Cyndi Lauper turned True Colors into a defiant call for courage, and the music of Outkast, Soundgarden and the White Stripes moved the house on Saturday night at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
Partway through the song, Lauper shouted the line “don’t be afraid!,” thrust her fist in the air and kept it there as the music stopped for a long and dramatic stretch.
She was then joined by Raye to sing Time After Time and Avril Lavigne for Girls Just Want to Have Fun. As Lauper called for the ladies to sing with her, Salt-N-Pepa — who earlier in the night donned their old tri-colour jackets to rock the crowd with Push It for their induction — came dancing out and joined her.
Chappell Roan, who inducted Lauper while wearing a huge, ornamented, showgirl-style headpiece, said Lauper “redefined what a pop star could look like, sound like, sing like.”
Lauper looked at Roan during her speech when she said, “I know that I stand on the shoulders of the women in the industry that came before me. And my shoulders are broad enough to have the women that came after me stand on mine.”
Lauper came back for an all-star jam and sang a verse of inductee Joe Cocker’s cover of With a Little Help From My Friends along with Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes, Teddy Swims and Bryan Adams. Cocker was one of several posthumous nominees, with a moving tribute to late Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell.
The power of women in music was called out loudly earlier in the evening at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles during the induction of Salt-N-Pepa.
“This is for every woman who picked up a mic when they told her she couldn’t,” Cheryl “Salt” James said in a rousing speech accepting her, Sandra “Pepa” Denton and DJ Spinderella’s entrance into the hall.
James brought up their fight to reclaim their master recordings from Universal Music Group. “The industry still doesn’t want to play fair, Salt-N-Pepa have never been afraid of a fight,” James said.
They took the stage for a medley of their hits. They opened with Shoop, then slid into Let’s Talk About Sex before En Vogue joined them for their joint hit What a Man.
James apologized to the fans who “got in trouble for cutting their hair like us,” a line that reverberated later when Roan said that Lauper showed you could “have whatever hair colour you want.”
Outkast rocks the house, but not entirely together
Outkast didn’t perform together for the first time since 2016 as some had hoped, but the duo stood together on stage, surrounded by a crew of friends and cohorts as they gave grateful speeches after doing rock-paper-scissors to decide who would go first.
André 3000 gave a long, rambling funny speech — “I’m freestylin’ y’all!” — that ended in tears when he talked about their very beginnings in a basement “dungeon” in Atlanta in the early 1990s.
He choked out the words, “Great things start in little rooms.”
André sat out the performance, but Big Boi, wearing shorts and a fur coat, started off an express tour through the Atlanta duo’s discography that included Tyler, the Creator, JID and Killer Mike.
Janelle Monáe joined them to shake her way through Hey Ya, and Doja Cat delivered a sly and soulful take on Ms. Jackson.
In his speech inducting them, Donald Glover praised them as “two visionaries who turned their differences into a dynasty.”
Soundgarden gets emotional
Emotions ran deep during Soundgarden’s segment of the night, starting with the induction speech of Jim Carrey, the actor and Soundgarden superfan who seemed to be fighting off tears throughout as he talked about Chris Cornell, who died from suicide in 2017.
“When you looked into his eyes, it’s like eternity was staring back,” Carrey said. “For all time, his voice will continue to light up the ether like a Tesla coil.”
Each of Cornell’s bandmates, all major godfathers of the Seattle grunge scene, paid their own tearful tributes.
One of Cornell’s daughters, Lilian, spoke for him while another, Toni, sang a quiet rendition of his song Fell on Black Days.
“I am just really, really happy that he got to make music with his friends,” Lilian Cornell said.
Taylor Momsen, who co-starred as a child with Carrey in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Brandi Carlile showed serious vocal power with their versions of Cornell’s mighty wail, backed by his bandmates on Rusty Cage and Black Hole Sun.
Bassist Hiro Yamamoto was among the few who brought up politics from the stage.
“Thanks to my parents, whose story is American citizens who are rounded up and placed into prison camps just for being Japanese during World War II,” Yamamoto said to some of the biggest cheers of the night. “Well, that affected my life greatly, and it really echoes strongly today. Let’s not add another story like this to our history.”
No reunion for the White Stripes
The White Stripes reunion that some fans had hoped for didn’t happen. Their induction was among the highlights of the night anyway. Twenty One Pilots brought the house down with a version of the duo’s stadium-shaking anthem Seven Nation Army, and Olivia Rodrigo and Feist delivered an acoustic version of We’re Gonna Be Friends.
Their fellow Detroit rock legend Iggy Pop began his induction speech by leading the crowd in a chorus of Seven Nation Army, then remembered his thoughts on meeting them.
“Cute kids, they’re gonna go places,” Pop said. “And they did.”
Drummer Meg White, who has led an almost entirely private life since the band broke up in 2011, did not show up for the ceremony, but Jack White said Meg, his ex-wife, helped him write the speech he delivered while wearing the band’s signature red and white.
Jack White shouted out several great duos from across culture and said that kind of one-on-one collaboration is “the most beautiful thing you can have as an artist and musician.”
He nearly cried several times as he told an Adam-and-Eve-like tale of “the boy and the girl” who made magic together, “knowing that they have shared and made another person feel something.”
Rousing tributes for absent inductees
Stevie Wonder led a funky and flashy tribute to the late Sly Stone to open the show that streamed live on Disney+. An edited version airs on ABC on Jan 1.
Wonder was joined on Saturday night by Questlove, Leon Thomas, Maxwell, Beck, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers for rousing renditions of Sly and the Family Stone hits Dance to the Music, Everyday People and Thank You. Jennifer Hudson joined them to wail through Higher.
Stone, who was inducted into the hall in 1993, died in June. Brian Wilson, who died two days later, got his own tribute from Elton John, who took the stage late in the show to sing the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows.
Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac inducted Bad Company, calling the British group founded by Paul Rodgers and Mick Ralphs in 1973 “classic rock legends.”
Rodgers had to skip the ceremony because of health issues, and Ralphs died earlier this year, so drummer Simon Kirke was the only member on the stage. He was joined by an ad hoc super group that included Robinson and Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson, who blasted through Feel Like Makin’ Love and Can’t Get Enough.
The late singer-songwriter Warren Zevon was inducted by David Letterman, a friend and superfan who made Zevon a regular on his NBC late-night show, including an appearance when Zevon was dying of cancer in 2002.
“Warren Zevon is in my Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” Letterman said. “Actually his own wing.”
Other inductees who got video tributes in the theatre were Chubby Checker, session bassist Carole Kaye, session piano man Nicky Hopkins and record producer and executive Lenny Waronker.
