Friday 2nd - Saturday 3rd June – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio

Friday was mostly another blogging and admin day as we had forked out for Wi-Fi at this site so it was good quality! Plus, we had an unusually late check-out at 3pm.  This meant that I could also fit a swim in the outdoor pool.  It may have been freezing initially, but in the glorious sunshine it felt lovely.  

I said we were only doing short drives this week. Well, Friday takes the biscuit!  Because we wanted to have a BBQ in a State Park on such a lovely evening, we drove just 10 minutes north up the road to Findley State Park.  We had a very easy evening as Simon was feeling under the weather, but enjoyed a camp fire into the darkness.

Saturday morning I made sure that I woke up with time to spare to go for a bike ride.  This park has what it describes as a ‘9-mile challenging mountain bike trail for advanced riders’.  Clearly, that doesn’t describe me but I thought I’d go and see what it was about anyway! After the amount of rain recently, my way was blocked on some of the paths by deep mud, but eventually I found a trail with good views of the lake and the dam where the bike route started. 

I only did a small segment of the trail and thankfully the course split into an ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ route depending on your tastes (right).  I took the easy route as the hard route went down what looked like a ravine. But I still returned to the RV with mud splashed all over me, so a successful jaunt!

We chose today to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland as it has extended opening hours on a Saturday and, for once, it would be nice not to be ushered out of the door of a museum at 5pm! It was only an hour away and I had done some advance research to find a parking lot right next to the museum for $25, however this included overnight parking – result!  It was a sunny, warm day and the Lake Erie waterfront was looking lovely.

The waterfront side of the Hall of Fame

To clarify - this sign explains the origins of the term 'rock and roll' used by Alan Freed in 1951, we all know that rock 'n' roll music was actually born in Memphis...

By the time we got into the museum it was getting towards 3pm, so only 6 and a half hours left to see everything! As you may imagine, I took a heck of a lot of pictures today.  Here’s the highlights, contact me if you’d like to see more!

2017 is the best year yet for us to visit here because the mighty Pearl Jam were inducted into the Hall of Fame only last month (along with others). So, even the program you’re handed on entry has Eddie Vedder on the front and the very first exhibit contains several items donated by the band this year:

Jeff Ament's bass from their early years. He wrote the names of various NBA basketball players on it, including Mookie Blaylock, whose moniker Pearl Jam used for their first band name. He broke this bass on the first night of the 1992 Lollapalooza tour

All 3 shirts belong to singer Eddie Vedder, he wore the one on the left on Saturday Night Live on 16th April 1994 when he opened his shirt to show the 'K' he'd drawn over his heart in tribute to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who'd died on 5th April. The drum on the left was used by Pearl Jam's first drummer, Dave Krusen, during the recording of numerous early songs, including 'Alive' and 'Yellow Ledbetter'.  Mike McCready's guitar (right) was destroyed during Pearl Jam's 2008 performance at the VH1 Rock Honours tribute to the Who.

Other talented artists were inducted this year, including ELO – here’s Jeff Lynne’s Les Paul guitar:

 

What followed was an extensive exhibit about the birth, history and time line of rock and roll that, for us, was more of a confirmation that we have had the pleasure of visiting ALL these significant locations on this trip.  I felt quite emotional.  As we progressed down the hallway I was reminded of all the places we have had the privilege of seeing first hand – Memphis with Beale Street and Sun Studios:

Graceland (Right, an extremely rare set up for a double-necked guitar - 6 string bass with 6 string guitar, that belonged to Elvis)

Detroit:

...then the timeline crosses to England to London and Liverpool (been to those!):

 

back to San Francisco and Haight Ashbury:

 

....then Los Angeles:

 

The timeline then moves to the cross-Atlantic ‘Blank Generation’ punk phase between 1975-1980:

 

.....before moving on to our personal favourite, the Seattle sound or ‘grunge’, circa 1979-1995:

 

Cue another excuse to show some Pearl Jam/Soundgarden/Nirvana memorabilia:

Chris Cornell's Soundgarden guitar from the 1980s, along with drumsticks belonging to Matt Cameron of Soundgarden, later and currently Pearl Jam's drummer

Nivana's original demo tape from 1990

Roy Orbison's guitar and black glasses

There was then a large section of individual displays about some of the 700 inducted artists, along with a collection of amazing memorabilia – I guess when you are inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame you donate your best stuff!

The double-neck guitar used by Don Felder of the Eagles during the recording of 'Hotel California' in 1976 and onstage.

Johnny Ramone's guitar, signed, with 'my main guitar 1997-1996' written on it

Steve Tyler of Aerosmith's stage outfit and microphone stand

David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust tour outfit

Collection of Who memorabilia

Metallica like black....

Pencil drawing of a rock band by a young by Jimi Hendrix

Ringo Starr's drum kit played during his tenure with the Beatles between 1964-1968

The Beatles and The Rolling Stones got half a room each. All of this…. And that was just floor 1…. Of 6!

 

Up the escalator to exhibitions about ‘The architects of Rock and Roll’ - Alan Freed, the first broadcaster of the term ‘rock and roll’, Sam Phillips of Sun Studios and Les Paul, guitar building genius. 

 

 

 

Also on this floor was a display showing the evolution of audio technology.  It makes you start to feel old though, when you see a row of cassette walkmans in a museum display (right)!

The front cover of the First Edition of Rolling Stone

Carrying on up the floors there was a large exhibition relating to the 50^th Anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine. I can’t say that I pay much attention to magazines in general, but you can’t fail to recognize some of the most striking and memorable cover shots from their history as the publication has always had music at its centre.  Anyone who’s a true music icon has appeared on the front cover during the last 5 decades, but the magazine also overlapped into popular culture, politics and sporting heroes:

There were four walls filled with memorable front covers

All these exhibitions, along with a theatre showing a U2 concert in Argentina in 3D (which was a decent excuse to grab a seat for a bit for some of their best tracks), took us up to 8pm! 

Five hours of wandering and absorbing rock culture can leave you a tad bit hungry and thirsty.  We walked into downtown Cleveland and found The Corner Alley bar – a perfect combination of sports bar/bowling alley/games room and restaurant:

The Corner Alley Bar

It was no coincidence that we had found a sports bar as the NHL hockey play-offs are STILL ON! You know, the ones that we started watching back in April in Canada!  It’s down to the finals, finally(!), between the Nashville Predators and Pittsburgh Penguins, but it’s still best of 7 games.  The penguins were 2-0 up, so tonight’s game was very important for Nashville, though most in the bar were clearly Penguins fans due to the proximity to Pittsburgh.  The food was amazing and our waitress assisted us in recommending the best local brews and supplying us with regular ‘taster’ samples! Nashville fought back from 1-0 down to take the game 5-1 and keep the finals interesting.

We strolled back down to the docks, taking some moonlit pictures of the Rock Hall on our way back to the RV: