Rock and Roll

The best exhibits here are from before anyone thought rock was museum-quality: black-and-white reels of the Animals, the Kinks, and the Beatles in their pre-fame rawness; bizarre homemade amplifiers from San Francisco’s psychedelic heyday; Keith Emerson’s dagger; the wreckage of Otis Redding’s plane. But even the more recent additions add depth to the collection. To see Britney’s sequinned bodysuit hung next to Elvis’s is to see that pop stars haven’t really changed in 40 years, even if their cardio programmes have. If you care about the music at all, you could easily spend an entire day here, rapt by the songs, the singers and the stars, finally with their guard down. An unadvertised fact about the museum: every musician can become a part of it. Bring a CD of your own music to the door, and they’ll add it to their archive and let you in free. See www.rockhall.com.