Superstar power arrived early at the 39th Rock &Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cleveland on Saturday night, as Cher strode onstage and joined Dua Lipa, who opened the show with “Believe,” the 1998 dance-pop smash that revitalized Cher’s career.
Perseverance was a recurring theme across the 5 1/2 hour ceremony, which also honored two mainstays of the ’70s and ’80s: funk and disco powerhouse Kool &the Gang and pop-rock band Foreigner.
Peter Frampton, 74, who is battling the degenerative muscle disease called inclusion bodymyositis, thanked David Bowie for rescuing him from a low point and performed a short set from a chair. Mary J. Blige, 53, spoke about having faith throughout her ups and downs ) before a sterling three-song performance.
And Ozzy Osbourne, 75, who has paused touring because of health challenges, appeared onstage in a suitably sinister black throne adorned with skulls and bat wings to offer a brief collection of thank yous and introduce a rendition of his de facto theme song “Crazy Train.”
The segment devoted to A Tribe Called Quest gave the night its emotional peak. In his speech honoring the Queens quartet, comedian Dave Chappelle credited the group with revolutionizing hip-hop aesthetics in the 1990s, calling their emergence a “cue for everybody that you could be cool and not necessarily gangster,” and mourned the loss of Phife Dawg, the member who died in 2016 at 45, from complications of diabetes.
The final induction of the night was offered not by a musician, but an Oscar-winning actress: Julia Roberts, who unpacked her longtime Dave Matthews Band fandom in a lengthy, passionate speech that praised the group’s “joyous, spontaneous abandon.”
Harking back to his pre-fame bartending gig at Miller’s, a jazz-focused club in Charlottesville, Virginia, Matthews, 57, emphasized how much he had looked up to his future bandmates Carter Beauford and LeRoi Moore, who died in 2008.
Matthews shouted out other key members of the scene — including Miller’s owner Steve Tharp, in attendance — gushed about his fellow inductees and concluded, “I just screwed up the whole speech.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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