Canwest News Service
VANCOUVER — Red Robinson has been interviewing rock-and-rollers since 1954. Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Sam Cooke, Vancouver's legendary DJ talked to them all.
He kept tapes of all his interviews. A couple of years ago, he had them digitized. Last week, he donated them to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.
"Having Red's material, all these interviews, is just invaluable," said Hall of Fame president Terry Stewart, who flew to Vancouver to pick up the collection.
"There are interviews here with artists that nobody else has. Period. End of story. For us to have access to them is just incredible."
Robinson's collection is quite historic, because Red was one of the first rock and roll DJs in North America.
"Basically [there were] one or two in Canada, maybe half a dozen in America, something like that," Stewart said.
"There's another thing that's different about Red, aside from keeping the stuff: he kept doing it. There's only one or two guys [like that]."
Sadly, most interviews from rock and roll's early days have disappeared.
"They were taped over, thrown away, put in the wrong room with the wrong temperature," Stewart said.
"[They] evaporated, are just gone."
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's goal is "to preserve this art form in every way possible, and make it accessible to people to do research." So when Stewart found out about Robinson's archive, he asked Red for it.
Robinson would love to have kept it in Canada, but there was no place for it to go.
"There is no repository for my stuff, or Bruce Allen's, or Bryan Adams', or anybody," Robinson said. "It's a disgrace."
So he decided to give to the Rock Hall.
"My kids don't want the stuff, they can't relate to it," said Robinson, 72, who has been a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 1994.
"But they're historical documents. If I pack it up and do the glory glory hallelujah thing, it should live on, because it's a piece of history."
The interviews will be part of a new library and archive the Hall of Fame is opening this fall, in a separate facility from the main museum. The library and archive's director Andy Leach said it has some amazing stuff.
"I had four interviews for the job," said Leach, 36.
"On the first or second one they took me into the vault and I saw things like the lyrics to In My Life, hand-written by John Lennon. It's stunning. You get choked up.
"If [things like this are on display] in the museum, it's really nice to be shoulder to shoulder with other fans, it's kind of a community of people. It's everybody's history, and it gets to you. It's really cool."
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was conceived in 1983 and started electing members in 1986, but the actual building wasn't opened until 1995. The first couple of years of inductees concentrated on early rock and rollers such as Elvis, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry. The Beatles and Bob Dylan were elected in 1988, the Rolling Stones a year later.
Over the years, the list of inductees has grown quite broad. Nobody has ever called Madonna a rock and roller, but she was elected in 2008. Swedish pop sensations Abba made the list this year.
This did not please some people.
"One issue right now that I'm dealing with is, people don't understand how Abba can be inducted," said Stewart, 64.
"I explain to them that Abba doesn't come out of the Gershwin/Irving Berlin songbook, they come out of the Elvis Presley rock and roll songbook. But they are translated through Swedish, and it's 40 years later.
"But people don't want to accept that. They ask Why didn't Kiss get in?' Well, they didn't get the votes. There's 600 voters. I'm the one that nominates [Kiss]. Every year I nominate them. I did comic books with Gene Simmons [Stewart used to run Marvel comics]. Kiss is one of those groups I think influentially deserves to be in.
"The basis for induction is impact, influence and innovation. All I say when I nominate Kiss is, This is a band that caused more kids to pick up a guitar in the last 30 or 40 years probably than any other band.' End of story."
Voting is conducted by the 400 living members of the hall and 200 people from the music industry (record company types, managers, writers, DJs, etc.). The only criteria is that your first record has to be 25 years old. A 35-person board headed by Bruce Springsteen's manager Jon Landau sifts through hundreds of names before deciding what acts to vote on. Once you get on the ballot, you need 50 per cent to get in.
"That's much more inclusive than sports hall of fames, which are typically 75 per cent," Stewart said.
"That's a number that's really hard to reach, which is why many years in the sports hall of fames, you don't have anybody get in."
Any rock fan will have favourites they feel should be inthe Guess Who, Steve Miller, Gram Parsons, Arthur Alexander, the Smiths, the Replacements, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe and Tom Waits spring to mind. Many fans launch petitions, although Stewart says they have no effect on voters.
" I had a woman come to me with 130,000 signatures that she got for
Johnny Rivers that she got by sitting out at a rest stop at the Ohio Turnpike," Stewart said.
"And she lives in her car. I'm not kidding. We had
Johnny Rivers coming in to do a show, and I invited her, and she was too embarrassed to come because she lives in her car."
As president, Stewart has learned to deal with it.
"The issue I face is that everybody filters who should be in and who shouldn't be in by who they like," Stewart said.
"I get 5,000 to 10,000 e-mails a year that are Dear moron,' or Dear idiot.' I try to respond to 99 per cent of them, [even though] they're pretty vehement and vitriolic. I say to them Okay Mr. Smarty Pants, if you're so wise about what rock and roll is, give me five artists that have to be inducted that you hate.' And nobody has ever ever answered that, because they can't get past what they like."
FROM: http://www.kelowna.com/2010/02/01/red-robinson-around-the-clock-vancouver-rock-n-roll-legacy-heads-to-hall-of-fame/
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