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2020 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony: Date, time, inductees, where to watch and all you need to know about live event

Dave Grohl, the Nirvana drummer and founder of Foo Fighters, will kick off the show with a touching introduction about this year’s inductees

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, originally scheduled for May, will take place on Saturday, November 7. But not just the date, a lot has changed in the program content as well. According to the official statement, due to the ongoing pandemic, The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation will replace its annual live induction ceremony with an exclusive special, honoring this year’s inductees and skipping all performances.

Here’s all that you need to know about the event.

Date, time, where to watch

The program will be available to stream exclusively on HBO and HBO Max on November 7 at 8 pm ET/PT. It will replace the live 35th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The radio simulcast can be heard on SiriusXM at 8 pm ET on the same day on Classic Vinyl (channel 26), VOLUME (channel 106) and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Radio (channel 310) and online with the SiriusXM app.

Inductees

The Class of 2020 Inductees includes Depeche Mode, The Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails, The Notorious BIG, T-Rex and Ahmet Ertegun Award honorees Jon Landau and Irving Azoff.

Special guests

The special will feature several guests, including Luke Bryan, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Miley Cyrus, Billy Gibbons, Dave Grohl, Don Henley, Jennifer Hudson, Billy Idol, Iggy Pop, Alicia Keys, Adam Levine, Chris Martin, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brad Paisley, Bruce Springsteen, St Vincent, Ringo Starr, Gwen Stefani, Charlize Theron, Nancy Wilson and more, all highlighting the importance and influence of this year's inductees.

Dave Grohl, the Nirvana drummer and founder of Foo Fighters, will kick off the show with a touching introduction about this year’s inductees which will be followed by the special guests highlighting the importance and influence of the 2020 inductees. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland is now open and debuts its 2020 Inductee exhibit on August 14. The 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will move to the fall with the 36th induction ceremony returning to Cleveland.

John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, stated in the official statement: “To protect the health and safety of our Inductees, their families, crews and our attendees, we’ve made the decision that the scheduled live event is not possible.” He added: “Together with HBO and executive producer Joel Gallen, we will still create an exciting program honoring our 2020 inductees, by telling the stories of their incredible contributions to music and impact on a generation of artists that followed them.”

However, the exclusive program will not include any live performances as we have seen for VMAs or BET awards shows. Joel Peresman, the president and CEO of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, talked about all the major changes in this year’s program in an interview with Vulture. He said, “We moved the timing of the ceremony. We’re going to move the ceremony permanently so it’s in the fall of each year because of COVID.” He added, “We’re also moving the nomination process. Normally, the nomination process starts in September, we announce the nominees in October, and then we announce the inductees in January. This time the nomination meetings will happen in January, so we’ll announce the nominees in February and start that voting process then.”

Talking about the live performances, he mentioned, “We looked at different ways to have live performances by the inductees or artists performing for the artists who are deceased.” “In the spring and summer, it really just became overwhelming to try to pull that off. There were so many events that were starting to happen with people doing performances on their iPhones and then they got a little bit more sophisticated. We thought that was kind of boring to try to go through the hoops of having artists performing with no audience, or doing it with just family or friends. It didn’t make any creative sense.”

“We felt so badly, and I know a lot of the inductees did, too,” Peresman said. “This was their moment to be onstage with their bandmates and their families and friends to celebrate this moment. It was devastating to us and for them to be able to not have that live moment.”