COMMENTARY : Hall of Fame Puts Rock and Roll on the Record

It’s been easy to be cynical about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum ever since Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun launched a campaign to build it a dozen years ago.

Many feared the Hall would end up as some sort of shamelessly commercial theme park. Others scoffed at the idea of finding public financing for such an ambitious undertaking. Still others questioned if it’s even appropriate to “legitimize” music that began as the voice of the outcast and the rebel.

But there wasn’t much left to be cynical about Saturday as the $92-million structure on the shores of Lake Erie opened its doors to the public. This is a world-class showcase, whose colorful exhibits combine a lively entertainment value with a faithful aura of scholarship.

We’re accustomed to civic landmarks as glamorous and daring as this I.M. Pei-designed museum, whose multilevel exterior reaches out aggressively in a dramatic series of competing angles and shapes, mirroring in some ways the various blues, country, gospel and pop roots of rock itself.

But showcases are invariably built to honor the fine arts. You expect Wagner and Mozart within such prestigious halls, not Little Richard and the Rolling Stones. You expect a Picasso painting, not a Hendrix guitar.

The only reason the Hall was possible is that city and state officials here had the vision (and faith in the music as a tourist lure) to see that rock ‘n’ roll deserved the same type of platform. Memphis and other cities, which contributed more to the development of rock, let the chance to house the museum slip away.

Sam Phillips, the Sun Records founder who helped launch the careers of Elvis Presley and seven other members of the Hall of Fame, gave the museum his blessing at an afternoon press conference.

“We were disappointed in Memphis that we didn’t get the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I want to congratulate Cleveland for doing an absolutely superb job,” he said. “I could not be happier in this world than [to know] that God has let me live 72 years to see this.”

Whereas some cities end up divided over publicly financed athletic stadiums or arts complexes, no dissenting voices were evident here Saturday. To celebrate the opening, there was a parade, a ribbon-cutting ceremony and welcome signs placed in stores throughout the city.

But you don’t have to be from Cleveland to be touched by this extraordinary salute to an essentially American art form whose liberating message of personal freedom was once considered so radical that civic officials roundly denounced it, not honored it.

It was only four decades ago that Elvis Presley went into a recording studio no bigger than a budget motel room and made a series of records with Phillips that formally launched the rock ‘n’ roll revolution.

And it is a sign of the impact and drama of that revolution that this new museum, which is massive enough to house hundreds of those studios, still isn’t big enough to tell the full rock story. Almost everyone will come away from the tour wondering how a particular favorite artist or group could have been left out.

The Hall staff says that museum elements will be constantly shifting, with new materials added as soon as they can be acquired. If it seems odd now that there is more space devoted to, say, the Rolling Stones than the Beatles, it is often because one act made more material available to the museum.

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The fun begins as you enter the main exhibit hall. You can either trace the history of rock through a series of films in small theaters or follow that history through wall charts and delightful interactive devices that let you sample the recordings of the musicians who influenced your favorite artists or listen to air tapes of the nation’s most influential disc jockeys over the years. They include such ‘50s and ‘60s L.A. favorites as Hunter Hancock, Art Laboe and B. Mitchell Reed.

The exhibit themes range from rock fashion (an Elvis Presley jumpsuit to the leather jacket John Lennon wore in Hamburg) to regional music scenes (Memphis and Detroit to London and Seattle, but not, so far, Los Angeles) to musical genres (rockabilly to rap).

Predictably, there are scores of guitars (including the one a young Bo Diddley made for himself at a Chicago vocational school), letters, childhood drawings (including a mother’s day card scrawled by Jim Morrison), high school yearbooks and pieces of papers with lyrics written on them (from Hendrix’s then-titled “Purple Haze, Jesus Saves”--later “Purple Haze”--to Paul Simon’s “Graceland.”)

There is even a replica of the old Sun Studios in Memphis, where Elvis made his first records in 1954 and ’55. The display has the original recording equipment, including a crude wall speaker made by Phillips himself.

The 150,000-square-foot museum also houses a snack bar, a record store and gift shop. There are cutesy touches, including ATMs that look like jukeboxes, but museum director Dennis Barrie and chief curator James Henke have been faithful to the music. This is a museum that honors, rather than exploits, rock and its culture.

At one crucial point, however, the museum is almost too reverential. Rather than the traditional plaques or busts, the inductees are saluted by having their signatures duplicated in white lettering on a black backdrop. The problem is the room is as hushed as a church memorial. You don’t know whether to kneel or light a candle.

For all of rock’s rebellion and darkness, the best music over the years has also inspired. What better way to honor the contributions of rock’s brightest and best than to simply play that music? It doesn’t make sense to salute rock ‘n’ roll in silence.