Peter Frampton is tipping his hat to Sheryl Crow for helping him secure his first-ever Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination.
Performing with her last year when she was inducted, he tells Billboard she "stirred the pot big-time and made people aware — including some of the board members, I think. They thought I was already in.”
Eligible since 1997, he says he's happy for his fans. “A lot of those fans feel more outraged about it taking so long for me than I am. So they can all rest easy now; at least my name’s in the hat.”
Continuing, he says, "I never expect anything. I’m a realist. I understand there have been criticisms of the past Rock Hall administration for bizarre choices, which I agree there were. And, yes, my career is what it is, and whatever anybody thinks about it I do feel I deserve [to be inducted],” but, he adds that he still has to "get the votes...
“If I do make it, to be on the same level these artists that are the be-all and end-all, as far as I’m concerned, is pretty incredible.”
Nominated alongside Frampton, also for the first time, is Foreigner.
Founder and guitarist Mick Jones, along with bassist Rick Wills, are longtime friends with Frampton, with Wills playing on his first three albums.
Wills tells Billboard, "We’re more than thrilled; it’s been over 20 years since we’ve been waiting for this day. I suppose we were frustrated, to be perfectly honest, but we tried to hide it as best we could because we didn’t want to appear like we were sad people [laughs]. I mean what else could you do but what we’ve done already with our music and what people have appreciated and enjoyed. We didn’t understand why we didn’t get that recognition.”
And manager Phil Carson, agrees, saying, “Oh, of course it’s been frustrating, and I do know that many of the nominating committee members have put Foreigner on the list, but we just never got in.[This year] the usual suspects who have always been in our court voted, and I guess there was just that little bit of extra credibility of people that surround Foreigner, surround Mick, helped.”
Original singer Lou Gramm has long maintained that it was Rolling Stone and Rock Hall co-founder and former Rock Hall Foundation Chairman Jann Wenner who kept them from being nominated.
The Class of 2024 will be announced in April with the ceremony set for Cleveland in the fall -- date to be announced.
Check out Frampton's post about it on his official X account here.
Check out Ozzy's post about it on his official Instagram, as well as his statement below he released on his official Facebook page.
Speaking of Ozzy......Ozzy Osbourne wants nothing to do with rapper Kanye West.
Ozzy says Kanye asked him if he could sample Ozzy's live performance of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" from his appearance at the US Festival in 1983 for a track on his new album, Vultures.
Ozzy refused, but Kanye went ahead and used it anyway, playing the song last Thursday at a listening party in Chicago, to which Ozzy says he refused permission because West is an "Anti-Semite and has caused untold heartache to many... I want no association with this man."