric Burdon and Jimi Hendrix's Final Performance
The six founding members of War – the late Papa Dee Allen and Charles Miller, survivors Harold Brown, B.B. Dickerson, Lonnie Jordan and Howard Scott – were gigging around L.A. for nearly a decade before hooking up with Eric Burdon (ex-Animals) and Danish harmonica player Lee Oskar in 1969. Burdon and producer Jerry Goldstein named them War, and they backed it up with a steamy Afro-Latin R&B groove that rocked their debut hit “Spill The Wine.” Less than two years later, Burdon dropped out and War went their own way in 1971. A long string of Top 10 pop/R&B crossover hits established War’s status through the Seventies, always with a social message grounded by their distinctively breezy Southern California vibe. In this interview with War founding member Lonnie Jordan, he shares his first memories of playing, how War first connected with Eric Burdon and jamming with Jimi Hendrix during what would be his last public performance.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: How did you first become interested in playing music?
Lonnie Jordan: As a kid, I used to watch old black-and-white movies. Now keep in mind I'll be 65 this year, so when ...
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Interviews Oliver Stone
Interview with award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone, who visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and sat down with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after his visit to share his impressions of the Museum, learning more about the roots of rock and roll, the history of rock and roll and the films featured in the exhibits; as well as hearing Motown for the first time in Vietnam; a time when rock and roll was "trashed," the importance of preserving pop culture, how "music is supposed to transcend" and more. Click here to plan your visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum this summer!
In the Lab with Les Paul
I began my internship at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s Library and Archives expecting to be busy with basic preservation tasks and minor conservation duties, such as creating enclosures for documents and rehousing materials. What I ended up doing instead was much more exciting, and it provided me with a much richer internship experience than I ever imagined.
I began by preparing the conservation lab, creating a conservation policy and expanding on the Library and Archives’ existing conservation manual. With everything in place, it was time to work on the collection most in need of treatment: the Les Paul Papers. The papers were in rough shape at the time of acquisition, as many of the documents and files were moldy and covered in rust from old staples and paper clips. The items with the most obvious mold damage were bagged and placed in quarantine until they could be cleaned, but mold seemed to be everywhere I looked in the collection.
Cleaning mold is not a simple task and requires special care and technique. Wearing personal protective equipment, including gloves, goggles, mask and apron, I carefully cleaned each item in the collection with conservation grade sponges ...
