MUSIC: CLEVELAND, OHIO: FOREVER ROCKIN’

The Tina Turner mannequin still needed a hair tease, and Madonna’s gold bustier had yet to be mounted. But James Henke, the chief curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, had a more pressing problem one day last week. Showing a journalist around the museum, he was stopped by a group of workers who were about to install a Jimi Hendrix guitar on the wall. Hendrix, who was left-handed, played right-handed guitars with the strings on upside down. But the guitar they were about to hang was a right-handed one Hendrix had borrowed for a photo shoot without restringing it. So which way should they mount it–left or right? Henke considered for a moment, then muttered, “I don’t have the answer to that,” and said he’d get back to them.

On such decisions, large and small, will this new institution be judged. The rock museum, which will celebrate its grand opening this weekend, boasts an impressive building by architect I.M. Pei (the entire project cost $92 million), interactive exhibits (touch-screen computers that play requested songs and videos) and an array of music memorabilia, including the poetry Bruce Springsteen wrote in junior college (excerpt: “emerald waves crashed upon the shores…”) and a list from the Rolling Stones detailing what they required backstage for their 1972 tour (among the items: vodka, backgammon set and “apple pie–lots”). As of last week, however, workers were still hustling to put the finishing touches on exhibits in the 150,000-sq.-ft. facility. Joked museum director Dennis Barrie: “Welcome to our organized chaos.”

Museums are often associated with bygone periods and remote artifacts–Renaissance paintings, Egyptian sarcophagi, the fossilized bones of velociraptors. Because the Rock Hall (as Clevelanders call it) focuses on music that has always been identified with rebellious youth culture, its exhibits seem forever fresh, bursting with the antiestablishment adolescent energy of the past five decades. Among the first things a visitor walking into the museum sees are huge black-and-white photos of antirock protests through the years, from crowds burning Beatles records to police protesting rapper Ice-T’s lyrics. Barrie is a passionate advocate of freedom of expression–he successfully fought an obscenity charge brought against a 1990 exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he was director there–and he says he wants to keep his new institution on the cutting edge: “We are a museum with attitude.”

The idea of creating a major museum dedicated to rock music is a relatively recent one. In 1983 a group of record-industry professionals founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to honor musical greats; the first inductees (including Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke and Chuck Berry) were selected in January 1986. But even as the selections were made and the institution’s first all-star jam held, the hall had no actual residence. In May 1986 the Hall of Fame board, after considering such sites as New York City and Memphis, Tennessee, decided to locate in Cleveland. Ostensibly, the city was selected because it’s the place where local deejay Alan Freed popularized the term rock ‘n’ roll in the early 1950s; perhaps more important, local leaders, eager for a tourist attraction, raised $65 million in public funds to help build the hall. “It wasn’t Alan Freed. It was $65 million,” says Cleveland Plain Dealer music critic Michael Norman. “Cleveland wanted it here and put up the money.” Still, there were many delays, and the ground breaking, originally scheduled for 1990, didn’t take place until 1993.

Architect Pei also had to be persuaded before he would agree to design the building. Pei, 78, admits that he isn’t a fan of rock ‘n’ roll. “I have been subjected–I guess that’s the word–to that music by my children for years,” he says. “So we have lots of records at home. But I never played them very much.” Yet after Atlantic Records co-chairman Ahmet Ertegun and Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner took him on a trip to Graceland and New Orleans to learn more about rock, Pei got interested. (He now listens to some rock, though he admits it’s mostly oldies. “I haven’t gone very far beyond the Beatles,” he says.)

The building is a rousing success. It bursts forth from the ground into several assertive geometric forms–a triangle, a cylinder, a rectangular box. A trapezoidal chunk of the museum brazenly juts out over Lake Erie. “The music has that youthful energy,” says Pei. “It has to come through in this building.” The structure is painted mostly noncommittal white and gray; Pei says the neutral color scheme allows the objects and visitors within the museum to stand out in contrast.

And museum officials hope for plenty of contrast. They estimate that the hall will draw 1 million visitors annually; 250,000 people are expected to attend this weekend’s festivities, which will include an all-star megaconcert featuring Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Soul Asylum, Snoop Doggy Dogg and others.

Along with the music, visitors will get an education. The museum places heavy emphasis on rock’s roots. One exhibit, called “The Beat Goes On,” consists of several touch-screen computers showing video clips of rockers along with the performers who influenced them–Chuck Berry, for example, is linked with saxophonist Louis Jordan. Other exhibits are devoted to important rock precursors, such as blues greats Lead Belly and Howlin’ Wolf. There are plenty of intriguing curios on display as well–such as the Who drummer Keith Moon’s grade school report card, saying he “is inclined to play the fool.” There is flair in even the smallest detail: the building’s ATMS look like jukeboxes. Mostly, however, the museum rises above Hard Rock Cafe-style gimmickry by showing respect for the music and its origins. Still, rock by nature resists institutionalization–the Lollapalooza tour, only in its fifth year, already seems stale. Museum officials plan to open a high-tech theater later this year in the hope that holographic concerts, online music events and other technology-rich experiences being created will help keep the institution fresh and relevant. After all, the last thing a rock museum should seem like is something that belongs in, well, a museum.