Van Halen entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, along with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five -- the first rap act to be inducted into the hall -- and R.E.M., the Ronettes and Patti Smith.
A panel of 600 industry figures selected the five acts to be inducted at the annual ceremony, to be held March 12 in New York. To be eligible, artists must have issued a first single or album at least 25 years before nomination.
"R.E.M. and myself in particular are really terrible at looking backward," R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe, told reporters via telephone from London. "We kind of, as a band, continually look forward so it's really fantastic that someone, especially the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, are looking backward to recognize the work that we've done."
"I'm just really honored that they thought of us," he added.
Van Halen was the 1980s hard rock quartet led by guitarist Eddie Van Halen, lead vocalist David Lee Roth, and later, rocker Sammy Hagar, that put out hits such as Jump and Why Can't This Be Love.
Eddie Van Halen stood out with his blistering guitar solos; his feud with Roth led to Hagar's run with the band, which produced hits into the 1990s.
R.E.M. (Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Stipe) was the quintessential indie rock band until breaking through to mass success in the early 1990s with songs like Losing My Religion.
The unique sound of their first album in 1983 Murmur, was the beginning of the multiplatinum band's emergence as leader of the US alternative scene of the 1980s and 1990s.
Punk rock poet Smith, known as the Godmother of Punk, came out of lower Manhattan in the early 1970s to create a blend of cerebral, raggedly emotional music.
Stipe said got a congratulatory call from Smith, a good friend, on Monday.
He noted that when he first heard her music in the 1970s, "I decided that I wanted to make music and be in a band ... now she and I are great friends. It was great to be able to congratulate her back."
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (Kid Creole, Cowboy, Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, Mr Ness, Raheim) led the most innovative act in hip-hop's formative era in the late 1970s, and the song The Message was like a letter from urban America. Grandmaster Flash was considered a pioneer in many DJ techniques.
With beehive hairdos and dark eyeliner, the 1960s girl group the Ronettes (Estelle Bennett, Ronnie Spector, Nedra Talley) achieved their greatest success with producer Phil Spector and his "wall of sound" style. Phil Spector co-wrote the trio's biggest hit, Be My Baby, and was married to its lead singer, Ronnie Spector.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS