Kansas rock legend proud of decorated career. But why hasn’t Hall of Fame called?
As a teenager, Kansas rock legend Melissa Etheridge commuted from her hometown of Leavenworth to perform at Kansas City venues such as the Ramada Inn and the Granada Royale Hotel’s La Veranda Lounge.
“Oh, yeah, that’s where I learned to play,” she said.
“We were a cover band, and they were grown men who had jobs and were doing this on the weekend, and I would go to school during the week and go sing on the weekend.”
Within a decade, she made the leap from that cover band to earning a Grammy nomination for “Bring Me Some Water” off her debut album in 1988. She has gone on to claim 15 Grammy nominations, with wins for best female rock performance for “Come to My Window” and “Ain’t it Heavy.”
Throw in an Academy Award for best original song for “I Need to Wake Up” from “An Inconvenient Truth,” five platinum albums and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and it adds up to a compelling resume for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But she’s still waiting for a call from the Hall. Eligible since 2014, the 64-year-old has never even been nominated for induction.
“I don’t take it personally,” Etheridge said via Zoom from Lienz, Austria, on a day off from her and Indigo Girls’ Make Rock Great Again tour. They will play at Kansas City’s Starlight Theatre on Thursday, Aug. 21.
“I know they have a big job because they have kind of a lot of making up to do. There’s a lot of women who aren’t in who absolutely should be in.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer included Etheridge in a 2024 story headlined “Snubbed too long? 30 women the Rock Hall should induct now.” Two of the 30, Cyndi Lauper and Dionne Warwick, have since been voted in.
Etheridge also was the subject of a 2017 cChange.org petition with 11,585 supporters calling for her induction into the Hall of Fame.
Making the Hall isn’t a priority for Etheridge, however.
“It certainly isn’t a reason I make music,” she said, “but I would not be telling the truth if I didn’t say it’s certainly a nice honor and something you can grasp in this creative world that doesn’t really make sense.
“But rock ’n’ roll is so subjective. What my rock ’n’ roll is isn’t necessarily yours or someone who’s 10 years younger or older than me. They’re going to have a different idea of what rock ’n’ roll is. So sometimes my rock ’n’ roll missed some ears.”
One thing that can’t be argued is that Etheridge’s music isn’t actually rock ’n’ roll, which has been the case with several recent inductees (Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, to name two).
“You said it, I didn’t,” she said.
Among the icons
On Sept. 2, 1995, Etheridge was part of a once-in-a-lifetime collection of music icons gathered at the since-demolished Cleveland Municipal Stadium for the Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which opened that day. The benefit concert showcased future Hall of Famers such as Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, James Brown and Bruce Springsteen.
Etheridge, who already had won her two Grammy Awards, was younger than those legends, but she held her own.
In all, more than 30 acts rocked Municipal Stadium that day, and all but a handful have since been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Of that handful, only one appeared onstage for multiple numbers — Etheridge. She performed three times, covering the 1960s girl-group classics “Be My Baby,” “Love Child” and “Leader of the Pack” as a solo act and returning to the stage to sing with Jackson Browne and later with Berry and Springsteen.
But her lasting memory is of an offstage experience.
“They had like little bleachers so that the artists could stand at the side and watch who was performing,” Etheridge said.
“AndI’m standing there, and John Fogarty is next to me, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Chrissie Hynde, Natalie Merchant, Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan … and we’re all watching James Brown. It was really special, a really special time.”
One school of thought is that the Hall of Fame nominating committee, a group of industry experts and insiders that varies from year to year but has historically been dominated by men, might hold Etheridge’s sexual orientation against her and others. She came out as a lesbian at a time most LGBTQ+ performers hid their orientation — in January 1993, during an event celebrating the inauguration of Bill Clinton — and she married her longtime partner, Linda Wallem, in 2014.
The Hall has inducted Elton John, Janis Joplin and Freddie Mercury, among others, but the likes of Johnny Mathis, Boy George, Ricky Martin, k.d. lang, the B-52s, Luther Vandross, Tracy Chapman and Queen Latifah are still waiting.
Even in the current political landscape, however, Etheridge refuses to respond to conservatives’ assaults on LGBTQ+ rights during her concerts.
“I never felt like the people buying my tickets that I needed to preach to them — ever,” she said.
“I came out 32 years ago, and I have seen the world change, and I’ve seen fear come, and I’ve seen it go. And every day, gay people are born. We don’t know why. But we are. It’s just part of life. The fear will change.
“I have lived long enough to see that we are always moving toward better. We haven’t gone back. Even though this feels like going back, it’s actually more of a push forward because when you have this kind of resistance, it means that that fear is really desperate, and this is when big changes happen.”
Not slowing down
Although she has lived in California for more than 40 years, Etheridge maintains strong ties to the Kansas City area. In addition to being a well-known Chiefs fan — “I’m still recovering from that last game, whatever that was,” she said of the 2025 Super Bowl — she has become a major supporter of the K.C. Current women’s soccer team.
“I’ve been doing a lot of Kansas City because Kansas City is growing, and it’s very exciting, what’s happening there,” she said. “Not only enjoying the Chiefs, of course, but I’ve fallen in love with and have become a big part of the KC Current. Just really loving that and am going to do a lot with them, because women’s sports are just very exciting right now.”
Etheridge said she returns to the area at least twice a year. She has performed here almost every year since 2015, including with the Kansas City Symphony in 2017 and with Jewel last summer at Starlight.
She has, in fact, been busier than ever since turning 60. In addition to nearly constant touring, she released her second memoir (“Talking to My Angels”) and took her one-woman show (“My Window — A Journey Through Life”) to Broadway, both in 2023. Last year, her two-part docuseries filmed at the Topeka Correctional Facility (“Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken”) streamed on Paramount+.
She said her next album, tentatively titled “Rise,” should come out in the first quarter of 2026.
After that, she’ll slow down, right?
“No, why should I?” she said. “Look, I take football season off so I can watch the Kansas City Chiefs. I basically don’t work from the end of October to the end of February, because that’s football season. I work very hard from March to October, and I love the work, and I love doing it. And then I come home for a good four months and really enjoy myself.
“… What I’m really grateful for is that I’m in my 60s now and still out here on tour, still filling my summers, playing my music, loving it, making new music. … I’m still doing things that I love.”
And still waiting for the Hall of Fame to call.
This story was originally published August 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Kansas rock legend proud of decorated career. But why hasn’t Hall of Fame called?."