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Over the last 12 years, Greg Harris has quietly, methodically steered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to massive financial growth despite a swamp of issues — from its lack of female inductees to Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner’s abrupt 2020 departure as foundation chairman to Dolly Parton’s (temporary) refusal to accept her nomination. According to ProPublica, the Cleveland-based hall and museum’s revenue increased from $19.2 million in Harris’ first year as president and CEO in 2012 to $54.8 million in 2023, while its annual visitors recently hit 1.5 million. “We worked to grow the business so that we’d be more stable,” says Harris. “And we have an incredible group of donors.”
Talking to Billboard by phone from the museum’s I.M. Pei-designed pyramid — before he visited the construction site of its $135 million, 50,000-square-foot expansion — Harris previewed the 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony to induct Outkast, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Cocker, The White Stripes and others. (The show, this Saturday Nov. 8, will be livestreamed on Disney+.) He also discussed the Hall of Fame’s six new board members, plus Chris Kelly, a partner at Cleveland law firm Jones Day, who became board chair in July. A former Philadelphia record-store owner, folklorist and top National Baseball Hall of Fame exec, Harris spoke of the common “emotional impact” of sports, music and folklore during the conversation, which you can read in full below.
What accounts for the revenue growth since you’ve been president?
Harris: We’ve greatly increased our visitation in those years. We made the museum more experiential. Odds are, in the summer, there’s a live band onstage. You can play guitars and drums and things in new spaces that we’ve built and jam with other visitors. We’ve made a lot of investments in improving the visitor experience, and they’ve paid off.
What’s the greatest percentage of revenue? Is it the paid visitors, or something else?
Visitors, ticket sales and retail sales are incredibly important, and we have a lot of events and groups that do events. Our fundraising is what’s enabled us to do this massive expansion project.
It strikes me that the iconic names from the ’50s and ’60s have mostly been inducted, so the Hall of Fame has to update it with new generations. Is that difficult? Fun? Both?
It’s a healthy project to continue to look at different eras. And maybe going against your hypothesis is that Chubby Checker and Joe Cocker are going in, and you could extend that up to the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s with Warren Zevon.
Do you get as many, “That’s not rock ‘n’ roll, that’s Dolly Parton, or [fill in the blank],” as much as you used to?
I believe that’s died down. This big tent of rock ‘n’ roll, that all these different genres and sounds and eras fit into it, has become much more widely accepted. It’s fun to tell these stories about how it all fits together rather than defend a decision here or there. It’s all rock ‘n’ roll. It all fits.
Everybody has a hot take on who should be in and who shouldn’t. What’s yours?
When I came over here, you would think about a certain artist, and most of them have gotten in. Back then, I thought Tom Waits should be in, of course — now he’s in. Stevie Ray [Vaughan] — now he’s in. Hall and Oates — now they’re in. That’s the debate we get to have all year long. At this moment, let’s celebrate this year’s inductees.
The new trustees have business backgrounds, not music backgrounds. Why is that the right criteria to lead the Hall of Fame?
What we look for is good trustees that will help advise us, help us think bigger and help us grow. Because the museum has such an economic impact in northeast Ohio, we do have quite a few of them from northeast Ohio, and they’re here to make sure this entity is terrific for this region while still being terrific for the world.
Chris Kelly, the new board chair, was head of the Republican National Convention host committee in 2016. Did that come up in the process of choosing him for the Hall of Fame, since so many people involved in the organization are politically progressive?
The host committee is what every city has when they try to attract a political convention. That convention was in Cleveland in 2016, but the reason why cities want them is because they’re a massive economic boon to the local economy. It’s not a political statement. It’s about attracting these things, like attracting the Olympics to your town.
Early in your career, you went from founding the Philadelphia Record Exchange to studying folklore in Cooperstown, N.Y., which led you to the Baseball Hall of Fame, then here. What was that transition like?
When I discovered there were these people called folklorists who do oral history, they make documentary films, they produce records, I thought, “What a career, that’s me.” After the Record Exchange, I road-managed some bands. I went back to college and thought I’d go to law school and worked for a law firm, and it just wasn’t for me. That’s when I went heavy on the folklore and museum studies. The great thing is, it’s a history of everyday people, and in many ways that’s what rock ‘n’ roll is all about.
Anything I’ve missed?
One thing is to make sure fans tune in. Go online and watch the streams of the induction. Visit us in Cleveland. We’re open 363 days a year. We have an exhibit right now on Saturday Night Live, 50 years of music that contains every performance. You can watch all of them.
[Harris calls back 30 seconds after the interview.]
What I should’ve ended with was, I love all museums, but this is the greatest museum in the world, and the one place where every visitor has a memory tied to the songs. People come through, they hear a certain song or they remember something they heard in college, the greatest road trip of their life … all that is tied to the music we get to honor every single day at the museum.
English (US)