GRAMMY WEEK REPORT : THE PASSAGES OF ROCK : THE RESPECTABLE : At Long Last, the Grammys Grow Up : Why music industry awards have been out of touch

When rock ‘n’ roll slammed into America in the ‘50s, the kids loved it, parents hated it and some wanted it banned. But now, closing in on 40, rock music permeates American society and has been exported and embraced throughout the world. Ironically, the record industry’s Grammy Awards were slow to fall under the spell. That too has changed. The passages of rock are charted in three stories:

* The notorious beginnings, seen through a movie about one of its wildest forefathers, Jerry Lee Lewis.

* An analysis of the Grammys and rock’s present respectability.

* A look at the cutting-edge artists who are pushing into the future.

T he Grammy Awards .

To millions of rock fans, the words are the punch line to a joke--with good reason.

For years, Grammy choices were out of touch with the most vital currents of pop music--often hilariously so.

What respect can you have for an academy that gives best album or best record awards to Christopher Cross, the Captain & Tennille, Toto, Olivia Newton-John and Glen Campbell, but none to Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, David Bowie, the Who, Bruce Springsteen, Marvin Gaye and Prince?

Grammy critics have attacked the awards process with such acidity over the years that former rock musician Mike Greene sounds tame when he declares, “There were times when I winced when I heard the names of the winners being read.”

What makes Greene’s remarks noteworthy is that he is the president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the sponsor of the Grammys.

Thanks in part to Greene’s efforts, however, the Grammys have undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years.

Mention of the awards will still draw snickers from cutting-edge artists and fans (see article on The Extreme, Page 70), but the nominees and, crucially, the winners in the key Grammy categories are becoming increasingly creditable.

Instead of measuring achievement by sales and allegiance to traditional pop forms, academy members--who determine the Grammy winners--now recognize the extra dimension of rock-era pop: artful music that mirrors and shapes social and cultural attitudes.

Paul Simon’s “Graceland” and U2’s “The Joshua Tree” were distinguished Grammy choices for album of the year in 1987 and 1988, respectively, and Tracy Chapman’s widely praised debut album is the favorite to continue the winning streak on Wednesday when the 31st annual awards ceremony is held at the Shrine Auditorium.

Progress is also reflected in the list of distinguished best-album nominees since 1984: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” Prince’s “Purple Rain” and “Sign ‘O’ the Times,” Peter Gabriel’s “So” and Sting’s “ . . . Nothing Like the Sun.” Most would once have been rejected as too radical for mainstream Grammy sensibilities.

Why the turnaround?

Greene and his two immediate predecessors at the academy--Bill Ivey and Mike Melvoin--saw the weaknesses in the Grammy system and worked to correct them. The result: A modernization of the awards structure with the addition of blues, contemporary folk, rap, reggae and hard-rock/heavy-metal categories, among others, and the recruitment of more than 2,000 new members.

Yet all three men acknowledge that the progress would have been impossible without one simple fact: attrition. Rock ‘n’ roll was dismissed during the early years of the Grammys as kid’s music. Well, those kids have grown up.

Explained Bill Ivey, who was chairman in 1981 and 1982, “The members now are comfortable with the vocabulary of rock ‘n’ roll . . . the use of political and socially sensitive lyrics, the use of a rock instrumental vocabulary and vocal performance style--things that once seemed foreign to them.”

Off to a Bad Start

Nel blu, dipinto di blu.

--Title lyric from Domenico Modugno’s 1958 hit

Better known as “Volare (To Fly),” Modugno’s 1958 recording was a hit in Italy before it was released in the the United States.

Written by Modugno and Franco Migliacci (who got the idea for the lyrics from a drawing on the back of a cigarette package), the song was a likable, curious tale about a man who paints his hands blue and dreams of flying through the air. Or something like that.

Record executives saw so much potential in “Volare” that at least six other versions (including one by Dean Martin) were rushed out to compete with Modugno, but the Italian emerged victorious. His record spent six weeks at No. 1 on the national pop charts.

Like most pop hits, the song then faded into nostalgia--revived at anniversaries or oldie radio shows. Its impact on pop music was nil. There wasn’t a run of Italian hits, and Modugno faded from the scene after his follow-up--”Piove” (Ciao, Ciao Bambina)”--stalled at No. 97 on the charts.

The only reason “Volare” is important at all is that it was named the best song and best record of the year at the first Grammy Awards ceremony in 1959.

To many critics, it was the start of a losing steak that continued--with rare exceptions--for more than 20 years.

Academy Goals

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences was formed almost by accident.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce embarked in 1956 on a beautification project. The objective: Lining the streets with stars saluting the greats of radio, television, movies and recordings. To determine who should be honored, committees were set up in each of the fields.

In its deliberations, the five-member recording industry committee decided to use sales as the basis for who would get the stars. But it became apparent that sales alone didn’t measure an artistic achievement. What about saluting artistic excellence a la the motion picture Oscar? The answer was the start of the recording academy and the Grammys.

The academy had approximately 700 members--all of whom were involved in the creative, rather than business end, of making records--when the first awards were handed out on May 5, 1959 in the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Ironically, sales--from the beginning--played a central role in the Grammy process. Almost without exception, the winners in the best record category have been Top 10 hits--often No. 1 hits. The other characteristic of most best record winners: A smooth, easy-listening style.

Outside of rock, there weren’t many compelling choices in 1958. In fact, Grammy old-timers are probably grateful that they didn’t make an even more embarrassing choice that first year. Among the five finalists: Ross Bagdasarian’s novelty, “The Chipmunk Song.”

The Rock Gap

It’s easy to see why rock was considered unworthy when the Grammy founders got together. The academy was the brainchild of the musical Establishment--people raised on big bands and Tin Pan Alley who had shaped the post-World War II sounds now being evicted from the Top 10 by rock.

For the most part, the voters seemed impervious to what was happening in the world at large. They tended to look at music in the narrowest and most technical terms.

While rock chronicled the social revolution of the ‘60s in a way that has redesigned the nature and boundaries of pop, the Grammy voters in that turbulent decade were content to declare as record of the year such mellow offerings as Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” and Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.”

Academy directors--sensing a need to better recognize the rock community--established a best contemporary/rock category in 1964. But the winners added little to Grammy credibility. The choices, from 1963 to 1966: Nino Tempo and April Stevens’ “Deep Purple,” Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” and--in the year of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby”--the New Vaudeville Band’s novelty “Winchester Cathedral.”

By 1968, the embarrassment might have proved too much. The Grammys quietly dropped the contemporary/rock category.

Signs of Change

There were signs in the ‘70s that the Grammy membership--nearly 4,000 by the end of the decade--was becoming more responsive to rock-era sensibilities. Hard-core rock acts were still outsiders, but there was room for artists--notably Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Billy Joel and Carole King--who combined contemporary viewpoint and traditional pop craft. Wonder won three best album awards during the decade, while Simon won two. Joel and King received one each.

Still, the membership’s longstanding emphasis on sales and easy-listening traits continued to dominate the choices.

By the early ‘80s, Greene was beginning to get involved in the academy. A musician-turned-businessman, Greene, now 39, served as president of the academy’s Atlanta chapter and volunteer chairman of the national board of trustees before becoming its first paid president last year.

The first academy chairman with a rock background, Greene felt badly that many of the artists who had inspired him had been overlooked by the academy.

“You can go through the whole list of ‘60s rock artists--Dylan, John Lennon, the Rolling Stones,” Greene said recently, sitting in his office at the academy headquarters in Burbank. “They all affected me as a person and as a musician.

“I was very much an activist in the South during the the civil rights movement. . . . Had my head banged around quite a few times in marches with Dr. King. I was also very much an involved in the whole Vietnamese (protests) . . . and rock music was there every step of the way, expressing how we all felt.”

In his early academy involvement, Greene didn’t find any “us-vs.-them” attitude toward rock. He simply found lethargy, a condition, he felt, due largely to the fact that the organization relied solely on volunteer leadership. At the time he was volunteer chairman, for instance, Greene was also executive vice president of Crawford Post Production Inc., an Atlanta-based television post production firm. One of his early goals: The installation of a paid, full-time president.

Greene found allies in his two predecessors as volunteer chairman: Bill Ivey, director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, and Mike Melvoin, a jazz-oriented keyboardist who played on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and whose daughter, Wendy, was in Prince’s Revolution band.

Ivey urged the creation of new award categories to reflect ethnic and regional styles, while Melvoin concentrated on an “Operation Outreach” program to recruit new--and younger--members.

“The only reason I’m sitting here now is that I saw we could make progress. I saw the academy as a big oil tanker and I saw it slowly starting to turn,” Greene said.

“I saw that the academy wanted to be a more open, inclusive type of organization, but that it just needed a kick in the ass to get them in the right direction. We are moving at the speed of light in relationship to what happened in the first couple of decades.”

About the increased credibility of the Grammys, he added, “I have a terribly warped belief in the theory that art--be it literature or painting or film or music--is really the only lasting watermark of a society and it’s gratifying to me that the Grammy awards (better) reflect that extra (social) dimension that rock has brought to pop music.”

Still, he knows there will be upset victories that may again cause him to wince.

“When you have an organization this big, you’ll always have to take a deep breath. But, for me, last year was a litmus test of our progress. When I saw nominations for Peter Gabriel and U2 and a number of other artists who are doing such creative things and saying such important things in their music, (I was confident) we were headed in the right direction. The main goal was to make the Grammys respond to all areas of the creative community and I think we are within shouting distance of that goal.”

WHAT IF . . . ? What would have been the best-record award winners if the Grammys had been more serious about rock ‘n’ roll? A list of Rolling Stone magazine’s nominations for the year’s best singles from 1964 to 1975 differs sharply from the best record Grammy Awards of those years--the decade in which Grammy voters exhibited the least rock ‘n’ roll sensibilities. The Rolling Stone chart was taken from the magazine’s ranking of the 100 best singles of the last 25 years.

Year Rolling Stone Magazine 1964 Beatles”’I Want to Hold Your Hand” 1965 Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” 1966 Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” 1967 Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”* 1968 Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” 1969 Creedence’s “Fortunate Son” 1970 Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” 1971 Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” 1972 T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong”** 1973 Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”* 1974 Raspberries’ “Overnight Sensation” 1975 Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”

Year Grammys 1964 Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto’s “The Girl From Ipanema.” 1965 Herb Alpert’s “A Taste of Honey.” 1966 Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” 1967 5th Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away.” 1968 Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” 1969 5th Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” 1970 Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” 1971 Carole King’s “It’s Too Late.” 1972 Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” 1973 Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” 1974 Olivia Newton-John’s “I Honestly Love You.”** 1975 Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.”

* “Respect” was awarded Grammys in 1967 for best R&B; recordingand female R&B; vocal, while “Superstition” was awarded Grammys in 1973 for best R&B; song and best male R&B; vocal.

** Alternatives in 1972 included the Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice,” Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love,” the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and Derek and the Dominoes’ “Layla.” Other possibilities in 1974 included Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” Stevie Wonder’s “You Haven’t Done Nothin” or “Living for the City,” and Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me.”