Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Count former Oasis singer, solo star and proprietor of one of rock‘s most legendary bored-to-death stares Liam Gallagher as someone unimpressed by his band’s inclusion on the 2024 short list for nomination into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The notoriously tetchy singer who went solo after older brother and chief Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher split the band in 2009 summed up his dyspeptic feelings about the nod in a short, sharp tweet in which he wrote, “F–ck the Rock n Roll hall of fame its full of BUMBACLARTS.” The latter is a Jamaican slang term frequently employed by Gallagher on his socials when peeved to express his disdain in no uncertain terms.

At press time a spokesperson for the RRHOF had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional comment on Gallagher’s tweet.

When someone commented with a reminder to Oasis fans to choose the group in the RRHOF fan vote since, at the moment, Oasis was “losing stratospherically” to this year’s other nominees, Gallagher responded, “Don’t waste your time Rkid as much as it’s appreciated it’s all a load of bollox.” He later wrote a comment on another post suggesting the Britpop superstars really do deserve the award. “I appreciate that you do but I honestly feel there’s something very fishy about those awards,” Gallagher wrote in one of dozens of snarky, humorous replies.

To be fair, someone else resurfaced a 2021 response Gallagher posted to someone asking his thoughts on Oasis’ possible induction into the Rock Hall, to which the singer said, “Not interested in any of that.”

At press time Oasis had just over 23,500 votes from fans, with Ozzy Osbourne leading all vote-getters (39,848), followed by Peter Frampton, Foreigner, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey and Kool & the Gang. The only acts below Oasis currently are Sinéad O’Connor, Sade and Jane’s Addiction. This year’s roster of nominees also includes Mary J. Blige, Eric B. & Rakim and A Tribe Called Quest.

Gallagher’s pointed response was quite different from one of his fellow irascible British rock peers, metal god Ozzy Osbourne, who said he was “deeply honored” to be considered as a solo act after already being enshrined with Black Sabbath. Foreigner singer Mick Jones also said it was an honor, calling the nomination an “incredible endorsement” of the band’s achievements over the past 45+ years and guitar great Frampton said he “screamed” when he found out. In the past, the Sex Pistols’ John Lydon and Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose have thrown cold water on their bands’ induction and a number of key band members have been conspicuously absent at inductions of Black Sabbath, Jefferson Airplane and Van Halen.

Gallagher would certainly not be the first potential inductee to say they’d prefer not being enshrined in Cleveland. Back in 2022, country superstar Dolly Parton initially “respectfully” declined the Hall’s nomination, later reversing course and accepting the honor, as well as releasing her first rock album, Rockstar.

The 2024 nominees will be decided by a voting body of 1,000+ “artists, historians and members of the music industry,” per a press release. The Rock Hall’s Class of 2024 will be announced in late April.

Check out Gallagher’s tweet below.

Fuck the Rock n Roll hall of fame its full of BUMBACLARTS LG x— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) February 12, 2024

Peter Frampton was taking a bathroom break during a recording session at home in Nashville when his managers called to tell him he was included on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ballot — for the first time ever.“I screamed — not like a girl, but I did scream. I said, ‘You’re kidding me!’” Frampton tells Billboard via Zoom, with a laugh. “My band leader Rob [Arthur] was in my music room at the time, ’cause we were doing a video… He came running, ‘What the hell’s going on!’ He thought something was wrong. “So, anyway, it was a very good day.”Frampton’s long-awaited appearance on the ballot — he’s been eligible since the early ’90s based on his first recordings — is good news for a legion of fans that have long been lobbying for him and protesting his exclusion from even the Rock Hall ballot. In fact, Frampton notes, “A lot of those fans feel more outraged about it taking so long for me than I am. So they can all rest easy now; at least my name’s in the hat.”“I never expect anything,” adds Frampton, who for several years has been battling degenerative Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM). “I’m a realist. I understand there have been criticisms of the past Rock Hall administration for bizarre choices, which I agree there were. And, yes, my career is what it is, and whatever anybody thinks about it I do feel I deserve [to be inducted].” However, he cautions, “This isn’t it, you know? I’ve still got to get the votes.”Frampton credits his nomination in part to 2023 Rock Hall inductee Sheryl Crow. She included him in last year’s ceremony in her performance with Stevie Nicks, which Frampton says “stirred the pot big-time and made people aware — including some of the board members, I think. They thought I was already in.”Frampton’s Rock Hall credentials are unquestioned, certainly. A younger classmate of David Bowie‘s at Bromley Technical School in England, where Frampton’s father was a teacher, he began playing from the time he was an adolescent and began touring in 1964 with his band The Preachers, whose recordings were produced by the Rolling Stones‘ Bill Wyman. As a member of The Herd, Frampton was named “The Face of 1968” by the British teen magazine Rave, and a year later he was part of the original Humble Pie, in which he spent three years before going solo.Along the way Frampton also played on George Harrison‘s All Things Must Pass, and he did sessions for The Who‘s John Entwistle, Harry Nilsson and Jerry Lee Lewis. Frampton’s first solo album, Winds ofChange, came out in 1972, and it was of course the iconic Frampton Comes Alive! album in 1976 that made him a global star, with estimated sales of more than 20 million copies worldwide and an induction into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Frampton lost his rock credibility after that, however, with his I’m in You album and an ill-advised starring role in the 1978 film adaptation of The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.“I was trounced on, rightly so, for being the pop star. I became this teenybopper thing,” Frampton acknowledges. But Frampton continued to record and got a boost from Bowie, who featured Frampton on his 1987 album Never Let Me Down and in the band for the subsequent Glass Spider Tour, which reminded the world he was first and foremost a guitar player. Back in rock ‘n’ roll favor, he also won his first Grammy Award in 2007 for the previous year’s instrumental album, Fingertips.

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“I have had so many wonderful helping hands along the way,” Frampton says. “Yes, my career has been my own, but I really have had some helping hands, wonderful helping hands, along the way that went to bat for me.”Frampton adds that the Rock Hall nomination is so fresh that “I haven’t quite realized what I feel it means yet. I’m still in the troughs of ‘Really?!’” But as “a super, super fan of other great talent,” he says the nomination, and the potential of an induction, mean a great deal to him.“It’s a heady kind of thought, really,” Frampton explains. “If I do make it, to be on the same level these artists that are the be-all and end-all, as far as I’m concerned, is pretty incredible.” Among those as well is fellow first-time nominee Foreigner, whose founder Mick Jones played on “All I Wanna Be (Is By Your Side)” on Wind of Change. “I’m so thrilled to hear that Foreigner got on [the ballot] ’cause Mick and I have been friends for a lifetime.”Frampton says he’ll do some modest campaigning — mostly reminding fans to participate in the Rock Hall’s public vote — when he sets out on his Never EVER Say Never Tour on March 3 in Greensboro, N.C. He’s been busy of late as well: he and his son Julian, who’s also a musician, recently appeared on the Fox TV reality show We Are Family , and Frampton is among the 60 musicians playing on Mark Knopfler‘s new version of his 1983 instrumental “Going Home: Theme of the Local Hero,” a fundraiser for the U.K.’s Teenage Cancer Trust that comes out Feb. 19.During the summer, meanwhile, Frampton says he’ll continue work on both a new album of original songs — his first since Hummingbird in a Box in 2014 — and a documentary that’s been in process for several years.Rock Hall inductees are expected to be announced during early May, with the ceremony taking place this fall in Cleveland, on a date to be determined. Disney+ will again telecast the event.

Bob Dylan made a rare public remark from the stage during his show at the Beacon Theatre in New York on Thursday night (Nov. 16) in which he offered up unequivocal support for his embattled friend, Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner.
“All right, like to say hello to Jann Wenner who’s in the house. Jann Wenner, surely everybody’s heard of him,” Dylan can be heard saying in a recording tweeted out by Dylan.FM Podcast of his comments to the crowd at the show. Billboard has confirmed the accuracy of Dylan’s quote. “Anyway, he just got booted out of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame – and we don’t think that’s right, we’re trying to get him back in.” At press time a spokesperson for the RRHOF Foundation had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment.

Dylan, 82, was referring to Wenner’s removal in September from the board of directors of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation after the organization’s 77-year-old co-founder made remarks in a New York Times interview that many labeled racist and sexist. While Wenner is still a member of the RRHOF as a non-performer, the organization’s board removed him from the Foundation after a Times interview to promote Wenner’s The Masters book in which the interviewer asked why there were no conversations with women or people of color in his collection.

Wenner, the former chairman of the RRHOF Foundation, conducted interviews with all white men for the book, including Bono, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend. In the introduction, Wenner explained that women and POC were not in his “zeitgeist.”

“When I was referring to the zeitgeist, I was referring to Black performers, not to the female performers, OK? Just to get that accurate,” Wenner told NYT writer David Marchese. “The selection was not a deliberate selection. It was kind of intuitive over the years; it just fell together that way. The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them. Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”

Wenner attempted to clarify his stance, saying he was not suggesting that “they’re not creative geniuses. It’s not that they’re inarticulate, although, go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest. You know, Joni [Mitchell] was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test. Not by her work, not by other interviews she did. The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock … Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right? I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.”

Shortly after his removal from the board — and an unsuccessful plea to remain on it during an emergency meeting — Wenner issued an apology in which he noted that his comments in the Times, “diminished the contributions, genius, and impact of Black and women artists and I apologize wholeheartedly for those remarks.”

He said the book is a collection of interviews he’s done over the years that seemed to him to be represent “an idea of rock ‘n’ roll’s impact on my world; they were not meant to represent the whole of music and it’s diverse and important originators but to reflect the high points of my career and interviews I felt illustrated the breadth and experience in that career. They don’t reflect my appreciation and admiration for myriad totemic, world-changing artists whose music and ideas I revere and will celebrate and promote as long as I live. I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize and accept the consequences.”

The apology and walk-back, however, did little to calm the fury over Wenner’s original comments, with few, if any, artists or friends speaking out publicly to support him. Wenner left Rolling Stone in 2019 when the publication was acquired by Penske Media Corporation, which is also Billboard‘s parent company.

The magazine, whose president and CEO is Wenner’s son, Gus Wenner, issued a statement amid the controversy distancing itself from the RS founder. “Jann Wenner’s recent statement to the New York Times do not represent the value and practices of today’s Rolling Stone,” the publication tweeted. “Jann Wenner has not been directly involved in our operations since 2019. Out purpose, especially since his departure, has been to tell stories that reflect the diversity of voices and experiences that shape our world. At Rolling Stone‘s core is the understanding that music above all can bring us together, not divide us.”

Listen to Dylan’s comment below.

“All right, like to say hello to Jann Wenner who’s in the house. Jann Wenner, surely everybody’s heard of him. Anyway, he just got booted out of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame – and we don’t think that’s right, we’re trying to get him back in.”— Bob Dylan 11/16/23 pic.twitter.com/Vkgt8klzYS— Dylan.FM Podcast (@TheFM_Dylan) November 17, 2023