Grammys: The Good, the Bad, the Forgettable : * Commentary: Academy voters again shied away from the maverick creative forces in music, favoring mainstream veterans and previous award-winners.

Want a sure thing in next year’s Grammy competition?

Team Natalie Cole and Bonnie Raitt on an album and have Quincy Jones produce it.

Or don’t you think there is a pattern to the voting of the 7,000-member National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences when you see that those three artists have won 16 Grammys in the last three years?

That’s more than James Brown, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon won together during the previous 30 years. And those four names weren’t just picked at random. Brown, Dylan, Hendrix and Lennon were honored with lifetime-achievement awards in the last two years by the academy, which sponsors the annual Grammy competition.

How embarrassing it must be year after year to keep handing out lifetime citations to artists whose accomplishments were virtually ignored by the Grammys during their most productive years. Yet the voters continue to favor mainstream bestsellers rather than the maverick forces that shape pop music.

No offense to Cole, Raitt and Jones, who are gracious and gifted artists, but they hardly represent the kind of artistic heat that either defines the moment--musically or sociologically--or that seems likely to alter the creative direction of pop in the coming years.

The fact that the same artists keep getting honored year after year--almost everyone who won a key award Tuesday had won previously--suggests that the academy membership is far too comfortable with the status quo.

All that Grammy voters had to do to see how far out of step their latest choices were from the creative pop climate of 1992 was to check Wednesday’s Village Voice, which contained the results of the weekly’s annual poll of U.S. pop critics.

Cole’s “Unforgettable” album, the big winner in Tuesday’s marathon awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall, didn’t even make the list of the 40 best albums as determined by a vote of approximately 300 critics. Similarly, Cole’s version of the song “Unforgettable,” which featured the endearing duet with her late father, Nat King Cole, wasn’t among the year’s 25 most notable singles.

The winner in both cases was Nirvana, the Seattle band whose music expresses the youthful alienation and anxiety of the early ‘90s with the immediacy and passion that has always characterized rock’s most compelling voices. Nirvana received one Grammy nomination--and it lost in the category.

But you don’t really begin to understand just how discouraging this year’s Grammy choices were until you look beyond the two top categories.

Under the leadership of President Michael Greene, the academy has tried to add new categories, including hard rock and rap, to better reflect the shifting currents of pop music in recent years. But the voters tend to neutralize that goal by opting for the most conservative choices in each case.

Consider:

* Guns N’ Roses, the incendiary Los Angeles band that had two albums in the Voice Top 20, should have been the easy winner in the hard rock category, but voters went with Van Halen, a band that would have been considered too maverick at one time but now seems a more established part of the musical community--at least when measured against Guns N’ Roses.

* Even more scandalous was the rap competition where Public Enemy--far and away the most acclaimed, and sometimes most controversial, rap group--lost out to inconsequential D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, probably because of the latter’s wholesome image and TV success. Public Enemy’s latest album finished second in the Voice poll.

* Instead of saluting R.E.M. in the best album and best record category, where the Georgia group was pitted against Cole, the academy voters went for R.E.M. in the alternative music category, when they should have saluted Nirvana. R.E.M.’s album finished third in the Voice poll.

* Even in the country field, the Grammy voters appear to have caved in to the enormous commercial success of Garth Brooks by giving him the best male singer award over Vince Gill, the superior vocalist. Brooks is a capable country singer, but his strength is the conviction and energy of his live show.

At least the Grammy voters sometimes learn from their mistakes.

There was so much of a howl when tired rock warhorse Jethro Tull won over the infinitely more vital Metallica in 1989, the year that the heavy metal category was introduced to the Grammy competition, that the academy voters seem afraid to vote for anyone other than Metallica for fear of making another mistake.

In winning Tuesday night for the third straight year in the category, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich couldn’t resist having fun with the black-tie Radio City Music Hall audience.

“I think the first thing we’ve got to do, obviously, is thank Jethro Tull for not putting out an album this year, right,” he said, laughing. After a slight pause, he added, “Read between the lines. . . . You know what I mean.”

Hopefully, Public Enemy or Nirvana or Guns N’ Roses or R.E.M. someday will get a chance to make the same joke.

Sidelights from the Grammy ceremony:

Goat to Hero: Irving Gordon, whose 41-year-old ballad “Unforgettable” was named best song, appeared at first to be the worst nightmare of the progressive wing of the academy when he remarked during his acceptance speech that it was nice to have a song accepted where you “don’t get a hernia when you sing it.”

Gordon, while not a big fan of contemporary pop music (see story on F1), explained backstage that his remarks had been chiefly a reaction to Michael Bolton’s tortured version of “When a Man Loves a Woman” on the Grammy telecast. Most of the critics in the room have said much harsher things themselves about the overkill of Bolton, a two-time Grammy winner.

Though he declined to criticize Gordon, Bolton did rise to the bait when one reporter asked how it feels to be “hated” by critics.

“If I was as insensitive a person as they seem to be, it wouldn’t bother me, but since I’m not, it does,” Bolton said. “You can take a bunch of chimpanzees and give them a bucket of paint and they’ll destroy a Van Gogh. . . . Critics can kiss my ass.”

Good-Winner Award: Bonnie Raitt continues to be a gracious winner. When she and veteran Texas roadhouse rocker Delbert McClinton won in the best rock duo category, she spent most of her acceptance speech praising her partner--as she did two years ago when she shared a Grammy with bluesman John Lee Hooker. “What an incredible honor . . . to be up here with one of my heroes . . .,” the red-haired singer said. “He’s been an inspiration to me and everybody that came up.”

Warm-Gesture Award: The large number of telecast participants, including hostess Whoopi Goldberg, who wore red AIDS-awareness ribbons.

Finally, Critics’ Choices: Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” Public Enemy’s “Apocalypse 91 . . .,” and R.E.M.’s “Out of Time” were followed in the Voice list of 10 best albums by U2’s “Achtung Baby,” P.M. Dawn’s “Of the Heart . . .,” Richard Thompson’s “Rumor and Sigh,” Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend,” Metallica’s “Metallica,” Chris Whitley’s “Living With the Law” and the Mekons’ “The Curse of the Mekons.”

The singles list was headed by Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” Naughty by Nature’s “O.P.P.,” the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

Times staff writer Jane Hall contributed to this report.

* GRAMMY’S TV RATINGS

The four-hour show scored poorly across the nation. F14