Sex Pistols, Skynyrd finally in Rock Hall of Fame

LOS ANGELES - After years of rejection, influential bands the Sex Pistols, Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd are finally making it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The 2006 class of inductees also includes jazz legend Miles Davis and New Wave group Blondie, while trumpeter Herb Alpert and business partner Jerry Moss, founders of A&M Records, will be inducted as non-performers.

The induction, set to take place on March 13 in New York, comes a little late for Davis, who died of a stroke in 1991, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, who succumbed to a drug overdose in 1979, and for four members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Southern rock band whose career was cut short by a 1977 plane crash.

It also places punk rock bad boys the Sex Pistols firmly in the music establishment, more than a quarter of a century after they outraged British society with such nihilistic anthems as Anarchy in the UK and the ironic God Save the Queen - which had nothing to do with the British national anthem.

"If I was 20, maybe I'd be upset (about being inducted), but it's all part of the game," Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, now 50 and a radio DJ in Los Angeles, said.

He said he resented not being inducted earlier. Indeed, the Sex Pistols were up for consideration four other times, while their peers in the Clash were inducted in 2003.

Musicians become eligible for consideration 25 years after their first recording. A shortlist of nominees is sent to an international body of about 700 voting "rock experts." British heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd were each rejected on seven previous votes, a Hall of Fame spokeswoman said.

"It's about time," Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward said, adding he had long ago given up on getting inducted.

"What bothered me was not necessarily that Black Sabbath was being passed over but that hard rock and heavy metal was being passed over. ... Bands that created heavy metal music or brought it into the foreground ought to have gone into the hall of fame some time ago, quite honestly."

Ward co-founded Black Sabbath with fellow long-haired outcasts singer Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler and guitarist Tony Iommi in the gritty English city of Birmingham almost 40 years ago.

The band's ear-splitting, trance-inducing songs about doom and gloom, such as Paranoid and War Pigs, were an instant hit with fans, though critics were late to catch on.

Osbourne, the self-proclaimed "prince of darkness," was kicked out in the late 1970s, and embarked on a successful solo career. In recent years, he has become better known as the over-medicated pater familias of a chaotic family, courtesy of the TV reality series The Osbournes.

Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington said he was in "a state of shock" about the induction, although it was a "bummer" that most of the band's current lineup was not included.

Like Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd was one of the biggest and hardest-living bands of the 1970s. Best known for such classic rock staples as Free Bird and Sweet Home Alabama, the Florida band was America's answer to the Rolling Stones.

Shortly after the release of a new album by a revitalised lineup, the band's plane crashed in Mississippi, killing singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines, among others.

The band eventually regrouped, with Ronnie's brother Johnny at the microphone. Today, the only original members in the lineup are Rossington and pianist Billy Powell.

The induction ceremony will reunite the pair with original guitarist Ed King, along with original drummer Bob Burns, and his replacement, Artimus Pyle, who survived the crash and helped rescue his injured bandmates, but was later dropped.

Relations between past and present members have been strained, but Rossington hoped for a happy reunion.

"If there's any weird feelings, I think they've all gone now," he said. "I'm too old to worry about that stuff."

- REUTERS