Michael's Guitar at RRHOF
I visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, during my recent vacation. I had heard that Steely Dan did not have a display at all in the museum, so I had approached the visit with a mixture of anticipation and fear. As we walked up to the front of the building, there were 2 mobile trucks setting up for an MTV concert. I was told this was a standard Wednesday night thing called "Live From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame". I found out the performer for the evening was Hoobastank. If you want to see pictures of them performing, here is the link.
Live From The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame
I had never heard of them and neither had the security guard. Why am I not surprised. The set up did add a bit to our museum visit. Lots of equipment, lighting, sound checks etc., going on all afternoon. When you enter the building, there are all these fiberglass guitars (similar to the angels in LA, or the cows in NYC). Different people have decorated Fender Stratocaster guitars with motifs. The ones in the lobby of the RRHOF were done by performers. They had a Michael Jackson guitar that was titled something like "The Many Faces of Michael". An interesting mix of art and music, that I found fun to look at and they set the stage for the visit to the museum.If you have ever seen the building, it is shaped like some sort of a modern pyramid, so, to start your visit, you go down to the basement. There, they have touch screen terminals that allow you to play songs from their list of the 500 most influential Rock and Roll songs. Steely Dan makes the list with “Reelin’ In The Years”. Just finding them right off the bat, made me happy and so we moved on to another set of terminals that showed performers and their influences. That was quite an interesting thing to get to trace back who was influenced by who. You could take a band from the present and go to the person who’s music influenced them and then find out whose music influenced that person. Steely Dan was not represented on that exhibit, but Bob Dylan was a major influence with lots of bands. They then have this display of costumes through the ages and of course Britney, Christina, Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, etc. all have costumes displayed. They also had things like Bobby Sherman’s costume or David Cassady’s costume. A strange bunch of clothes. Next was a bunch of displays of memorabilia from different eras of rock music. In each display they had a video showing performers from each era. I found it interesting that “The Seattle Sound” had a display window to call it’s own. There was a “San Francisco Sound” display that had the Mama’s and the Papa’s playing “California Dreamin'” in the Video. I believe “White Rabbit” also ended up on that presentation.
Level 2 had an area where you could go to head phones and listen to DJ’s from the prime time of Rock and Roll and beyond. There was Cousin Brucie and Dan Ingram (both from 77 WABC), Dr. Demento, and Jim Ladd (doing the open to his show,Headsets), to name a few. It really brought back memories.
Upon entering the downstairs area, I had asked if Steely Dan were represented anywhere and was told to make sure to check out level 3. So on we went to level 3 and found that they have a theater that shows a 42 minute film containing each years inductees. At this point, it is almost too long and I figure they will have to split up the presentation soon. So we watched the whole thing and found that the RRHOF editors had done quite a nice job with the presentation of inductees, during the show. It is a multimedia presentation on three screens “a la” Woodstock. It even kept my child’s interest (no mean feat). The video they showed of Steely Dan was the song “My Old School” ). It was definitely a “not to be missed” presentation. On the way out of the theater, they have signatures of every inductee displayed alphabetically. Saw Becker and Fagen of course and noticed many others. Pink Floyd had many in it’s group. After we passed the signatures, they have a display of each of this years inductees. I would assume that there was one for Steely Dan last year. Too bad I missed it. When you finally exit this whole area, you find out that you have actually ended up on level 4. So on we went to level 5 and 6. These are at the top of the pyramid and were quite small. This is where they have their “Special Exhibits”. In our case, it was the presentation of “Lennon”. All sorts of memorabilia of John Lennon’s. I saw the bed that they used for the “Bed In”. It is actually 2 church pews with a board set on them. They had the “personal effects” of John’s from when he was shot, all still in the police bag. I couldn’t believe Yoko kept them all these years. A really gruesome thing to look at. They also had busts of John, Yoko and Sean Lennon. They were done shortly before John was shot. On the 6th floor they had some of the songs that John had written, in his own hand. These included some Beatle’s Songs. The one I found most interesting was “Baby You Can Drive My Car”. They said that originally, that was penned by Paul and was this totally sappy thing. John said something like you can’t do it that way and came up with the chorus that makes the song, what we know today. Similar to Becker and Fagen, the synergy between Lennon and McCartney was always better then either one alone.
I do have a few words of advice, to anyone who might like to make the trip. It is definitely worth it, but if you want to get the most out of the visit, you might like to ditch the kids. It has some movies that have disclaimers warning you that “due to the subject matter”, you might not want to bring little ones. We skipped those, but wish we had seen them. The other thing was that we were constantly pushed to move on by our child. A reality similar to what we went through at the Baseball Hall of Fame. What interests you, is not necessarily what interests them. Also, it is very expensive. Adults are $15.00 with a AAA discount. Children and seniors, a bit less.
We stayed at a Holiday Inn that is about 2 blocks away from the museum, on the suggestion of cyber friend: Snakehips. That worked out just fine for us. We left the car at the hotel and walked over to the museum area. The only problem with it is that Downtown Cleveland closes up at around 6PM, similar to Downtown LA. So if you want something to eat, it is not an easy feat. The view from the hotel was not to be beat, though. Lake Erie, Cleveland Airport, a TV station, Amtrak Station, and local train service, all passed within feet of our room. My child was totally thrilled. Add to that the thunder storm and the child was in total heaven (there’s no accounting for taste).
If you ever do go, enjoy.
MY OTHER STEELY DAN PAGES
Steely Fan Band
Cousin Dupree
The SD Danfest
The Steely Damned in Carlsbad
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Home Page
