Did they really have to wait until Jon Lord succumbs before inducting them?
For their musical legacy, DP should have been inducted long ago. To this day, most hard rock bands fall into the "sounds like Zep", "sounds like Sabbath" and"sounds like the Purps" categories. Purple invented the Hammond driven hard rock sound, Lord would play his keys like a guitar, he would call it "the gorgan". I just read a nice piece by Rick Wakeman on Jon Lord where he says: "Jon probably doesn't want to be remembered for it, but he's the man who killed the rhythm guitarist in the seventies". And it's true, following Purple's early seventies success, the singer/lead guitarist/lead organist/bassist/drummer line-up became a blueprint for many bands. Neither Zep nor Sabbath were organ-driven, JPJ was an able keyboard player but he tended to avoid the Hammond, perhaps a conscious move to not sound like DP (Plant despised DP). While Sabbath have been gaining ground as an influence in the nineties and Zep always had their followers, I hear DP influences in as diverse bands as Uriah Heep, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, Angel, Styx, Boston, Kansas, Judas Priest, BÖC, Nazareth, Iron Maiden, Grand Funk once Craig Frost had joined etc.
So it's about time.
