Van Halen entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, along with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five -- the first rap act to be inducted into the hall -- and R.E.M., the Ronettes and Patti Smith.
A panel of 600 industry figures selected the five acts to be inducted at the annual ceremony, to be held March 12 in New York. To be eligible, artists must have issued a first single or album at least 25 years before nomination.
"R.E.M. and myself in particular are really terrible at looking backward," R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe, told reporters via telephone from London. "We kind of, as a band, continually look forward so it's really fantastic that someone, especially the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, are looking backward to recognize the work that we've done."
"I'm just really honored that they thought of us," he added.
Van Halen was the 1980s hard rock quartet led by guitarist Eddie Van Halen, lead vocalist David Lee Roth, and later, rocker Sammy Hagar, that put out hits such as Jump and Why Can't This Be Love.
Eddie Van Halen stood out with his blistering guitar solos; his feud with Roth led to Hagar's run with the band, which produced hits into the 1990s.
R.E.M. (Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Stipe) was the quintessential indie rock band until breaking through to mass success in the early 1990s with songs like Losing My Religion.
The unique sound of their first album in 1983 Murmur, was the beginning of the multiplatinum band's emergence as leader of the US alternative scene of the 1980s and 1990s.
Punk rock poet Smith, known as the Godmother of Punk, came out of lower Manhattan in the early 1970s to create a blend of cerebral, raggedly emotional music.
Stipe said got a congratulatory call from Smith, a good friend, on Monday.
He noted that when he first heard her music in the 1970s, "I decided that I wanted to make music and be in a band ... now she and I are great friends. It was great to be able to congratulate her back."
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (Kid Creole, Cowboy, Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, Mr Ness, Raheim) led the most innovative act in hip-hop's formative era in the late 1970s, and the song The Message was like a letter from urban America. Grandmaster Flash was considered a pioneer in many DJ techniques.
With beehive hairdos and dark eyeliner, the 1960s girl group the Ronettes (Estelle Bennett, Ronnie Spector, Nedra Talley) achieved their greatest success with producer Phil Spector and his "wall of sound" style. Phil Spector co-wrote the trio's biggest hit, Be My Baby, and was married to its lead singer, Ronnie Spector.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS