Saturday night in Cleveland, the 2015 class will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Lou Reed, Bill Withers, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, and Green Day each represent a different era in rock’s history – from the mid-60s to the mid-90s. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts are also being inducted. She’s one of the few females who’ve made it into the Rock Hall. ideastream's David C. Barnett, has this look at the challenges women have faced breaking into the boy’s club of rock and roll.
MUSIC: Paul Butterfield Blues Band Work Song UP & UNDER
As the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was tearing up Chicago clubs in the mid-1960s, the Velvet Underground was making its own waves in New York … thanks in part to the solid drumming of Maureen Tucker. But in 1987, she told WHYY’s Fresh Air that she wasn’t welcomed by Velvets co-founder John Cale.
MAUREEN TUCKER: “No chicks, no chicks”, that’s what he said (chuckles). I guess he figured it would just make trouble, or I’d be whiny, or something.
That, despite the fact that one of the band’s singers was Nico, a German former model and actress. Music journalist Lucy O’Brien tells the story of Maureen Tucker, and hundreds of other women in the music industry, in her book, “She Bop”.
LUCY O’BRIEN: I interviewed Moe Tucker and she said there was a lot of attention on Nico, because of the sexual thing, because she had beautiful blonde, Nordic model looks. But Moe, didn’t play the game, she didn’t try and sell herself on her sexuality.
Of the 726 artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since the ceremony began in 1986, only 65 have been women --- that’s less than 10% --- and most of those are singers. Among this year’s inductees, Bill Withers was cranking out hits from Los Angeles in the early 1970s, at the same time as a different sort soul voice could be heard on the south side of Chicago.
MUSIC: Chaka Khan & Rufus Tell Me Something Good SNEAK-UP opening bass line UNDER
Yvette Marie Stevens was raised by a stepmother steeped in feminist politics. Stevens became immersed in the emerging Black Power movement, and adopted the stage name, Chaka Khan.
MUSIC: BACK UP FULL for a post and then UNDER
As lead singer for the band, Rufus, Khan says she quickly learned that she HAD to make her voice heard.
CHAKA KHAN: If you’re a girl and you’re coming into a band of guys --- on several levels, you have to lay it down, lay down the rules. I had to fight.
But, not all males were threatened by strong female musicians.
MUSIC: Runaways Cherry Bomb
GARY MOSS: I got that record and I was just struck by the raw nature of it.
Gary Moss was a kid in Los Angeles in the mid-70s when he heard the Runaways – five young women playing their own instruments.
MUSIC: Runaways Cherry Bomb
Hello Daddy, Hello Mom
I’m Your Ch-Ch-Ch…Cherry Bomb UNDER
GARY MOSS: And, of course, the sexuality of it to a 13-year-old kid --- you know, five girls playing rock and roll was pretty darn cool.
The Runaways only lasted three years. When the band’s former guitarist and 2015 Rock Hall inductee Joan Jett was assembling her own group, bass player Gary Moss was quick to sign on under the name Gary Ryan. As Joan Jett and the Blackhearts started touring, Moss says it was obvious they were in the middle of a cultural shift.
GARY MOSS: The girls were supposed to be the fans. The guys were playing in the bands to get the girls. The girls weren’t supposed to be the ones playing in the band. But, I think you saw it turn around --- we had a lot of male fans, we had a lot of female fans.
MUSIC: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
By the end of the decade, Stevie Ray Vaughan was starting to attract notice in Austin, Texas, and Chrissie Hynde was living in London. In a 1995 interview, the Ohio native told me that the British punk community embraced cultural and gender diversity as a way to poke a finger in the face of the establishment.
CHRISSIE HYNDE: It was actually so uncool to discriminate on any level. It lasted maybe six months, but that’s when I made my attempt to get into the game.
She assembled the Pretenders.
MUSIC: Pretenders Brass In Pocket
CHRISSIE HYNDE: I never saw this as a man’s world, and I never saw this as a man’s field --- Rock and Roll. It never felt odd to me to pick-up a guitar and be in a rock band. I didn’t want to be a novelty because I was a chick in a band, so I waited until 1977 when I could slip through the net and it didn’t seem exceptional to be a woman --- which it wasn’t.
But, because she was a woman, she faced some challenges that many of her male counterparts didn’t. In her 1983 song, Middle of the Road, Hynde reflects on the manic reality of mixing career… and motherhood.
MUSIC: Middle of the Road
Don’t harass me, can’t you tell
I’m going home, I’m tired as hell
I’m not the cat I used to be
I got a kid, I’m 33, baby!
Writer Lucy O’Brien says Hynde wasn’t alone.
LUCY O’BRIEN: And a lot of women do end up leaving the business, like Patti Smith, she took a long break to have her kids, she stopped touring.
Chaka Khan says she nursed her babies on the tour bus, and relied on her mother and nannies to care for the children as they got older
CHAKA KHAN: That’s a juggle for any woman who has a career, and wants to be a mother. The kids used to crawl in my suitcases when I was packing. It was really heartbreaking.
Still Khan continued performing and became a successful solo act.
MUSIC: I’m Every Woman
By the mid-90s, when one of this year’s Rock Hall inductees, Green Day, was topping the charts, bass player Carla DeSantis Black had already been in the business for over a decade. In 1994 she started a magazine devoted to female performers, called ROCKRGRL. In an interview four years ago from the Rock Hall’s oral history collection, Black said that she longs for the time when a woman with a guitar, or playing drums, or engineering a record won’t be a novelty.
CARLA DeSANTIS BLACK: You know, I’m a little bit old to be talking about “it’s still a novelty”. When I started out, it was the early 80s, and we’re still having these conversations.
MUSIC: Joan Jett Bad Reputation UP & UNDER
When Joan Jett walks onto a Cleveland stage tomorrow night, the scales of the rock hall will tip a little closer toward some semblance of balance.
MUSIC: Joan Jett Bad Reputation UP & OUT
