As the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame welcomed its Class of 2025 on Nov. 8 at Los Angeles’s Peacock Theater, the inductees who did not attend or perform — for various reasons, some unavoidable and some just unexplained — were practically more newsworthy than the ones who actually turned up and turned it out.

This left producers with the daunting task of filling the more than four-hour show with A-list guests. So, Saturday’s spectacular cold-opened with a funky tribute to late Class of 1993 Hall of Famer Sly Stone by a stellar cast of Stevie Wonder, Questlove, Beck, Maxwell, Leon Thomas, leather-sheathed diva Jennifer Hudson, and a particularly excitable and elastic Flea.

And that was immediately followed by the induction of one of this year’s most rockin’ honorees, Bad Company. Frontman Paul Rodgers was the first of the night’s many no-shows, even though both he and founding drummer Simon Kirke had confirmed in several interviews that he’d be performing two songs at the ceremony. Just five days before the event, Rodgers sadly announced that had to bow out due to his ongoing health issues stemming from a series of strokes, so accepted the honor via a pretaped video message from his home. However, Bryan Adams and the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson ably handled Rodgers’s vocals on “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and “Can’t Get Enough,” while Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Heart’s Nancy Wilson filled in for late Bad Company guitarist Mick Ralphs, who died in June.

As lone attending member Kirke then accepted the band’s Hall trophy from fellow drummer Mick Fleetwood, he said, “I want to acknowledge one of the greatest rock singers of all time: my friend, Mr. Paul Rodgers,” and he warned the audience that he’d “try not to tear up” as he honored both Ralphs and Bad Company’s founding bassist Boz Burrell, who died in 2006. But Kirke was especially emotional, nearly breaking down, as he thanked Rodgers’s wife, Cynthia, “who’s looked after Paul so valiantly for the last several years,” and Ralphs’s widow, Susie Chavasse, “who [cared for Ralphs] so tenderly for the last a few years of his life… that was a 25-hour-a-day job.”

Speaking with the press backstage after Bad Company’s induction, Kirke admitted that he had “mixed emotions” about that night, saying, “When death takes a friend, it never really dies. It never really fades away, I’m just glad that Mick Ralphs got to hear that we were inducted before he passed away. I believe it was two weeks after he got the news, and I believe Paul called him and said, ‘Hey mate, we got in!’ And Mick said, ‘Does that mean we get free hot dogs?’ I guess it was the morphine talking. But he went out with a smile. I miss him very much. And it was hard holding it together out there, but I hope I did him proud.” As for Rodgers’s absence, Kirke told reporters, “I do wish he had been here, but in fact, he got more publicity from not coming! So, go figure.”

Ralphs and Burrell were far from the only posthumous inductees this year: They were joined in the Class of 2025 by Philly soul produce-arranger-songwriter Thom Bell, British keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, Joe Cocker, Warren Zevon, and Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell. It was Zevon’s induction, however, by longtime friend and fan David Letterman, that might have been the ceremony’s most touching.

Letterman — who’d dedicated an entire Late Show episode to Zevon in 2002, shortly after the singer-songwriter was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer — had long lobbied the Hall to induct Zevon, who had eligible since 1994. Tonight, he recalled that after Zevon’s special 2002 Late Show episode taping, which turned out to be Zevon’s final public appearance, Zevon had gifted him with a guitar and said, “‘Take care of this for me.’ … I started to sob uncontrollably. Warren and I hugged, and I said, ‘Warren, I just love your music.’ So, for 22 years, I have taken care of the guitar. This is the guitar right here. … And tonight, it’s going back to work.” With that, Letterman handed Zevon’s famous guitar to the Killers’ Dave Keuning, as the Killers and special guest Waddy Wachtel played Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” and Letterman (and probably quite a few audience members) tried not to sob uncontrollably once again.

Soundgarden were inducted by Jim Carrey, who first met the grunge band because he insisted that they be the musical guest when he hosted a 1996 episode of Saturday Night Live. (Interestingly, Cornell also gave him a guitar that night, which Carrey called “one of my most prized possessions,” a Fender Telecaster signed by the band.) “Sadly, on a shocking night in 2017, Chris left us,” Carrey said, referring to the singer’s suicide at age 52. “We lost a monumental musical artist and a deeply special soul. But for all time, his voice will continue to light up the ether like a Tesla coil.”

Original Soundgarden bassist Hiro Yamamoto, who cofounded the band with Cornell in 1984 and left in 1989, delivered one of the ceremony’s most emotional speeches (and one of the ceremony’s few political statements, other than fellow inductee Cyndi Lauper’s), saying: “Thanks to my parents, whose story, as American citizens who were rounded up and placed into prison camps just for being Japanese during World War II, affected my life greatly. It echoes strongly today. Let’s not add another story like this to our history. We can do better than this. It’s up to us to take the power back and keep the dialogue alive — because that’s what we need. … To everyone else out there, especially all you brown kids, let’s rock!”

Carrey’s The Grinch costar Taylor Momsen (who Carrey had not seen in 25 years!) and Brandi Carlile respectively performed fiery renditions of “Rusty Cage” and “Black Hole Sun,” unofficially carrying on a female-fronted tradition started by fellow grunge legends Nirvana, who’d had Joan Jett, St. Vincent, and Lorde stand in for the late Kurt Cobain at Nirvana’s induction in 2014. (Incidentally, Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic was in the Peacock audience on Saturday, while two other Seattle stars, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell and Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, joined Soundgarden onstage.)

Two other special women — Cornell’s daughters — also took part. Lily Cornell Silver, the frontman’s only child with first wife and former Soundgarden manager Susan Silver, gave a speech that briefly celebrated her mother, who she called “a major badass,” before she said, “Seeing my dad not as a public figure, but as a person, a father, and someone who faced his struggles out loud, I am just really, really happy that he got to make music with his friends. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. I know how much purpose that gave him, and how much it’s meant to people who have heard that music. That’s what I’ll be holding in my heart tonight.” Chris’s daughter with second wife Vicky, Toni Cornell, then performed “Fell on Black Days” with acoustic accompaniment from Nancy Wilson, later explaining to press backstage, “Everyone can relate to that song on so many levels. ‘I fell on black days’ — we’ve all been there. So, I personally related to that, and I really wanted to channel how my dad would’ve performed that song on his own.”

Moving on to other absent inductees, the White Stripes’ elusive and reclusive drummer, Meg White, who had not performed publicly since 2009, was rumored to attend — speculation that was only fueled by her ex-bandmate Jack White’s multiple Meg appreciation posts on social media leading up to the ceremony. Sadly, she did not attend, but the Stripes’ induction was still very Meg-centric, with the garage-rock duo’s inductor, fellow Detroit punk icon Iggy Pop, declaring: “Meg White, who is a timeless beauty, Meg White, who gave her name to the group, was a charismatic, naturally likable person. I met her once, and she had the most genuine and charming smile. She played the drums for the benefit of her band. … I think it was Meg’s support that helped launch the rocket of racket that was Jack White.”

Jack, decked out in a red tuxedo reminiscent of his White Stripes era, then told the crowd, “I spoke with Meg White the other day. She said that she’s very sorry she couldn’t make it here tonight, but she wanted me to tell you that she’s very grateful to all of the folks who supported her through all the years, and it really means a lot to her tonight. She helped me write all this [speech] in the last couple of days. I sent these things to her and she checked it for me. A lot of punctuation corrections too. She’s pretty good at that.”

After the audience shouted, “We love you, Meg,” Jack acknowledged with a smile, “Yes, we love Meg,” before he rattled off a long list of “just a few of the bands and the artists that inspired us and came before us and also helped us along the way,” most of which would never otherwise get a mention on a Rock Hall broadcast — like the Gun Club, Fugazi, the Misfits, the Flat Duo Jets, the Sonics, Pavement, Black Flag, Sleater-Kinney, Death, the Creation, the Breeders, the Cramps, the Hives, the Damned, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Minor Threat, and Captain Beefheart. He signed off with, “My sister thanks you, and I thank you” — a reference to the early days when he and Meg, who were actually married from 1996 to 2000, pretended to be siblings.

Perhaps out of respect for Meg, Jack did not perform — a surprising and frankly disappointing decision, considering that he is one of the hardest-working men in rock today, the sort of dependably awesome performer that SNL can call in the pinch to come in and kill it. This left a hodgepodge of guest performers to pay homage instead. Olivia Rodrigo and Feist’s winsome acoustic cover of the schoolyard ditty “We Are Going to Be Friends” was well-cast and effectively charming, but Twenty One Pilots’ serviceable cover of the band’s sports anthem “Seven Nation Army” never quite connected, with the band’s faces hidden behinds shredded cloth masks and their sound muddled by a bad audio mix. At this moment, Meg was especially missed.

Outkast’s also-elusive André 3000 — whose only studio album, after a 17-year hiatus, has been a collection of jazz/new age flute music — also didn’t perform Saturday, once again dashing fans’ reunion hopes. (The Southern hip-hop duo’s last public concert was at Atlanta’s ONE Musicfest in 2016.) However, André did attend Saturday’s festivities, and he seemed in good spirits as he and Outkast partner Big Boi accepted their trophies from “Hey Ya!”-style green-suited Atlanta star Donald Glover. Flanked by his massive Dungeon Family collective, André even got emotional as he quoted Jack White’s Rock Hall speech about advising aspiring young artists to “get in your garage or your little room and get obsessed.” Turning to Big Boi, André teared up as he said softly, “We started in a little room. Great things start in little rooms.”

André was definitely missed when he returned to his seat for performance portion of Outkast’s segment. Atlanta rapper J.I.D. capably opened the set with “ATLiens”; Tyler, the Creator absolutely slayed “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)”; Janelle Monáe was a wacky delight trilling “Hey Ya!” while jumping on the VIP section’s dining tables, crawling on the theater floor, and shaking it like a Polaroid picture in a fringed Muppet jacket; Big Boi and Sleepy Brown’s “The Way You Move,” accompanied by a 12-piece band, was a silky-smooth groove; and the Killer Mike-assisted finale “The Whole World” was great fun. But the entire medley was still nearly ruined by Doja Cat, who seemed unrehearsed and cringeworthily flubbed André’s verse of one of Outkast’s most beloved tracks, “Ms. Jackson” — much to the chagrin of many Outkast fans on Twitter/X.

“The Twist” singer Chubby Checker, finally entering the Rock Hall after 40 years of eligibility, also skipped the ceremony entirely (instead staging his own “induction” during a July concert in Des Plaines, Ill.), as did Wrecking Crew bassist Carole Kaye, who explained in a since-deleted Facebook post that the honor “wasn’t something that reflects the work that studio musicians do and did in the golden era of the 1960s. … I refuse to be part of a process that is something else rather than what I believe in, for others’ benefit and not reflecting on the truth.” However, fans did get one surprise attendee — and one hoped-for band reunion — when Salt-N-Pepa’s DJ, Spinderella, aka Deidra Roper, performed with the female hip-hop trailblazers for the first time since 2018.

Spinderella, who proudly noted that she is now the first female DJ to ever be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, had been estranged from Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton for years, and had even sued them for fraud in 2019, but as they rejoined forces on Saturday, they gave the night’s most vivacious, Technicolor-bright, house-party-hardy performance (with guests En Vogue, Kid N Play, and their keytar-wielding original producer Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor), and they actually told reporters backstage that they plan to tour together again in 2026. They also appeared as a unified front as they addressed their current lawsuit against Universal Music Group, who they have accused of violating the Copyright Act for not allowing them to reclaim control of their music.

“This moment right here is bigger than us,” declared Salt, whose group was inducted by Missy Elliott, the Hall’s first female hip-hop inductee. “This is for every woman who picked up a mic when they told her she couldn’t, for every sister who had to fight twice was hard to be heard, for every artist who ever had to learn that ownership is the real freedom. When we came up, the industry was different. We didn’t have streaming. We didn’t have social media. We had cassette tapes, turntables, and dreams. But even back then, we had the fight to be heard and to prove our worth. We’re in a fight right now for our masters that rightfully belong to us after 40 years. As we celebrate this moment, fans can’t even stream our music. It’s been taken down from all streaming platforms, because the industry still doesn’t want to play fair. But Salt-N-Pepa has never been afraid of a fight. This is the [Musical] Influence Award. We have to keep using our influence until the industry honors creativity the way the audience does, with love, respect, and fairness. … Hip-hop gave us a voice, and we’ll keep using it.”

That sort of fierce feminine energy continued to fill the theater for Cyndi Lauper’s segment, when Chappell Roan, who at age 14 won a local talent show in her native Missouri covering “True Colors,” inducted the early-MTV pioneer while wearing a perfect recreation of Lauper’s “True Colors”-era sculptural newspaper skirt and chandelier-like jeweled headpiece. Roan praised Lauper for having “the courage that not only creates incredible art, it gives everyone who experiences it the permission to be themselves. It opens their hearts, it changes their mind, and that is its power. Tonight, we honor a woman who redefined what a pop star could look like, sound like, sing like, and be.”

Lauper, sporting a shock of shocking blue hair and backed by the Go-Go’s’ Gina Schock on drums and Prince & the Revolution s Lisa Coleman on keys, then performed “True Colors” — a song that Roan, who is openly gay, described as “an anthem synonymous with love and acceptance in the LGBTQ+ community and beyond” — in front of a wall-sized rainbow/transgender-pride flag, raising her fist in the air and dramatically pausing for the ballad’s triumphant “Don’t be afraid!” line while the audience roared. The audience then illuminated their phone flashlights, upon Lauper’s command, for Lauper’s sentimental “Time After Time” duet with British R&B/jazz singer Raye, as Lauper declared, “Look at us. We are a community of light. Don’t forget that, in case it gets really dark.”

And the girl-powered celebration continued as Avril Lavigne, Salt-N-Pepa, and Spinderella joined in for a jubilant “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” as Lauper chanted, “Girls, they wanna have fundamental rights!” during the final chorus. “I know that I stand on the shoulders of the women in the industry that came before me, and my shoulders are broad enough to have the women that come after me stand on mine,” Lauper stated, after this cross-generational performance.

Towards the end of the evening, an In Memoriam segment was a sobering reminder of the many icons the music world has lost during the past year, including Hall inductees like KISS’s Ace Frehley, Blondie’s Clem Burke, Class of 2024 member Ozzy Osbourne, the above-mentioned Sly Stone, and the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. The latter received a lovely tribute from superfan Elton John, (who’d inducted the Beach Boys into the Hall in 1988), who crooned “God Only Knows” joined by drummer Kenny Aronoff, bassist Don Was, and keyboardist Benmont Tench. “[Wilson] was the one that influenced me more than anybody else when it came to writing songs on the piano. … We loved each other. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather pay tribute than Brian Wilson and his family with this incredible song,” John gushed.

While the marathon night was filled with tributes to much-missed, dearly departed artists, the mood in the room was usually more joyful than somber, as was the case when it came time to celebrate the ceremony’s final honoree, British blues-rock belter Joe Cocker, who died in 2014. After a presentation by Cocker’s friend and collaborator Bryan Adams, who shared an amusing anecdote about a night of over-indulging in Cocker’s signature rum cocktail, the “Joe Cola,” the show ended strong with a rousing singalong of Cocker’s cover of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” by Adams, Teddy Swims, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Nathaniel Rateliff, Chris Robinson, and even Lauper, whose wild wailing ended the evening on a literal high note.

“The little kid in me still believes that rock ‘n’ roll can save the world,” Lauper proclaimed, “Rock ‘n’ roll is a big, wonderful quilt of a lot of different styles and music, thank goodness, and all of that music has influenced me and my work. Without it, I don’t know what kind of music I’d be making. So, I just want to say now, of all times, let’s come together again and do good in the world, because it needs us.”

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Checker, Cocker, Lauper, Outkast, Soundgarden, and the White Stripes all entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Performer Category, while Salt-N-Pepa and Zevon received the Musical Influence Award for “artists whose music and performance style have directly influenced, inspired, and evolved rock ‘n’ roll and music impacting culture,” and Bell, Kaye, and Hopkins received the Musical Excellence Award, which goes to “artists, musicians, songwriters and producers whose originality and influence have had a dramatic impact on music.” This year’s Ahmet Ertegun Award, which recognizes non-performing industry professionals, went to record producer and Warner/DreamWorks record executive Lenny Waronker. The show streamed live on Disney+, and will air in an edited format on ABC on New Year’s Day.