One place of several people’s bucket list to visit is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Cleveland Ohio. The memorabilia filling the Hall of Fame is mostly loaned to or given by the actual artists or their families but it is enough to fill 6 floors. The basement has a lot of th general memorabilia starting with the origins of rock in country and blues. Sheet music, guitars, clothes and other stuff from the early 1900’s through the 1950’s are displayed in well labeled cases. A large display about Woodstock has a lot of displays. There you will find all the usual suspects like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Blondie, the Doors, U2, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, the Who, the Supremes, Guns N’ Roses and others.
What to Expect
Research told us we should allow 2 to 3 hours to see everything so when we got through the basement in 45 minutes, we thought either we missed something or went through too fast. We went to find one of the people we were requested to find and discovered we had 6 more floors to walk through.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Cleveland Ohio
The first floor has a stage for concerts, the gift shop and snack bar but if you look behind the stage there is some memorabilia to be found. We were looking for Rush and found a huge picture of the group as well as other material.
The second floor is dedicated to garage bands and has a hands-on lab with a wide variety of guitars and drum sets to show everyone your licks. Not surprisingly some people need more practice but occasionally there is someone that makes you stop and listen. You can also record a video for internal display about the music that meant the most to you.
The third floor has a theater, list of the inductees by year, displays for this year’s inductees. It also gives you the opportunity to vote for who think should be included in the next year’s class of inductees.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth floors display rock in the media – primarily TV. Of course, MTV has a spot there it also Ed Sullivan, Soul Train, American Bandstand and others. (If American Bandstand is of interest to you there is a 10-minute looped video on just Bandstand in the basement.)
Allow Plenty of Time
Altogether we did spend about 2 ½ hours in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Cleveland Ohio. If you hit it on the right night there might be a free concert outside the main entry door – free to listen with food available for purchase!