Eleven years ago, Chubby Checker laid out a clear request to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame: He wanted to be inducted, and soon. Checker, 72 at the time, thought his resume as a rock 'n' roll pioneer spoke for itself. Besides scoring early #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 with "The Twist" and "Pony Time," he won the genre's first Grammy for "Let's Twist Again." Checker (born Ernest Evans) had been agitating on his own behalf for years when, at the 2014 Songwriters Hall Of Fame gala, he told the AP about his urgent desire to get into the Rock Hall: "I don’t want to get in there when I’m 85 years old. I'll tell them to drop dead, so you better do it quick while I’m still smiling."
It's 2025, and Checker is finally getting in this year. The induction ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 8 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, with a livestream on Disney+. But it's possible the Rock Hall waited too long. Checker is 83, and he'll be 84 by the time he's inducted. That's pretty close to 85 years old. So, perhaps in fulfillment of his own promise, he says he won't be showing up.
In footage excerpted on Bluesky, Checker tells an interviewer that he isn't planning to attend his induction into the Rock Hall. Why? Because he has a gig that night:
As you come to be an older person, you run into things that you didn't run into when you were not an older person. So I told my manager, I says, "Make sure when we go to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, the induction, that I'm doing what I love doing the most: being in front of an audience. A live audience, not a television audience." So she said, "Let me just get it for you now, so if it happens." So she did, she got me a show. And the Rock Hall says, "We want you to come here this day and be here." We said, "We're not coming." "You're what?!" I said, "We're not coming. We have a gig." "Well, forget about your gig." You never forget about gigs.
What's not clear from this excerpt is whether Checker was going to be allowed to perform at the induction ceremony. Last year, Foreigner's Lou Gramm was displeased with the Rock Hall's decision to let pop stars like Demi Lovato and Kelly Clarkson take the spotlight during much of the band's showcase, leaving only one Foreigner song to actually be sung by Gramm. Foreigner drummer Dennis Elliott skipped the ceremony because he was told the band's classic lineup would not be performing. Based on Checker's comments, it's entirely possible that he was told he wouldn't be asked to sing at the Rock Hall ceremony and would get a tribute from younger artists instead.
And, back in 2001, Checker took out a full page Billboard ad to demand a statue of himself in the courtyard of the Hall Of Fame in Cleveland and said he'd refuse his induction into the hall if he didn’t get one. Talking to Variety in April, he reiterated his wish for a statue: “Everybody’s made a whole lotta money off of Chubby. Give the man some credit!”
Whatever the reason, after all that campaigning to be included, this is quite the troll move:
Chubby Checker is skipping the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony (h/t @rockinretropod.bsky.social )
…more to come
— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklegends.com) July 29, 2025 at 12:17 AM
