Eminem, Dolly Parton and Lionel Richie Lead Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2022 class
Duran Duran, Pat Benatar, Judas Priest, Carly Simon, Eurythmics, and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis will also enter the Cleveland institution
By Andy Greene
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has officially announced this year’s inductees: Eminem, Dolly Parton, Duran Duran, Lionel Richie, Pat Benatar, Eurythmics, and Carly Simon will join the class of 2022 in the Performers category.
Additionally, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and Judas Priest will receive the Musical Excellence Award; Harry Belafonte and Elizabeth Cotten will be given the Early Influence Award; and attorney Allen Grubman, record executive/producerJimmy Iovine, and R&B singer/Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson will be presented with the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
The induction ceremony will be held on Nov. 5, 2022 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. It will air at a later date on HBO and stream on HBO Max. There will also be a radio simulcast on SiriusXM’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Radio.
“This diverse group of inductees each had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture and helped change the course of rock & roll,” John Sykes, Chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, said in a statement. “Their music moved generations and influenced so many artists that followed.”
Dolly Parton is entering the Hall despite her declaration on March 14, weeks after the ballots went out, that she was removing herself from consideration. The Hall of Fame said it was way too late for such a move, and Parton reversed course just as the voting period was closing late last week.
“It was always my belief that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was for people in rock music,” she told NPR. “I have found out lately it’s not necessarily that. But if they can’t go there to be recognized, where can they go? And so I felt like I was taking away from someone that maybe deserved it certainly more than me since I never considered myself a rock artist. But obviously, there’s more to it than that.”
Unlike most years, every inductee from the Performers category is alive and either an active touring artist or has performed in recent years. Eurythmics are the only inactive group, but Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart remain close friends and they came together in 2019 for a thrilling set at the Rainforest Benefit in New York City. They will almost certainly put on a similar show at the ceremony in November.
The current lineup of Duran Duran is entering the Hall of Fame along with former guitarists Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. They haven’t played with Cuccurullo since he departed the group in 2001, and they haven’t performed with Taylor since he left in 2006. “There’s no way I’d be sitting here talking to you if it wasn’t for the incredible artistic contributions of both Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo,” Simon Le Bon said on SiriusXM shortly after the Hall of Fame news broke earlier this year. “If we get through, it would be great to get on stage with them again.”
The induction of Judas Priest is a chance for the band to reunite with guitarist K.K. Downing. He left the group in 2011 and exchanged bitter words with his ex-bandmates in the press before putting together his own edition of the group called KK’s Priest in 2020. Former drummers Les Blinks and Dave Holland are also being inducted. Holland died in 2018, but Blinks is a member of K.K.’s Priest and could conceivably perform with the band at the induction for the first time in several decades.
Eminem is the only hip-hop artist to be inducted as a Performer this year, the only artist that began releasing music in the Nineties, and the only act to be inducted in their first year of eligibility. This was the third nomination for Eurythmics and Judas Priest, the second for Pat Benatar (who will be inducted alongside her husband and longtime collaborator Neil Giraldo), and the first for Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, and Lionel Richie.
This will be only the third time the ceremony has been held in Los Angeles following the 1993 event at the Century Plaza Hotel and the 2013 one at the Microsoft Theater, which was then called the Nokia Theater. Ticket information will be announced in the coming weeks.