Sheryl Crow will be inducted later this year into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, along with Willie Nelson, Kate Bush, Rage Against the Machine, Missy Elliott, the late George Michael and the Spinners. For Crow, there isn’t another artist that she would rather join her in this year’s class than Nelson.
“I got to sing with Willie the other night at his 90th party,” Crow tells Apple Music 1. “I don’t know how to put that kind of thing into words. I mean, awards are incredible, and it’s really a lovely experience to be acknowledged, but it can never measure up to sitting on stage and feeling like you’re the only two in the room singing. He’s without a doubt my favorite person to sing with. He’s one of my favorite people on the planet. That for me is immeasurable.”
Crow grew up in many ways a student of all kinds of music, including rock and roll.
“I’ll say that I came up when rock and roll was still very much alive and the history books were still being written,” the 61-year-old says. “My first concert was Peter Frampton. I saw Ted Nugent in concert. From my generation, I saw Journey, Foreigner, Supertramp. The first woman I ever saw play rock guitar was Bonnie Raitt. I saw Fleetwood Mac, I saw Stevie Nicks, I saw Joe Walsh, I saw The Eagles. I saw the Rolling Stones numerous times.
“And so all those people, for me, that was the documentary as it was happening,” she continues. “So it’s a funny thing being inducted into the Rock Hall now, because I feel like the people that wrote the book on rock and roll got in so many years ago. I mean, I’m just happy to even be in the same reference book as those guys.”
Of all of her influences, one of her biggest is Nicks, whose career she still tries to emulate today.
“She was kind of everything that, as a kid, I thought, ‘I want to be like her,'” Crow acknowledges. “And then many years later, I met her at a Grammys after-party and she asked me if I’d produce some stuff on her. We just became really, really good friends. She was one of the first people I called when I got diagnosed with breast cancer.
“Not only is she a great friend, but she still inspires me,” she adds. “I spoke to her the other day on the phone, and she’s still very, very inspired by what’s happening in the world and going to pen and paper and music and trying to give voice to what we’re all experiencing. And that’s something I don’t think you ever age out of. I aspire to be like her. I aspire to have a career like hers and to be still looking at the world the way that she does.”
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place on November 3 in Brooklyn, New York.
