The Wall as art

Words and characters of note. One stairway landing at the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame is given to an intriguing installation commemorating Pink Floyd’s landmark album <em>The Wall>/em> True that. How am I going to capture the feel of this by photo, I wondered, dodging this way and that. Looking up. Each segment said so much.…

Quite a landmark

You are there. You can’t miss the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame off the shore of Lake Erie in Cleveland. The archicture is stricking. Indeed. I loved the sign coming and going.

And so Leon Russell says to me …

The year is 1999, and Leon Russell is coming to perform at the New York State Blues Festival in downtown Syracuse’s Clinton Square. I bag a phone interview to write a preview story for the big daily. So in my preparation, I see that Mr. Russell doesn’t do many interviews any more. In fact, some…

The Rock Hall Induction likes itself a lot now

Of course Joan Jett and Bill Withers and the three guys in Green Day — Billie Joe Armstrong front-man loquacious but Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool equally worthy and chatty — were proud as hell to be up there accepting their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So, too, were Stevie Ray…

Rock Hall reveals class, and I think of young me and Lou Reed back then

Mulling over the list of inductees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 2015 class of inductees announced today, Lou Reed pulls my thoughts like a magnet. New York connection, dating back to my Wonder Bread years, when I’m pretty sure my parents did not know that this Velvet Underground character had made it…

I dig sharing Cat Stevens and the E Street Band’s special night

Something I thought I’d lost forever: I watched Cat Stevens perform three of his songs that marked my introspective teens on stage with a big and great band to celebrate his induction into the Rock Hall of Fame. Yeah, I know, the event happened in April, in Brooklyn. But the four hours of acceptance speeches…