Alan Freed and the Moondog Coronation Ball are virtually synonymous with the breakthrough of rock & roll. Freed didn’t invent the term or the genre; but like no previous celebrity, he gave it a voice. And the Moondog Coronation Ball was far from rock & roll’s shining hour; but it ushered in a new era for live music. Together, the man and the event became the faces of a new medium, a revolutionary form of entertainment, and an ever-expanding musical lexicon. Their intertwined and flawed (but increasingly varnished) legacies endure to this day.

Already a seasoned radio disc jockey in Youngstown and Akron, Alan Freed had his first Cleveland gig in 1949 as an afternoon movie show host on WXEL-TV. In 1951 he was hired to host a classical music program on WJW-Radio. However, Freed’s direction soon changed when popular record-store owner Leo Mintz volunteered to sponsor a three-hour, late-night radio show with Freed spinning rhythm-and-blues records by Black musicians. Much like Sam Phillips at Sun Records, Mintz had recognized the burgeoning appeal of Black (“race”) music to young White consumers. Freed grabbed the opportunity and his new show, the Moondog Rock & Roll House Party, was a near-overnight success. As one of a small handful of White disc jockeys pushing rhythm and blues, Freed became an industry force, a true influencer with the power to make or break records with his airplay. The self-anointed Moondog was a “hit man.” And rock & roll was here to stay.

The two terms—rock & roll and moondog—are an etymological story unto themselves. Historians generally describe rock & roll as the confluence of traditionally Black musical styles, such as blues, jazz, and gospel, or as an evolving hybrid of rhythm & blues (R&B), pop, and country music. Throughout the 1950s, the terms rock & roll and R&B were often used interchangeably. However, the term rock & roll predates Freed by about 70 years. In 1881, comedian John W. Morton of Morton's Minstrels performed a song titled "Rock and Roll." Five years later, a comic song titled "Rock and Roll Me" was performed by the Moore's Troubadours. Still, these tunes did not refer to a musical form but, most likely, to swaying dance movements or (some believe) to the rocking and rolling movement of watercraft. These connotations held well into the 1930s, with rock & roll references adopted by performers such as the Boswell Sisters and Verne and Irene Castle. Around that time, however, many of the era’s popular blues singers recast rock & roll in significantly more explicit terms. Some of the starkest examples might be 1944’s "Rock Me Mama" by Arthur Crudup (“Rock me mama like a southbound train”) or 1951’s "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and his Dominoes ("I rock 'em, roll 'em all night long"). From that point forward, rock & roll—the music and the motion—became the disruptive and often sexualized experience that we know today.

Moondog (or moon dog), on the other hand, is a meteorological synonym for “paraselene (par-uh-si-lee-nee)”: faint glimmers caused by moonlight refracted through ice crystals in certain types of clouds. But this was not the inspiration for Freed's nickname. In 1949 an eccentric musician and composer named Louis Thomas Hardin Jr. christened himself Moondog (in honor of a pet that constantly howled at the moon) and composed a classical piece eponymously called "Moondog’s Symphony." Keen to hippify his image, Freed co-opted the name, thus paving the way for his Moondog Rock & Roll House Party radio show and 1952’s Moondog Coronation Ball. In 1954, Hardin sued Freed and won. Freed was ordered to apologize and cease using the name Moondog on the air. However, the term had already become enmeshed in American culture—the eventual subject of multiple rock songs, musical events, cafés, and even basketball-team mascots. One of the names initially considered by the Beatles was Johnny and the Moondogs.

The 1954 lawsuit was not Moondog Freed’s first humbling moment. That would be the seminal but scandal-plagued stumblefest he called the Moondog Coronation Ball. “Coronation” referred to an intermission event during which the most popular male and female teen would be crowned. Organized by Freed, Mintz, and concert promoter Lew Platt, what is now dubbed America’s first rock concert was set for March 21, 1952, at the Cleveland Arena on Euclid Avenue. The bash would include saxophonist Paul Williams and his Hucklebuckers, Tiny Grimes and the Rocking Highlanders (an African American instrumental group whose members wore kilts), the Dominoes (one of the early ’50s’ most successful rhythm and blues bands), teenage R&B singer Varetta Dillard, and jazz/blues-man Danny Cobb. According to former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame president Terry Stuart, “when Freed opened the show, the [overwhelmingly Black] audience could not believe the exuberant radio personality whose show they had been listening to for months was white. The delighted crowd went nuts."

The show’s downfall was a simple printing error: Tickets for a later Moondog event had been printed without a date, thus giving additional thousands access to the March 25 event. A number of tickets also were counterfeited. Ultimately, about 20,000 to 25,000 showed up, with the ticketed and ticketless stuffing the Arena far beyond its 9,500-seat capacity. Hundreds had forced their way in, broken down doors, smashed glass, and pushed past police. Accounts vary as to how long the 10:00 PM concert lasted: somewhere between 15 minutes and two hours. It also isn’t clear which authorities, police or fire, ultimately called a halt. Either way, the crowd was ordered to leave well before the midnight coronation. Most did so reluctantly. A few were more belligerent (one person reportedly was stabbed). The country’s first rock & roll concert—which one promotional poster had presciently called "the most terrible ball of them all"—was kaput.

Blowback was swift and brutal. Fire Department officials prepared charges (ultimately dropped) against Freed and his two associates. The Cleveland Press reported “a crushing mob of 25,000.” The Plain Dealer stuck closely to the facts, but the Call & Post hit Freed with both barrels, calling him unscrupulous and “the fast-talking, wisecracking Pied Piper of the airwaves.” The paper further accused Freed’s radio show of attracting “the most vicious and most depraved elements of society.” The next day, with his job on the line, Freed took to the air, apologizing effusively while claiming that he was not the promotor but rather a “hired hand.” Days later, the Call & Post fired back, citing evidence that Freed assuredly was a co-promoter. Two months after the concert a real moon dog was spotted in the sky over Cleveland (In folklore, moondogs are harbingers of stormy weather.).

Still, Freed won the PR battle, kept his job, and was quickly back in action. Another Moondog show—this time at Public Hall and featuring Dinah Washington, Woody Herman, and the Mills Brothers—came off with no problems on May 25, 1952. In July 1953, Freed returned to the Arena to host the Joe Lewis Show, an R&B event featuring the former heavyweight champion. A Plain Dealer reporter’s distressingly bigoted review of the concert referred to the audience as “trained squeals” and the evening’s “race music,” as recordings that “sell by the hundreds of thousands in shops South of Euclid Ave.”

Later that same year Freed caught what may have been his biggest break. WJNR began daily rebroadcasts of Freed’s shows to listeners in New York and New Jersey. Additional markets soon opened up, including the Armed Forces Network in Europe. By 1954 Freed had moved to WINS-AM in New York City, launching what might be considered his golden age. Over three years he expanded his radio empire, established his own record label (End Records), and produced (and appeared in) several cheesy rock & roll movies. So vast was his reach that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI put Freed under surveillance. As broadcast historian Mike Olszewski recalled, “Back then, it seemed, the United States was always looking for new enemies.”

Comprising equal parts PR and paranoia, Hoover’s actions reflected a nation of two minds. One side recognized a musical future of increased tolerance and innovation. The other saw an assault on long-held “traditional values.” In 1957, Freed’s rock & roll show on ABC television was cancelled after black R&B singer Frankie Lymon danced with a white girl on stage at a Freed-promoted concert. The next year, Freed lost his job at WINS radio after he supposedly yelled “The police don’t want you to have fun,” at an event in Boston. Although he quickly resurfaced on rival radio station WABC-AM, the beginning of the end wasn’t far off: On November 21, 1959, Freed was sacked after declining to sign an FCC document stating that he never received funds or gifts for playing records on the air. Although he was only fined, the implied admission effectively ended his broadcasting career and his high profile made him a poster child for the practice of payola. Payola is generally thought of as a “pay-to-play” arrangement between promoters and DJs. However, the then-common practice often involved more complex relationships, such as fake songwriting credits, royalty kickbacks, and hidden ownership of recording interests. Freed, for example, was wrongly given partial songwriting credit (and royalties) for Chuck Berry’s "Maybellene" and The Moonglows’ "Sincerely." Rock critic Nadine Cohodas once described Freed’s relation with the owners of Chess Records as “a warm friendship shaped by money.”

In 1960 payola was formally classified as a crime and two years later Freed was convicted of commercial bribery. Once again, he escaped with only a fine. The same activities got him indicted (but apparently not convicted) of tax fraud in 1964. By this time he had moved to Florida and was working only sporadically at Miami-area radio stations. Freed died January 1965 at the age of 43 and is buried in Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery.

Since his death, Freed’s legacy has grown in mostly positive ways. Historically speaking, he may still be the face of payola. But his reputation as patron saint of rock & roll has largely pushed payola to the sidelines. Rock is now considered the musical font from which most popular music has emerged—from do-wop, soul, and psychedelic to punk, grunge, and pop. Moreover, the Moondog Coronation Ball is deemed the foundation stone upon which every live-rock event is built, and as DJ Norm N. Nite once stated, “If it wasn’t for Alan Freed and the Moondog Coronation Ball, Cleveland would not have the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”

Perhaps most important, Freed can legitimately be seen as an early crusader in the battle for racial equality. Opportunist though he was, Freed worked tirelessly to promote Black performers, reach mixed audiences, and stage events where racial integration was accepted and encouraged. More than most other media, “his” music transcends social classes, age groups, and race.

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Youth culture writer Jane Scott noted, in an article for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a handwritten sign hung in the broadcast booth at the first WMMS office that read, “Never play three electric tunes in a row. Never play three acoustic tunes in a row. Be real. Be good. Have fun. Be tight!” The sign was penned by Billy Bass, one of the first disc jockeys employed by the station. The article, published in early 1972, provided a glimpse into the mindset driving one of Cleveland’s newest cultural phenomena. WMMS was, at the time, an underground, progressive-rock radio station gaining traction among the city’s youth for its unique catalog and culture-savvy deejays, who were boldly airing music that reflected the period’s anti-war, anti-establishment, and anti-conservative sentiments. The station would continue to grow, and would later be responsible for breaking such acts as David Bowie, Rush, and Bruce Springsteen. Bass, and the rest of the WMMS crew, would revolutionize the radio industry – and mark Cleveland as the “Rock and Roll Capital of the World.”

Rock and roll, as a genre, was not born in Cleveland. But the genre was forever linked to the city when Cleveland deejay Alan Freed coined the term for the rhythm-and-blues records he was playing on his radio show for WJW-AM. Following his Moondog Coronation Ball in 1952, regarded as the first rock ‘n’ roll concert, the city was flooded with bars and clubs boasting live music, attracting the coming-of-age Baby Boomer population, and creating a prevalent youth culture within the city. In August of 1968, local AM station WHK debuted its first FM sister-station under the name WHK-FM. A few weeks later, the call letters were changed to WMMS. This new station became the first in Cleveland to feature full-time progressive rock programming.

The crew solidified their format in the early 1970s, officially becoming an album-oriented rock station and challenging the standards of radio broadcasting. They began airing “Coffeebreak Concerts,” mid-afternoon acoustic performances from popular local, national, and international artists, free for all listeners. They played songs that, subliminally or overtly, criticized war or politics. They quickly gained a loyal following of young rockers who, bored of their declining Midwest city and empowered by the student, feminist, and civil rights movements of the previous decade, were finally seeing themselves embodied in public media. The mid-’70s saw the debut of several on-air acts who would become household names in Cleveland, including Matt “the Cat” Lapczynski, later host of the Coffeebreak Concerts, Lawrence “Kid Leo” Travagliante, afternoon-drive host, late-night rocker Betty “Crash” Korvan, and Jeff Kinzbach and Ed Ferenc, cohosts of the “Buzzard Morning Zoo,” also known as “Jeff and Flash.”

The bizarre, irreverent antics of these deejays became a source of power for WMMS and were reflected in multiple aspects of the station’s programming and persona. The station ran PSAs promoting safe abortion services, much to the dismay of local conservatives. When corporate management insisted that they run more commercials, deejays discreetly fought back by playing humorous sound effects over the ads. Outside of the studio, WMMS staff made appearances at local events such as sponsored concerts and community gatherings, including a rally at nearby Cleveland State University advocating for youth voices and participation in government.

The station’s mascot itself exemplified their cheeky brand of humor. After a failed run of advertisements featuring the call letters as signifiers of the phrase “Where Music Means Something,” orchestrated by corporate leaders (leading some locals to adopt instead the phrase “Weed Makes Me Smile”), WMMS personnel took the reins and employed an artist to create an official logo. This artist, Jane Tiburski Elliot, drew a logo featuring a large mushroom shading a blissful-eyed alien as he smokes a joint. This, however, obviously did little to negate the claims that WMMS promoted drug use and it was dropped by management in 1974. Again, the station needed something new. As the story goes, program director John Gorman was driving home through the east side of Cleveland one night contemplating his work and its role within the city when he was struck by the first idea for what would become the buzzard. He describes it in his memoir as “A bird of doom for a dying city whose centerpiece was a crumbling building with the name ‘Terminal Tower.’” Gorman employed American Greetings card illustrator David Helton to create what is now one of the most recognizable mascots in rock radio history. With a sly grin, a mane of blond hair, and his common accessories of guitars and mushrooms, the Buzzard became the face not only of WMMS, but of Cleveland. The figure would later be printed on merchandise of all kinds – apparel, keychains, stickers, and so on – and stood as a symbol of the city’s perseverance.

In the station’s glory days, generally considered to be the mid-’70s through the late 1980s, it enjoyed soaring ratings. Music director and deejay Denny Sanders claims that of the 1.7 million people living in the Cleveland metropolitan area at the time, around 700,000 of them were WMMS listeners. Outside of Northeast Ohio, WMMS gained national recognition. It won the Rolling Stone magazine nationwide readers’ poll for “Best Radio Station” nine years in a row. Wall Street Journal writer Robert Werner noted in a 1979 article that “The primal energy of hard rock and roll apparently captures and abounds here [in Cleveland] more effectively,” largely due to the influence of WMMS. In the 1980s, it was WMMS deejays leading the lobby for the newly-conceived Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to be built in Cleveland, promoting on-air and to any Rock Hall board members that would listen that Cleveland was really the rock and roll capital of the world (a nickname coined years before by deejay Billy Bass), and in the late ’80s, the Rock Hall was constructed on the shores of Lake Erie.

WMMS, however, saw a period of decline in the 1990s, in both popularity and credibility. Increasing corporate oversight led to format changes and employee turnover as a few of the station’s most recognizable names, including Gorman, Sanders, “Kid Leo,” and “Jeff and Flash” departed. A Cleveland Plain Dealer article published in 1988 exposed an in-office memo addressed to staff from upper-management demanding they fill out hundreds of Rolling Stone poll ballots, leading to local outrage and a loss of national respect. The station is still in operation today, though new management has moved away from much of the station’s classic branding.

Though WMMS never quite recovered from corporatization or scandal, the legend of WMMS remains. The WMMS of the ’70s and ’80s revolutionized radio. The WMMS of the ’70s and ’80s gave a new, heartfelt nickname to a city once commonly referred to as “the mistake by the lake.” The WMMS of the ’70s and ’80s was progressive, was loud and obnoxious, was obscene, and was one-of-a-kind. But the WMMS of the ’70s and ’80s had to come to an end. “Kid Leo” was quoted in a Cleveland Plain Dealer article in 1989 saying, “We were a family that lived, worked, and played together… The station was like a family dinner table that went on 24 hours a day.” That same article quotes John Gorman: “These kinds of utopias don’t last.” It’s true – WMMS did not, in essence, last – but its influence on the culture of Cleveland is everlasting.

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The nation’s first gay and lesbian talk radio show, The Gay 90s, aired from downtown Cleveland, Ohio and started off with a bang. Not literally, but given the bomb threat called in before the show’s premier broadcast on WHK 1420 AM it was a possibility. Despite the potential danger, The Gay 90s aired as scheduled on March 26, 1993, and became the country’s first commercial live, “call in” radio program by, for, and about the gay and lesbian community. Given Cleveland’s history of settling disputes with explosives, coupled with the homophobic atmosphere surrounding lesbians and gay men at the time, the threat was taken seriously. Not willing to risk the consequences of ignoring the threat, the Cleveland Police Department provided the show’s staff with personal escorts to and from the radio station for the next two weeks. The police attention and protection was motivated, in part, by the station’s location: Cleveland’s iconic Tower City Center. Thankfully, no bomb exploded at Tower City that night or any of the following nights during The Gay 90s six-year run. It was, instead, the radio show itself that blew down barriers, shattered myths and united Cleveland’s gay, straight and “in between” communities in a remarkably peaceful way.

Looking back, it’s not surprising that the nation’s first gay and lesbian talk show was hosted by Cleveland native Buck Harris, a man at ease being the “first” in a number of public roles. In 1984, Governor Richard Celeste appointed Harris as the Ohio Department of Health’s gay health consultant, the first state in the nation to create such a position in response to the growing AIDS crisis. Shortly after his appointment, The Plain Dealer asked Harris for an interview regarding the crisis, insisting on referring to him as a “homosexual” (as opposed to gay) consultant, as was the newspaper’s policy at the time. Harris told the paper if they did not use his proper title, there would be no interview. The paper relented and, in 1985, for the first time used the word “gay” instead of the inflammatory alternative. A few short months later Harris made the P.D.’s 1986 “Happy New Year” list, the first openly gay person to make the cut. Later that year, Cleveland Magazine named Harris one of the 86 most interesting Clevelanders – again, a first for any openly gay Clevelander. And the bomb threat that greeted Harris and his staff that first radio broadcast? Not a first. As an outspoken and unapologetic AIDS activist, Harris was accustomed getting death threats. Escorted by police and armed with his brave “chin up” attitude, Harris and his crew aired the live broadcast as scheduled.

Bomb threat notwithstanding, The Gay 90s aired during a time of national crisis for the LGBTQ community, as the AIDS epidemic was nearing its worst. In 1993, tennis star Arthur Ashe died (six weeks before the first show’s first broadcast); President Clinton established the White House Office of National AIDS Policy; Tom Hanks starred in Philadelphia, Hollywood’s first major film on AIDS; and the play Angels in America won both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. There was a lot to talk about. Regardless of the topic, which ranged from local politics to the art scene and everything in between, Harris maintains that “a good slice of gay culture” was served, often with a side of humor. The first half of the weekly two-hour program involved guest interviews, and there were notable ones including, in Harris’s words, “movers, shakers and founders of the gay civil rights movement.” Among them were U.S. Congressman Barney Frank; gay rights activist Frank Kameny; two-time Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter Janis Ian, and four-time Tony award winning playwright Harvey Fierstein. Arbitron, the radio ratings agency, estimated that 20,000 listeners tuned in to The Gay 90s on a typical night – perhaps more on a clear night when the AM signal strength was strong enough to reach listeners as far away as Akron or Canton, maybe even the “boondocks,” Harris quips. Some listeners, he believed, were petrified to actually call in – fearing that someone might recognize their voice. Some took the chance, but changed their name. Not all, of course, but the fear of being identified as queer was strong enough to paralyze some listeners, preventing them from calling – and for good reason. Jobs, homes, families – even lives were at risk. One fourteen-year-old gay listener, however, summoned the courage to call in one night. The young man told Harris that he was thinking of suicide but changed his mind after listening to the show. Listening to The Gay 90s, the young man realized there was a “world waiting for him,” where he fit in – brought to him from a radio station in downtown Cleveland.

After two and a half years broadcasting from WHK on Friday nights and getting preempted for sports broadcasting on more than one occasion, Harris moved to another station, WERE 1300 AM. From there, The Gay 90s aired on Sunday evenings – a time slot Harris preferred, believing that his target audience was more likely to be home (and tuned in), not partying in one of Cleveland’s many gay bars. Harris once commented, “Our entrée into the gay community was through the doors of gay bars”. Not that he was opposed to gay bars – after all, he was a former bartender at the locally famous gay bar, Twiggy’s, and knew the bar’s value as a community anchor. But Harris also knew Cleveland’s gay community needed an alternative to the bar scene, and needed, literally, a voice. Seeing the opportunity and the need, Harris offered his voice as he opened the every show with this greeting: “Good evening Cleveland… Welcome to The Gay 90s, the voice of Northeast Ohio’s gay and lesbian community. It is the intent of this show to provide programming that represents the diversity of our gay and lesbian community and reveal the deep cultural and historical contributions that for too long have gone unrecognized. The opinions expressed are those of the host and guest and not necessarily of WERE or its management – as a matter of fact, probably not. If you are a member of our community, a friend, or just a curious listener we certainly welcome you and please give us a call this evening at 578-1300. If you’re not a friend, don’t tune in, don’t call and find some other way to torture yourself. And a word about our advertisers: unless otherwise stated, you can assume their sexual orientation to be either bi or gay or straight.“

If the show started with a (figurative) bang, according to Harris, it “went out with a whimper.” He compared the show’s finale on July 11, 1999, to the last episode of the Mary Tyler Moore television show in 1977 when Moore simply turned off the lights and left the building – sad and anticlimactic. The legacy of the radio program, however, is anything but. In the show’s six-and-a-half-year run, thousands of Clevelanders of every flavor listened, learned, and participated in the nation’s first live gay talk show, bringing together gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, and, importantly, straight listeners. Bringing these diverse groups together to listen and learn from each other bridged, at least to some degree, a very large gap, and along with the work of many, many others, helped lay the foundation for the LGBTQ civil rights momentum we witness today.

When asked if he would consider doing it again, Harris, although flattered by the question, declines to entertain the idea of hosting another gay and lesbian-exclusive radio program. “The world has changed, and I’m not sure we need that today.” Perhaps he’s right.

In an interview several years after the show last broadcast, Harris reflected on how far things have come since the show first aired in 1993. He says, “It’s exciting in this day and age to see organizations like the lesbian and gay service center that are strong, vibrant, and in storefronts. Before…. you would never have the rainbow flag hanging out in front of the Center… it would have been dangerous to do so… I can rest comfortably knowing I had some impact on helping those organizations grow.”

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In 1979, the year that Ian Hunter released “Cleveland Rocks,” the Wall Street Journal proclaimed Cleveland the nation’s “Rock and Roll Capital.” The city had earned this reputation through the influence of WJW disc jockey Alan Freed, Record Rendezvous owner Leo Mintz, jukebox supplier and, later, Agora Theater operator Hank LoConti in breaking emerging talent. It didn’t hurt that downtown Cleveland also housed many of the leading record companies’ warehouses, which supplied a seemingly insatiable demand for rock among Cleveland youth. Despite the city’s strong reputation as a rock and roll town in the 1970s, Cleveland was suffering a dismal decade economically. At a time when Cleveland had become the butt of jokes on national television, few could have imagined the city’s landing one of the world’s most iconic shrines to rock and roll.

The idea for a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was conceived by Atlantic Records founder and R&B producer Ahmet Ertegun. Ertegun and other music industry luminaries formed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 1983 in hopes of creating a permanent shrine to rock music. The Foundation planned to locate the new facility in Manhattan, close to the heart of the recording industry, and at first few outsiders had any inkling of the plan. In Cleveland, Hank LoConti and his friends separately envisioned a museum to honor the city’s seminal role in popularizing rock music, particularly local disc jockey Alan Freed’s coining of the term “rock and roll” and hosting the first rock concert, the Moondog Coronation Ball, in 1952.

Through Norm N. Nite, a Cleveland native with close ties to New York’s music scene, LoConti learned of the Foundation’s plan for a rock and roll shrine. Nite agreed to present Cleveland to Ertegun as an alternative site for the Rock Hall. Nite opened the door for a contingent of Cleveland boosters to present their case to the Foundation. Armed with letters of support from Cleveland’s leading cultural institutions, the group highlighted Cleveland’s claim as the cradle of rock—including Freed and the Moondog Coronation Ball; the role of LoConti’s Agora and radio station WMMS in breaking new talent (including David Bowie, Rush, and Bruce Springsteen); and longtime music businesses like Record Rendezvous and Record Revolution—as well as the fact that a Rock Hall would be a singular tourist attraction in Cleveland but only one among many competing points of interest in Manhattan.

After a July 1985 visit to Cleveland by Foundation leaders, the Foundation decided to hold a national competition to host the venue. The race to land the Rock Hall was on, with Cleveland, Memphis, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Philadelphia as leading contenders. All cities vying for the Rock Hall pointed to the star power behind their respective bids. San Francisco used (Jefferson) Starship’s hit “We Built This City” as a theme song for its bid. Cleveland claimed support from Michael Jackson, the Kinks, and some 50 other musicians. As the selection process progressed, the choice narrowed to Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Spurred by WMMS, 120,000 listeners voted for Cleveland as the Rock Hall site in a USA Today poll. Then Cleveland backers gathered 600,000 signatures on a petition that the Greater Cleveland Growth Association presented to the Foundation in New York. They banked on more than just the city’s preeminent historical stake in the genre—turning to the city and state governments and local Foundations, which collectively raised $26 million to lure the Rock Hall. Thanks largely to these efforts, the Foundation selected Cleveland in May 1986.

Once Cleveland got the nod, attention turned to a site. Early prospective locations for the Rock Hall included the lakefront, Public Square, the Flats, Playhouse Square, the Mall, and a couple of sites along Huron Road behind the Terminal Tower. Ruling out the adaptive reuse of an old building, Rock Hall officials opted for a “signature building” at the urging of architect I. M. Pei, whom the Foundation retained to design the hall despite his public admission that he knew little about rock music. The Foundation selected Tower City as the preferred site. Pei’s original design included an 18-story glass tower overlooking the Cuyahoga River with a concourse connecting to the Tower City Center complex.

Relations between Cleveland and New York soured by 1989, notably when the Foundation announced it would keep induction ceremonies in Manhattan rather than moving them to the Cleveland Rock Hall. In addition, Clevelanders’ tax dollars would be required, thus diverting millions of dollars away from the city’s school system—a stark contrast to what a Plain Dealer editorial called “a rock ’n’ roll industry grown fat on its successes.” The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s construction cost ballooned to $100 million, four times the original budget. When a record store opened inside Tower City in 1990, Rock Hall officials became angry and began to look at other sites besides Huron Road, which they now claimed was too small to permit construction. After several anxious months, a new site was chosen on city-owned land at North Coast Harbor. With the new location came a reduction in height. Pei’s glass tower was too tall to place so near Burke Lakefront Airport. Instead a shorter tower and glass pyramid design emerged, evoking the slanted glass wall of his Louvre design. The Rock Hall opened in September 1995.

While Cleveland civic leaders rightly lauded the Rock Hall as a coup for the city’s image and economy, many musicians and fans were ambivalent; a few were outright hostile to the very idea of a museum for rock and roll. In contrast to the music industry leaders who saw the Rock Hall as a means to foster mainstream appreciation for rock and roll’s cultural impact, many saw irony in the formal enshrinement of rock and roll, an art form often associated with rebellion and counterculture. As one reporter observed of the first induction ceremony in New York in the 1980s, “Once the sole-soul property of gifted wild men who shocked America with their three-chord songs, rock ’n’ roll is now so middle class it was accorded a most civilized honor…. It was given a dinner.”

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