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    Bob Heil, Whose Innovations Enhanced the Sound of Rock, Dies at 83

    A groundbreaking audio engineer, he provided the large-scale systems that brought tours by the Who and the Grateful Dead to life.Bob Heil’s career as a groundbreaking sound engineer who brought thunder and rich sonic coloring to tours by rock titans like the Grateful Dead and the Who began behind a pipe organ in a 1920s movie palace.Mr. Heil, who helped usher rock into its arena-shaking era by designing elaborate sound systems that allowed rock juggernauts of the late 1960s and ’70s to play at volcanic volumes, first learned to appreciate the full spectrum of musical tones as a teenager, when he took a job playing the massive Wurlitzer pipe organ at the opulent Fox Theater in St. Louis.“We had to voice and tune 3,500 pipes, from one inch to 32 feet,” he said in a 2022 video interview with the audio entrepreneur Ken Berger. “Voicing taught me to listen. Very few people know how to listen. Listening, you’ve got to mentally go in and dissect.”Mr. Heil died on Feb. 28 of cancer in a hospital in Belleville, Ill., his daughter Julie Staley said. He was 83. His death was not widely reported at the time.Although he worked behind the scenes, Mr. Heil was enough of a force that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland credited him with “creating the template for modern rock sound systems” In 2006, the Hall installed a public display containing his mixing boards, speakers and other items.Mr. Heil developed some of the first effective sound systems for large rock concerts in the 1970s. The two men here were unidentified.via Heil SoundWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Cher, Dave Matthews Band and A Tribe Called Quest Join Rock Hall of Fame

    Mary J. Blige and Ozzy Osbourne were also voted in, but Sinead O’Connor, who died last year at 56, did not make the cut.Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Peter Frampton and Mary J. Blige are part of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2024, along with Dave Matthews Band, Kool & the Gang, Foreigner and A Tribe Called Quest, the hall announced on Sunday.The latest crop of stars will officially join the pantheon in a ceremony on Oct. 19 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, where the hall’s affiliated museum is also located.The 39th annual group of inductees matches the hall’s genre and demographic spread of recent years, with a pop diva (Cher), a metal idol (Osbourne), a top funk band of 1970s and ’80s vintage (Kool & the Gang), a couple of ’90s hip-hop and R&B heroes (Blige, Tribe) and rock mainstays from the boomer (Frampton, Foreigner) and Gen X (Matthews) eras.Of those artists, four were elevated to the hall on their first nomination: Cher, Foreigner, Frampton and Kool & the Gang. Osbourne was nominated for the first time as a solo act, though he had joined the hall as part of Black Sabbath in 2006. The Rock Hall has come under increasing pressure in recent years to diversify its ranks with more women and artists of color, and has made progress in that regard, though some critics say it is not enough.“Rock ’n’ roll is an ever-evolving amalgam of sounds that impacts culture and moves generations,” John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement. “This diverse group of inductees each broke down musical barriers and influenced countless artists that followed in their footsteps.”Seven acts that were nominated in February did not make the cut: Mariah Carey, Jane’s Addiction, Oasis, Sade, Eric B. & Rakim, Lenny Kravitz and, perhaps most surprisingly, Sinead O’Connor, whose death last year, at age 56, elicited a global outpouring of grief and a reconsideration of her place in rock history.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees Include Cher, Mariah Carey and More

    Oasis and Sade will appear on the ballot for the first time, alongside Dave Matthews Band, A Tribe Called Quest, Mary J. Blige and others.Cher, Mariah Carey, Sinead O’Connor, Oasis and Sade are among the first-time nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2024, which were revealed Saturday.Other new names on the hall’s short list include Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & the Gang and Lenny Kravitz. Also on the list are Dave Matthews Band, Mary J. Blige, Jane’s Addiction, A Tribe Called Quest and Eric B. & Rakim, each of whom has been nominated at least once before. Ozzy Osbourne, who is already part of the pantheon as a member of Black Sabbath, has gotten the nod as a solo artist for the first time.“This remarkable list of nominees reflects the diverse artists and music that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honors and celebrates,” John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement. “Continuing in the true spirit of rock ’n’ roll, these artists have created their own sounds that have impacted generations and influenced countless others that have followed in their footsteps.”The 15 cited artists are the first batch of nominees since the abrupt departure last year of Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone editor and co-founder of the Rock Hall, who had long held a powerful sway over the awards process.In September, Wenner was ejected from the hall’s governing board just one day after the publication of an interview in The New York Times in which he justified the subjects for his interview collection “The Masters” — all of them white and male — with comments that were widely condemned as racist and misogynistic. Female artists like Joni Mitchell, he said, were not “philosophers of rock,” and Black performers like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye “just didn’t articulate at that level.”It is also a little more than a year after Jon Landau, the former Rolling Stone critic who became Bruce Springsteen’s producer and manager, stepped down from his longtime perch as the chairman of the hall’s deliberately secretive nominating committee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More