This year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies held March 18th at the Waldorf-Astoria were not the most star-studded in the seventeen-year history of enshrining musical luminaries. Nonetheless, the list of this year’s honorees, which included the late Chet Atkins, Brenda Lee, Gene Pitney, Isaac Hayes, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Talking Heads, and Forest Hills’ own punk rock pioneers, the Ramones, made for a worthy line-up.

The induction of the Ramones was a bittersweet and somewhat strange affair. Pearl Jam guitarist and lead vocalist Eddie Vedder made a half-hour long rambling speech that contained the occasional expletive; one can nearly imagine the editing department at cable’s VH-1 working furiously to edit the speech for broadcast 48 hours later. To make matters worse, the attendees at the $2500 per plate dinner were clearly getting antsy, giving Vedder a fiendish pleasure.

Johnny, Dee Dee, and Marky Ramone looked remarkably unchanged by time, and a publicity still of the band waiting for the “E” train at Continental Avenue shown during a two-minute video tribute certainly made it feel like 1976 all over again. Sadly though, the band’s front man, the late Joey Ramone (née Jeffrey Hyman), seemed to be an afterthought except for a perfunctory mention from his self-absorbed former bandmates. For some reason, neither Joey’s mom nor his brother came to the podium to accept the Hall of Fame statue.

Few members of the entertainment industry have enjoyed the varied career paths Isaac Hayes has. He has been a noted composer and producer for others, a music star in his own right, a record company owner, an actor, and, most recently, an on-air personality for New York’s KISS-FM.

While it was always commonplace for white artists to cover songs written and originally recorded by African-American musicians, Isaac Hayes, along with the Isley Brothers, were among the first to reverse the process. I asked him why he chose to record Jimmy Webb’s “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” and “Walk On By,” as well as “The Look Of Love” written by Burt Bacharach and, in doing so, turning them into gripping short stories. “Those are all soulful songs in that they speak to the most human of experiences: the affairs of the heart,” Hayes said, with his usual aplomb. Isaac Hayes told the press that his greatest thrill was performing “The Theme From Shaft” at the 1972 Academy Awards.

Coincidentally, singer/songwriter and ‘60s heartthrob Gene Pitney cited his own appearance at the Academy Awards a decade earlier singing “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” as his career highlight. Pitney, who wrote “Hello Mary Lou” for Ricky Nelson and “He’s A Rebel” for Darlene Love and the Crystals, also had hits with such memorable tunes as “Town Without Pity,” “It Hurts To Be In Love,” and “I’ve Got To Be Strong,” admitted that his legacy has suffered because he recorded his songs for a now defunct small record company, Musicor. Another interesting factoid about Gene Pitney is that his publicist in the early Sixties was Andrew Loog Oldham, who also happened to represent a young British rock band named the Rolling Stones. Pitney was the first singer to cover a Mick Jagger/Keith Richards tune, “The Girl Belongs To Yesterday,” a full six months before the Stones had their first American hit, “Tell Me,” during the summer of ‘64.

It would not be a stretch to call Brenda Lee a “G-rated” Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera of her day, as she was a mere 14 years old when she started recording hits for Decca Records. Lee was also one of the very few female artists to have hits on both the country and pop charts in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. I asked if her mentor, Nashville record producer Owen Bradley, a noted conservative in Music City, was ever upset about her rock & roll success. “Not at all,” said Lee, adding, “ he even wrote one of my biggest pop hits, ‘Sweet Nothings.’”

Arguably the biggest act honored at the Waldorf-Astoria was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who, despite their quarter-century long career, are still considered contemporary artists.

In the press room, the politically liberal Petty acknowledged that his biggest hit, “I Won’t Back Down,” has been co-opted by certain right-wing groups, a problem Bruce Springsteen has had with “Born In The USA.” “It’s a drag, but I can’t control who plays my music at political rallies,” Petty said.

I guess that’s just part of rock & roll.