The US Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame inducted the latest artists to be admitted to the pantheon of rock n’ roll at a lavish ceremony at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Monday night US Time. Alice Cooper, gravel voiced Tom Waits and Neil Young joined pianist Dr John and Darlene Love in receiving the gongs.
Although Neil Young complained of having flown 25 hours from Australia to get there, he didn’t appear to reveal to those assembled that he blew out a gig in Melbourne on Monday which was only announced on the promoter’s website a day before the gig, leaving hundreds of fans turning up to find the concert at Rod Laver Arena cancelled.
Cooper appeared on stage in his usual schlock horror makeup, draped with a boa constrictor across his shoulders, telling the assembled throng, “We’ve always been a hard-rock band, we just wanted to decorate it a little differently.” Waits dryly noted “They say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with … and they say that like it’s a bad thing.”
