Then I heard Tin Soldier. Blew my mind. The boy could sing! I started to do some serious Google research and found out that not only Led Zeppelin, but Jimmy Hendrix to countless others had been influenced by this wonderful fellow and his amazing well of talent.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has certain requirements for the musicians they choose to induct into their certified Holy Grail of greatness, but their ignorance of Steve Marriott shows failure in the institution. You cannot deny what is good, and you cannot pass over influence and inspiration.
What makes a Rock and Roll legend? Someone with a voice of the gods, someone who can stop--do a pose two seconds before crashing into a guitar solo--and then swing his legs out in complete defiance of what should and shouldn't be, someone who writes what he feels, giving his whole life to the craft, someone whose guitar is his best mate. Someone who can give a person the chills four decades through time.
Surely Steve Marriott has met all of the requirements of a rock legend. And though it's not exactly necessary for us to see his name up on some wall to define what we already know, it would nice to see it happen anyway. For all those times he wrote instead of slept, and performed instead of prayed; his singing was a prayer, like a cricket on the last night of summer, fading out into the night without abandon. He deserves the recognition, and modern music needs to remember where it came from, so it can move forward in well measured paces.
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