The Rock Hall Opened In 1995 With One of the Greatest Cleveland Concerts of All Time

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame will have plenty of opportunities to celebrate the opening of its $135 million expansion over the next year, particularly with its induction ceremony coming back to Cleveland in late 2027. Live music will almost certainly be part of those celebrations, as the expansion includes a new state-of-the-art concert hall with a capacity of 1,400.

But whatever the Rock Hall cooks up to showcase its new digs, it will be tough to match the party it threw on Sept. 2, 1995, to mark the museum’s grand opening.

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That party was “The Concert for Hall of Fame,” held on a picture-perfect evening at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Three decades later, many still consider it the single greatest show ever to take place in the city. I was there, covering the concert as a music writer for The Plain Dealer, and I agree wholeheartedly.

The size and scale of the HBO-televised concert was unprecedented for Northeast Ohio, more on par with one-off spectacles like Live Aid or Woodstock than the old World Series of Rock shows. It featured 41 combinations of artists — rock pioneers, icons, rising stars and more — playing 68 songs over six hours and 40 minutes. The lineup was like something from a rock ‘n’ roll fantasy, with pioneers Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Little Richard mixing it up with Bob Dylan, the Kinks, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, John Fogerty, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and many more.

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The highlights are too numerous to mention here. (You can find a stream of the full show on the Rock Hall’s YouTube page.) But I vividly remember several magical moments. Johnny Cash, in one of his final Cleveland performances, blazed through “Folsom Prison Blues” and duetted with John Mellencamp on “Ring of Fire.” Dylan showed up as a surprise guest, playing “All Along The Watchtower,” “Just Like A Woman” and “Highway 61 Revisited,” then duetting with Springsteen on “Forever Young.” Springsteen, playing with the E Street Band for the first time in almost a decade, backed Chuck Berry on the opening “Johnny B. Goode” and later played with Jerry Lee Lewis.

The Boss and company also sent the sold-out crowd of 57,000 into a frenzy with “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” Al Green stole the show with an inspiring “A Change Is Gonna Come,” while Aretha Franklin took the crowd to new heights with “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” It ended with a bit of a thud at 2:10 a.m. when Berry blew up the planned finale by playing “Rock and Roll Music” in a different key than his supporting players.

But at that point, it didn’t matter. The crowd was exhausted with joy, and nothing could kill the magic.

Looking back, it was certainly my favorite musical moment in Cleveland during 30-plus years of writing and editing stories about music in the city. It was also a great way to say goodbye to the old Stadium, which was demolished soon after the show to make way for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns to build their Factory of Sadness.

Whatever happens to the site when the Browns move to Brook Park in 2029, I hope the powers that be find a way to commemorate the magic of that September ’95 show. With apologies to Van Morrison, it was one of those wild nights that call us all to come on out and dance.

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