There are two very differing but no less valid thoughts when it comes to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. On the one hand, it’s great that artists who changed the world are celebrated once a year, as fans can relive their memories with a crop of artists who have defined rebellion and creativity through the majesty of song. Great bands have put on legendary performances and given speeches that form part of their legacy in a lavish ceremony every year in the Hall Of Fame’s home of Cleveland, Ohio. The other side of the coin is that some of the glaring omissions make a mockery of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Artists that are such obvious choices that it feels like the institution is goading its target audience. You can’t have a boxing Hall Of Fame without Mohammed Ali, you can’t have an acting Hall Of Fame without Meryl Streep and these are the artists that would legitimize the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. 10 Iron Maiden No Place For One Of Metal’s Most Important Bands The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame is ultimately a celebration of all things loud, paying homage to rebellious statements of musical intent that disrupt the status quo and sometimes the world itself. Considering that criteria, Iron Maiden’s omission is a damning indictment of the institution itself. From their imagery to their steely-minded dedication to never straying from heavy metal’s core rulebook (largely because they wrote a lot of it), Iron Maiden are a global movement that embody everything the Hall Of Fame is supposed to stand for. It’s no wonder that Iron Maiden feel insulted by being overlooked by the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. “We don’t give a monkey’s,” singer Bruce Dickinson told the Telegraph in 2023. “Because the people that get us are not the people that run the music business establishment, whatever that is. Because that is largely run by people that can’t make a living doing anything else.” If 80,000 people singing songs about Marcus Antonius’s speech about Cesar’s murder (“The Evil That Men Do”) isn’t rock and roll, what is? There’s More To Korn Than Nu Metal No matter what direction you come at it from, Korn are one of the 90s most important bands. As influential as Radiohead or Nirvana, as vital on matters of mental health and vulnerability as voices like Michael Stipe or Tori Amos, Korn are best known for spearheading the Nu Metal movement. That’s great but it’s not even scratching the surface of their importance. Heavy metal was a world of machismo bullsh*t where even the singer of Judas Priest was forced to hide his sexuality for fear of being kicked out of heavy metal’s so-called accepting family. Kurt Cobain would soften those toxic walls by being an openly sensitive man, and everyone from David Bowie to Dee Snider and Perry Farrell have challenged stereotypes with androgyny. But Jonathan Davis brought vulnerability to metal lyrics, dropping all metaphors to express rage and anguish in literal fashion with his words. Countless teenagers were given an outlet by Korn and the generation of bands they spawned. They are a special band among special bands. 8 Motörhead They Are Motörhead And They Play Rock & Roll Gruff as old leather and twice as tough, Motörhead wrote the book on being a rock and roll outlaw. If the image of rock and roll is saturated in Jack Daniels, smelling of cigarettes, and pulling up on a Harley Davidson (fire, skulls and lightning are optional), Lemmy lived and breathed that life. It was no gimmick. For Lemmy Kilmister, Motörhead’s mission statement of “Everything Louder Than Everything Else” was how he conducted his life. You could give countless reasons for Motörhead’s inclusion, but the band that wrote “Ace Of Spades” has to be any Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Lemmy had cameos in Airheads and various other movies, and there are tens of millions of WWE fans who find themselves headbanging to Triple H’s entrance music and may not have even heard of the band. The band’s Snaggletooth mascot is so iconic that high-street stores carry Motörhead t-shirts because they personify rock and roll. There is not one box that Motörhead do not tick when it comes to being rock and roll. 7 Blink-182 21st Century Rock Gods Deserve More Respect Respect is a funny thing, and it alters depending on who you talk to. Blink-182 are a trigger for a lot of people, unable to accept that Blink are a classic band that at least two generations herald as legends in the same way they see Nirvana or Green Day. It’s hard to reconcile that a band that’ll get naked and sing about dog farts are considered talents that are in the same Hall Of Fame as The Beatles and Radiohead, but Blink-182 bridged the gap between the generation-defining emo and pop punk movements and, depressingly, those were the last bands to conquer the world. It may be nearly impossible to imagine the likes of Bring Me The Horizon or Sleep Token being even on this institution’s radar, because they’re not even close to what the likes of Blink achieved. Blink-182 were mainstream stars who influenced the fashion of their era, as well as the music, and their albums are loved with a burning passion by the Warped Tour community. That Blink-182 fill stadiums while someone beloved and respected like Weezer play far smaller venues, truly shows that fan popularity will always overpower the outlook of insufferable musos. There Must Be Space For The Most Successful Prog Rock Band Of The Last 30 Years It is a meme that Tool fans are passionate to the point of being insufferable, but your writer is one such Tool fan, and it is a travesty that the most musically interesting band to go mainstream are not in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. There are not many (if any) bands in the pool of festival headliners who can hold a candle to Tool when it comes to raw musical ability. Prog Rock has had a small renaissance since the turn of the millenium, mainly thanks to the Californians achieving mainstream success despite creating a complex musical kaleidoscope, but Tool are an anti-trend sensation. Being one of the most antagonistically anti-mainstream bands ever, Tool reveled in doing everything a band was supposed to avoid doing, hilariously achieving great success and artistic achievements in the process. Their photo shoots were entirely off-brand for a heavy rock band, they didn’t appear in their music videos, and Tool delivered their most complex musical opus as music got dumber, with Lateralus coming at the height of Nu Metal. Lots of people “don’t get Tool” but for them to sit alongside the likes of Guns N Roses and AC/DC, while making bananas music using the Fibonacci sequence, is quite an achievement. 5 Thin Lizzy A Frankly Wild Snub Towards The Emerald Rockers In a mind-boggling snub from the powers that be, Thin Lizzy are almost too cool for any of this. The band who wrote Jailbreak are too badass to put into something as stuffy as a Hall Of Fame. It almost feels like Phil Lynott and his group of rock and roll bandits are too untameable, a mob of party animals that rage just too hard to be contained by an institution. Nevertheless, Thin Lizzy deserve recognition for being one of the 70s most fun bands. At the heart of it all, Phil Lynott is one of rock and roll’s greatest showman. If Bruce and his E Street Band are kissing babies and high-fiving grandma, Lynott and Thin Lizzy are the band for the reprobates staggering into the wee hours of the early morning, firing on all cylinders and singing about killers on the loose. In a world where the establishment thinks Mariah Carey is a potential representative for rock and roll, not recognizing Thin Lizzy ought to see someone thrown in jail. 4 Linkin Park They Can’t Ignore One Of The Biggest Selling Artists Of The 21st Century Looking at where pop culture is right now compared to where it was in the 2000s, it feels unfathomable, but there was a period when Linkin Park were the biggest selling act in the world. Take all the genres that always dominate the charts, like Country, Rap, EDM, Boy/Girl bands, MOR pop artists making cheese-on-toast fodder for millions of dullards. All of them were choking on the dust of Chester Bennington, Mike Shinoda, as they released Hybrid Theory, one of the best debut albums ever written. More than that, Linkin Park helped open the door for 21st century rap artists to be entered into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. The likes of Public Enemy and Anthrax, Run DMC and Aerosmith and Fishbone, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine brought rap into rock and roll, but Linkin Park’s hook-up with Jay-Z is largely responsible for 21st century rappers being seen as “acts who rock”. If Hova is already in the Hall Of Fame, the band that provided his most rocking moments on their mash-up album deserve their flowers too. 3 Mötley Crüe One Of Glam’s Biggest Bands Are Out In The Cold It is unfathomable that there can be a Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame that wants to be taken seriously that doesn’t have Motley Crue in it. So much of rock’s stereotype look comes from the 1980s, a time of big egos and bigger hair. It was a scene, look, and legend that Tommy, Nikki, Mick and Vince wrote the book on, as Mötley Crüe ignited the streets of Hollywood that gave birth to Guns N Roses and the whole legend of the Sunset Strip. Something that doesn’t get spoken about enough is that Mötley Crüe should be in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame on the strength of their songs. Too Fast For Love is a debut album that fizzes with spunky excitement and punk rock recklessness, Dr Feelgood is 80s glam’s greatest moment, and they’d even have a respectable reputation as a great live band if their singer wasn’t a disgrace to his profession. Whatever way you slice it, Motley Crue’s music is every bit as important as their (bad) reputation. 2 Wu-Tang Clan Hip-Hops Hardest Crew Need To Bum Rush The Show If the powers that be have assessed that rap music has its rightful place in this institution, Wu-Tang Clan’s creativity and being the hardest crew in hip-hop history should see them inducted. There’s something so enjoyable about listening to the Wu-Tang Clan, and it’s as much about feeling the dirt under your fingernails from the grimy production and industrial production as it is the hooks and classic songs in the band’s repertoire. Wu-Tang Clan are a reason hip-hop is seen as dangerous and rebellious art, and the Hall Of Fame needs to recognize that. More than anything else, Wu-Tang Clan is a group full of legitimate geniuses who excel in production, design, wordplay, sampling and MCing. Their records are dizzying experiences, transporting the listener to another mesmerizing realm by a versatile cast of shape-shifters, spitting bars about their reality and from their imagination depending on which way the wind is blowing. Somehow, as the years roll on, Enter The 36 Chambers refuses to age, and most of their canon still sounds fresh and unique in a world full of clones. 1 Queens Of The Stone Age The Acceptable Face Of Mainstream Alternative Rock Are Sure Fire Contenders Not to suggest that there’s a certain cookie-cutter idea of what an ideal inductee feels like that permeates’ from the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, but Queens Of The Stone Age feel like everything the establishment looks for. Queens have a vibe that’s rough enough to be edgy, but slick and sexy enough to not scare off the masses. They house a timeless sound that effortlessly struts down the difficult line of balancing creativity with mainstream appeal. Crucially, Josh Homme feels as though he’s part of the “Dave Grohl circle of friends” who spring to mind when the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame is a topic of conversation. The acceptable face of rock music for people who love “Everlong” but have never heard a Kyuss record, Queens feel like Jack Black would have already inducted them “in the spirit of rock and roll”. You can see it, right? It’s weird that they haven’t sauntered in on a white swan when you think about it.