Chrissie Hynde added her voice on Friday to a conversation sparked by Courtney Love about women in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“I don’t even wanna be associated with it,” the 71-year-old singer said of the Rock Hall, in a message she shared on Facebook. “It’s just more establishment backslapping. I got in a band so I didn’t have to be part of all that.”
The 71-year-old singer was inducted in 2005 as a member of the Pretenders. “Other than Neil Young’s participation in the induction process, the whole thing was, and is, total bollocks,” Hynde wrote. “It’s absolutely nothing to do with rock ‘n’ roll and anyone who thinks it is is a fool.”
In a piece for The Guardian, Love noted that only 8.5 percent of Rock Hall inductees and only nine of the 31 people on the nominating board are women.
“If so few women are being inducted into the Rock Hall, then the nominating committee is broken,” wrote Love, 58. “If it cannot properly honour what visionary women artists have created, innovated, revolutionized and contributed to popular music – well, then let it go to hell in a handbag.”
This year’s list of nominees for induction includes Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper, Sheryl Crow and Missy Elliott – as well as The White Stripes (which has Meg White) and New Order (which has Gillian Gilbert). Inductees will be announced in May.
Love and Hynde are not the first artists to criticize the Rock Hall. In 2021, Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider slammed it for not respecting metal bands.
“The RnR Hall committee members are arrogant elitist a**holes who look down on metal & other bands that sell millions because we’re not their definition of cool,” the singer, now 68, said. “The fan vote is their ‘throwing a bone’ to the peasants. I want to say FU, but I want them to have to deal with us!”
Last year, Ted Nugent blasted the Rock Hall for inducting artists from other genres.
“Why don’t we just go down to Chuck Berry’s grave and take a s**t on it?” he said. “Why ABBA before Styx? Why Patti Smith before Triumph? Why Grandmaster Flash or JAY-Z at all?”
Nugent, 74, said he has no “need” to be inducted. “The authenticity of the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame has been so tainted by the inclusion of not just non-rockers but anti-rockers. Madonna? Really? So I find it offensive on that level.
“I don’t take this stuff personally but I find it offensive to real rockers, to real rock artists and to real rock and roll fans.”