“I know it’s only rock and roll, but I like it.” And today we spent all day with it. We finally got to spend a day at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. We were there once before, but we only had a very short time. Today, we spent about 6 hours.
We arrived at around 11:15, and decided to go down to the lower level of the museum first to see the special Beatles “Let It Be” exhibit. I am not sure the entire set-up was “special”, or only the Beatles portion of it. We started out at a large display featuring all the musicians who had an early influence on rock, mostly blues singers and some early folk singers like Woody Guthrie. I could have spent an hour just at this part--with headphones, we could choose an early musical icon such as Muddy Waters, and then were presented with four songs by that artist. I was in the mood to hear them all! But there was so much to see and I was afraid I would run out of time! There was also a lot about the early artists who influenced the Beatles, such as Elvis, Little Richard, etc. I ended up skipping most of that, including Elvis (!) because we had seen a lot of that material presented in Memphis at the Museum of Rock and Soul.
I spent quite a bit of time absorbed by a display of photographs Baron Wolman, the first photographer for Rolling Stone magazine. His amazing portraits of rock stars were fascinating, and there was a video of interviews with him and others about his work. Then we entered a section which discussed the different cities which had produced influential styles in the R&R genre-- Liverpool, San Francisco, Detroit, etc. Different groups from each city were highlighted with memorabilia, costumes, etc. The historical retrospectives were very interesting to read. This was followed by more costumes and memorabilia of various artists in no particular order, as I recall. And then finally, these displays segued to the Rolling Stones, who had a large video section with snippets from their many years of concerts. And adjacent to them was the beginning of the Beatles information.
It began with a huge display of memorabilia to accompany the historical retrospective on the group’s development. My favorite item in that display was a few copies of The Howl, a mock newspaper John Lennon wrote and illustrated when he was in grammar school. It already had hi trademark style of humor, “Charles turned around... suddenly, quite suddenly, all of a sudden suddenly, he could see in the distance quite near ....” Another excellent exhibit was a video which went progressively through each Beatle album, with snippets of comments from the Beatles about the particular songs or the album as a whole, and how it related to the development of their music.
Finally, we arrived at the Let It Be portion of the exhibit. Here there were four small “theaters”, each with a segment from the recent documentary about the recording of the Let It Be album. We sat there immersed in the conversations of the four Beatles about the compositions they were recording, and then the final playing of the music as they made it all come together. The videos were completely engrossing and we sat through each completely, and sometimes more than once. The final one was the concert on the roof at Apple Studios, with split screens showing the people on the street, the constables coming to keep everything under control, and people climbing out onto their roofs nearby to see and hear the Beatles playing. The music, of course, is just fantastic anyway, and the sound system and intimacy of the experience was fabulous.
By the time we left there, it was about 2:00 and we needed some sustenance, so marking our place in the exhibit, we exited and went upstairs to the cafe/snack bar. After a short break for lunch, we went back downstairs--by this time it was almost 3pm, and i realized we were STILL on the bottom floor of the museum! I was worrying we’d need to come back tomorrow to see the rest of the place.
We went in the “exit” side of the show, going back in time to see a Janis Joplin display and videos, read about the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, and listen to the video in a room about the Cleveland rock scene. Our last visit was to a small theater which had videos playing of songs that were sung during various R&R Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. The focus was still on the Beatles, and there were several of Paul and Ringo singing together (A Little Help from my Friends and I Saw Her Standing There.) But the best one was a group that (I think) was honoring George Harrison, playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps. They (including Tom Petty, George’s son Dhani Harrison, Prince, and several others whose names I am blanking on) honed musically very close to the original Beatles recording from the instrumental perspective, enhanced by Tom Petty’s vocals; his voice sounded very much like George’s. But the best part was the guitar solos at the end, recreating George’s incredible guitar work on the album. Prince stepped up suddenly and took over the solo, and he just SHREDDED it. It was totally incredible! It so happened that this number was where we entered the theater, and we listened to all the other musical numbers until that one came around, when we listened for a second time, with the exact same reaction. It was absolutely amazingly great.
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| Joe on Drums |
We finally stumbled out of there, just saturated by the sound, and I was thinking that the rest of the museum had to be an anticlimax. It was now 3:30 and we’d only been on one floor! We took the escalators up to the 2nd floor (the first was the entry and cafeteria), and found “The Garage.” This was a hands-on studio experience for people who wanted to become rock musicians. We had the option of playing guitar, keyboard, or drums. Joey went into the drum booth (totally soundproofed) and played a few drum riffs for old time’s sake. Then he made me try out the keyboard. I played a C-chord with Aretha’s Chain of Fools recording. It was a very cute “tutorial”.
We were about to leave that floor when one of the museum staff saw our hesitation and grabbed us. “Go over there to the theater-- it’s the last showing of our film on Hall inductees!” So we went into another theater and got tiny snippets of dozens of Hall of Fame concerts and honorees singing during the presentations. The last scene was--guess what-- Prince’s solo at the end of As My Guitar Gently Weeps. He got far more minutes than anyone else--at least a minute or two, and that was the finale! So I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought it was an incredible performance.
By this time, Joe was feeling kind of tired. So we went up to the 5th and 6th levels quickly. The 5th floor had a lot of costumes; I vaguely remembered it from our earlier visit years ago. The 6th level was interesting, though. It had four exhibits only, each one featuring a specific guitarist with a distinct style, and a video of him describing how he learned to play guitar that way, why he liked his particular approach, etc. We watched Keith Richards and Tom Morrelli, both of whom I love, and a third guy whose name i can’t remember, from Quicksilver Messenger Service in the 1960s. (The fourth was Eddie Van Halen; we heard his interview while we looked at the other three and read the materials.)
By this time, we had finished everything except the 3rd floor-- Pink Floyd’s The Wall. And since I don’t like Pink Floyd and their anti-Semitic front man Roger Waters, we skipped that and at 4:30, finally left the museum. We’d spent 5+ hours there, mostly on that one floor. And I would not mind going back and doing it all again.
The museum was great, but like any museum, can’t cover everything. The depth of material on soul music was much greater at the museums in Memphis, where that music was recorded, for instance. But we loved what we saw, and feel so lucky to have lived through this part of musical history. When we left the place, we sat for a little bit looking at the view of Lake Erie from a bench between the Rock Museum and the Science Museum next door. And then we drove back to Kent & Tom’s, where we had a casual dinner and ice cream for dessert. All in all, an excellent day.
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