The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced the nominees for its class of 2019. The list includes Radiohead, Rage Against The Machine, Janet Jackson, Roxy Music, Stevie Nicks, The Cure, Def Leppard, Todd Rundgren, Rufus and Chaka Khan, LL Cool J, The Zombies, Devo, John Prine, MC5, and Kraftwerk. There will be a fan vote that will help decide who gets in off this list.
Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, and Stone Temple Pilots were not nominated.
Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil told Alternative Nation a few years ago about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “It’s not a particular objective or goal of mine, so I could take it or leave it. I imagine from what I’ve heard from friends, they say it’s really a lot of fun for fans, they say the fans get excited about it. The opportunity to meet and play with your peers, and maybe some heroes. That is probably the exciting thing about it, but seriously it’s kind of a strange accolade.
It’s not like you have achieved something superior in performance like a baseball player, like the baseball Hall of Fame. [The Hall of Fame is kind of like] where you achieve commercial success, durable commercial success. Well that already is rewarded monetarily, and it’s rewarded with plaques or whatever. So you have a Hall of Fame for people who made a lot of money for other people? That’s what it ends up being, but people I know who have experienced this say the best part about it is working with other musicians, to be able to play with those musicians, and they regard the enthusiasm that the fans have for that experience.
So, I think for that reason, you make a lot of people happy and you can have some new experiences, that would be a great thing for us to do. But I’m not going to lose sleep over it, because I think [of] our days [as] make music, make records, and play our songs.”
