The dark side of the 2017 ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME

No Motörhead or Maiden, hack claims, Bon Jovi kept out, Journey winners of the public vote for induction. Yes’ Rick Wakeman: “I might be washing my hair on the ceremony night”.

Grab your popcorn, tune into Bloodyloud and sit back: here’s the rock version of “Netflix and chill”, starring your favorite artists and… Rick Wakeman washing his hair on the night of the induction ceremony.

Like every year, the Rock’N Roll Hall of Fame circus is in fact back in town.

Drama is already flowing free as the 21th edition builds up speed, curbed only by the hack claims made earlier this month, that led the organizers to postpone the deadline for voting by 15 days.

It was indeed reported that 500.000 votes were dropped on the counting of 850.000 previously entered votes within the past six weeks. A spike that didn’t go unnoticed by Future Rock Legends, the tracking site analyzing the Rock Hall’s turnout, that harshly criticized the organization for the poor explanation of what happened.

Todd Mesek, HOF exec, stated in fact half a million votes, then released at once, were simply “being held to make sure we could validate their authenticity”. However, some of the bands involved are still not seeing it straight.

“Don’t know what happened but this appears to have been hacked. We were 5k in lead, now 2k” Journey tweeted.

Despite the setback, the band has won fan vote today, outclassing Electric Light Orchestra, Yes, Pearl Jam and The Cars. Good news are also coming from keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who made no secret of his hope to reunite with former singer Steve Perry one last time and current singer Arnel Pineda willing to stand aside. “The door’s always been open for him to join us any time he wanted. I mean, that has to happen. The band has to play” he told.

Perry has yet to comment, even if packed-out reunions are allegedly not new to the Rock Hall . Last year, Deep Purple had to face a rather bitter guerrilla due to the band’s several past line-ups. Metallica had a slightly happier ending when former guitarist Dave Mustaine refused Lars Ulrich‘s invitation to join the inducted members as guest.

And to think that there’s players being locked out of the Barclays Center. Like Jon Bon Jovi, for example.

The singer told The Howard Stern Show he believes the band has every criteria needed to join the pantheon, however “there’s guys on that thing that have made it their personal mission to fuck with me. And that’s okay. I get it – I’ve sold more records than their artists”.

He continued: “The criteria is that your music had an influence on generations that came after you, and that it’s still out and very present.”

Someone needs to remind the heads of HOF about it, as Yes’ Rick Wakeman pointed out, referring to the carelessness regarding Prog Rock. Wakeman is so “disgusted with the way Prog Rock and Yes have been treated”, he claimed he “might be busy” the night of the ceremony.

“I’m not sure whether I’d turn up. I might be washing my hair that night” the keyboardist explained. “It seems that anything to do with prog rock was considered a dirty word by them. It’s the most influential music to musicians that there’s ever been in the history of rock’n’roll – and yet it’s ignored.”

Among the other noticeable absentees, the still dynamic forty-one-year-old Iron Maiden, brilliant Judas Priest and ageless Motörhead, who went out of business last year as consequence of legendary singer and bassist Lemmy Kilmister‘s passing in December 2015.

On the other hand, a few choices off the list of iconic stars like Joan Baez, Depeche Mode, Jane’s Addiction, Bad Brains, MC5, Steppenwolf and Tupac are about to join the already shining Hall.