The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s president and CEO said Tuesday that he was as surprised as anyone when “The Joker” singer Steve Miller lashed out at the music industry after performing at his own induction ceremony last week.
Mr. Miller, 72, decried the ceremony as a “private boys club” attended by “jackasses and jerks,” and accused the Rock Hall of demanding $10,000 per seat from his own band members, among other allegations, moments after he was inducted on Friday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
“The whole experience should be completely redesigned and become much more artist-friendly,” he told Billboard after. “Starting from who you can invite, what you can do, how long you can play, what you can say. The whole thing is sort of an amateur production and doing this is harder than doing a 20-city tour.”
Responding to the musician’s remarks, President and CEO Joel Peresman on Tuesday told Rolling Stone that Mr. Miller deserved to be inducted into the Rock Hall, even if his comments raised more questions than answers.
“It’s sad. This is a night where we’ve had bands that have broken up, and hate each other, and with a few exceptions, are able to get back together and celebrate for one night and realize it isn’t about them, it’s about the fans that wanted to see them get inducted. It’s about the fans going to the museum in Cleveland for years and have been going, ’Why isn’t Steve Miller inducted?’ For one night, look at it as a celebration of your legacy and how important you are to rock and roll,” Mr. Peresman said.
“That’s what we try and celebrate and overall we’ve tried to do that year after year. But at the end of the day, you can’t make people happy. It’s sad the overarching story is one person’s unhappiness when he should have looked at the night as a celebration of his music and just gone from there.”
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Although Mr. Miller, and not his group, was inducted during Friday’s ceremony, Mr. Peresman told Billboard that the organization “unquestionably took care of his band,” contrary to his claim that the musicians were asked to pay $10,000 per seat to attend the event. He also insisted the Hall of Fame has “inducted women basically every year,” although no female performers made the cut in 2016.
“I’m really surprised he goes down that path being that he’s on the board of other cultural institutions, and he should have an understanding of how cultural institutions work. They do fundraisers and when you do fundraisers, you have rules in order to actually make money. You don’t just give away tickets for free,” he said.
“At the end of the day, Steve Miller, unquestionably from his musical legacy and influence, deserved to be inducted. That he feels this way I feel badly for him. But, again, we’re thrilled and happy he was inducted. He deserves to be inducted. We’re happy to have him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Mr. Peresman added.
The Steve Miller Band has sold over 24 million records in the U.S. since the 1970s and was inducted on Friday alongside Cheap Trick, Chicago, Deep Purple, N.W.A. and Bert Berns.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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