Sorry, Chad Channing, But You Won’t Be Going into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame After All
Next to Dave Grohl, Chad Channing was the most important drummer in Nirvana. He was with the group from the spring of 1988 through to mid-1990. It’s him on the Bleach album and if you’ve heard the Butch Vig demos from April 1990–essentially most of Nevermind–that’s Chad, too. Come to think of it, he’s on Nevermind, too, playing drums on “Polly,” which was taken directly from those demo sessions. You probably don’t know that because he wasn’t given credit.
So here’s the question: should he be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the band next month? The ruling from the Hall is “no.”
A bit of a rip-off for Chad, no?
The RRHF is irrelevant! It is a glorified popularity contest. It always has been and, sadly, probably always will be. Grohl is awesome! Channing is awesome! Both contributed significantly to the success of Nirvana. What would it cost the RRHF to include them both?
The RRHF committee heaped the same thing on the significant collection of RHCP guitarists. In my not-so-humble opinion all of them contributed to that band being as awesome as it is.
Channing is no different and deserves better!
Why should a musician get into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame when they only played on one album, plus one song from another album? How is that Hall of Fame material (regardless of whether or not the RRHF allows in rap, disco, pop and other non-rock acts, as Gene Simmons, and others, have so rightly pointed out, which is another issue entirely…)? I have no problem with Channing’s exclusion. However, I do have a problem with who the RRHF decided should be allowed in as Kiss (excluding Eric Carr and Tommy Thayer is ridiculous, given their tenure in the band).
Having said that, I don’t think Kiss is a great band, musically, by any stretch, yet they deserve inclusion if only because of their pioneering stage show, and the fact they raised the bar for stage productions with their makeup, costumes and pyrotechnics.
The RRHF needs to be consistent and not all over the map. I always thought it was strange that Jimmy Page got inducted as part of the Yardbirds and with RHCP, one can easily argue that Frusciante stands heads and tail over every other guitar player who was ever in the band (because of his song writing skills). I guess no matter how you do it will always be a matter of lessors among equals. Nirvana was pretty much the Kurt Cobain band anyway.
Half the bands inducted in the RRHF should not be there in the first place (hello Kiss!), I think not having Chad Channing inducted with the rest of the band is just another silly example on how the “board” is just out of touch with anything involving music in general. I mean… Grohl was not even an acquaintance of the band when they recorded “Bleach”!!! We can say what we want against Channing’s playing, he is still the guy that kept the beat for the songs. It’s one thing to not induct Dave Foster, Jason Everman (the most unfortunate musician in Seattle!!!) or even Dan Peters (played one show with Nirvana), but I feel like Grohl and Novoselic (or even Love) should show the finger to RRHF by not showing up unless Channing is inducted… but, it’s all politic with the music business… unfortunately…!
This is wrong. Just goes to show that nobody cares for you when you are small. I think it is great that Nirvana had so many drummers. Dale Crover is also a monster drummer that should be noted his contributions for being in the band twice. Piss Stain