ANAHEIM, Calif. — When John Sykes took over as chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, his goal was to ensure the hall evolved with the times.

“Not to stay in one place but to always expand, reflecting where rock and roll is going,” Sykes explains a few weeks before the 2025 Rock Hall induction ceremony arrives at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Saturday, Nov. 8.

“That’s been my mantra, my priority coming in, to never stay in one place, because rock and roll, as we’ve seen since 1955, has continued to change.”

This year’s inductees include hard rockers Bad Company, pop-rock singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper, and hip-hop duo OutKast. British blues-rock singer Joe Cocker, “The Twist” popularizer Chubby Checker, Seattle grunge band Soundgarden, and indie rock duo the White Stripes join them in the performers category.

Hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa and singer-songwriter Warren Zevon enter the hall in the musical influence category. Record producer Thom Bell, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins and Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye join the hall in the category of musical excellence.

When Sykes looks at the diversity of genre, gender, ethnicity and era in this year’s class, he likes what he sees.

“One of my priorities coming in with the job in 2020 was to have a nominating committee that realizes that rock and roll is an amalgam of sounds,” says Sykes, a co-founder of MTV, past president of VH1 and Chrysalis Records, and current head of iHeartMedia’s entertainment enterprises.

“It was born from really the collision of rhythm and blues, country and gospel in the late ’50s,” he says. “I wanted the nominee committee to really look deep at the artists that are eligible and not have one binary focus as to what rock and roll is.

“And to understand that it’s never an obvious sound because it’s always changing, and artists and music from the past are influencing artists today,” Sykes adds.

Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after their first records are released. For much of the Rock Hall’s history, the nominating committee played catch-up with the legends and influences from the earliest eras.

But in more recent years, it earned criticism from artists and fans of newer music, who argued its annual induction classes didn’t adequately represent women and people of color or artists who created music in genres that stretched the definitions of rock and roll.

From 1986 to 2000, only 13% of inductees were women while 37% were artists of color, Sykes says. In recent years, women inductees represent 33% while nonwhite artists have represented 48% of inductees, he said.

“When you look at the inductees [this year], you’ve got Thom Bell, one of the great R&B writer-producers of all time. And you’ve got Cyndi Lauper, a woman who broke it wide open in the ’80s with OutKast that in the late ’90s came through and took hip-hop to a different level.

“So I think if anything this class represents the diverse sounds that are rock and roll and the incredible inspiration that these artists in the late ’50s had on generations that have followed,” Sykes says.

That diversity is also reflected in the presenters and performers who will be on stage this year in Los Angeles, a group that includes Iggy Pop, Elton John, Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, Donald Glover, Doja Cat, Twenty One Pilots, Missy Elliott and more.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Sykes talked about how the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame worked to nominate a broader class of inductees, why it decided to bring the ceremony to Los Angeles every three years and more.

Q: It would seem that in order to have more diverse inductees, you need people on the committee who can make a case for them.

A: There you go. That’s exactly it. To answer your question, we are constantly updating not only our nominating committee but our general voting class body so that it reflects the artists that are eligible. To recognize and induct the artists that are deserving to be in the hall of fame you need committee members who understand their music.

This nominating committee came up with such a diverse group. From Thom Bell to OutKast to Salt-n-Pepa to Jack White to Warren Zevon to Bad Company. To me, this class reflects the fact that rock and roll is this beautiful — as Missy Elliott would call it — gumbo of sounds.

And as Chuck D said, “It’s not the rock, it’s the roll.”

Q: At 40, the Rock Hall is older than rock was when the hall was founded. There are entire genres that didn’t exist when it started, which weren’t often acknowledged by the committee until more recently.

A: Kiss could never get in because the nominee committee would just turn their heads away. Then, Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine joined the committee and said, “Guys, how can you not put Kiss in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?”

Eddie Vedder grew up with Kiss, too. The younger members of the committee got it immediately, which is why we continue to evolve the committee. I’m very proud of the decisions that are made by the committee to look past their own personal tastes to understand the power these artists have had.

Rock and roll is democracy. It’s this incredible combination of people that all get together to form one single vision.

Q: You’ve mentioned how part of the induction day is to create a show that’s appealing to people in the theater where it’s held but also watching at home. How can you see it this year?

A: It’s live on Disney+ as a stream for four hours on Nov. 8, and then on New Year’s Day, it runs as a three-hour special on ABC. So for fans who want to see every single moment, they can all watch four hours commercial-free on Disney+, and if you miss the four hours you can see a best-of on Jan. 1.

Q: And the public can buy tickets to the show, too, which might not be widely known.

A: Oh, yeah, it’s a big venue, and I think there are a few tickets left.

Q: You produce live events like this for iHeartMedia and have done so there and elsewhere for years, I think.

A: I produced the first MTV VMAs 40 years ago, actually 41 years to be exact. So I’ve been doing these live shows for a while. But I love doing them because the fact that you can sit down in front of your television set or laptop, even phone, and experience this incredible gift of the history of rock and roll in one night is just a gift.

It’s live and we live in a live world where live sports, live everything rules. We do have a seven-second delay because they do have a habit of swearing a lot. It is still the place where the rebels have taken over, the inmates have taken over the asylum on that night.

One great thing about this show is not only these great performances, but you never know what these presenters are going to say when they’re inducting, and you never what the inductees are going to say as they’re been waiting forever to get inducted.

Q: Before this year, the induction ceremony had been in L.A. in 2022, and before that 2013 and 1993. It’s now on a three-year cycle, though?

A: Yes, a three-year rotation. When I took over, I made a commitment to treat New York, Cleveland and L.A. equally because they’re the three legs of the stool that make up the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The show that we just did three years ago in L.A. was only the third time in the history of the Hall of Fame that it was celebrated in Southern California. How can you not be in Southern California? That’s where half of the music was created. The same way the Midwest and certainly the South are important. The idea that we’re just a New York foundation, I think, is long past.

Q: Probably an impossible question, but do you have a favorite performance from the induction shows of the past?

A: They’re like your children; you love them all. But I think there’s one that everyone agrees is the most historic performance. That was Prince performing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in honor of George Harrison. Just blew the roof off the place. As he’s standing up there next to Dhani Harrison, George’s son, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and he breaks into this guitar solo that has just gone down in history.

So that to me probably will be the most famous performance, but it’s hard to choose after that. There’s just been unbelievable performances. I think Cream reuniting back in probably ’93, I think, the first time it was ever in L.A. Over the years, you’ve had Blondie get into an argument on stage as the band was being presented their awards. You never know what you’re going to get.

Some guys get talking a little bit too much and their bandmates give them the hook and bring them off stage. This is not your typical award show. This is meant to be rock and roll.

Q: You’ve been chair for five or six years now. Where do you think the hall goes over the next decade or so?

A: Just like the great line, “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” rock and roll will never stay in one place. It will always be changing and that’s why it continues to be relevant 40 years after the hall was created.

It continues to surprise us. It continues to change culture. And as long as there’s protest and as long as there’s angry and frustrated teenagers, there will be rock and roll.

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