Part of the display honoring Whitney Houston at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had to postpone its May induction ceremony for its class of 2020. But the Hall’s Cleveland museum is currently open — with temperature checks, masks and distancing between attendees required — and unveiled, this month, a display featuring its 2020 honorees. These include New Jersey’s own Whitney Houston as well as honorary New Jerseyan Jon Landau (Bruce Springsteen’s longtime manager and a co-producer of albums such as Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town).
Part of the Jon Landau exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Among the items in the Landau display is a copy of his 1974 review — for his “Loose Ends” column in the Boston weekly newspaper The Real Paper — in which he, after seeing Springsteen perform for the first time, proclaimed him “rock and roll future.”
You can see a short video about the exhibition at rockhall.com/exhibitions/class-2020-exhibit. And you can read more about it in this Cleveland.com article.
The other 2020 inductees will be Depeche Mode, The Doobie Brothers, Nine Inch Nails, The Notorious B.IG, T. Rex and Irving Azoff. Landau and Azoff, a music industry powerhouse best known for his long association with The Eagles, are being honored in the Ahmet Ertegun Award category, which is for non-performers.
The May induction ceremony was originally postponed until the fall, but with the pandemic continuing, it has been cancelled and will be replaced with a TV special honoring the inductees. It will be broadcast on HBO and HBO Max, Nov. 7 at 8 p.m.
In 2021, that year’s induction ceremony will take place in the fall, rather than the usual time for it, in the spring.
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