2018 Rock Hall Nominees Announced

Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead and Judas Priest are among nine first-time nominees on the ballot for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2018.

The trio is joined by fellow first-timers the Moody Blues, Dire Straits, Eurythmics, Kate Bush, Nina Simone and Sister Rosetta Sharpe. Rounding out the ballot are returnees Bon Jovi, the Cars, Depeche Mode, the MC5, the J. Geils Band, the Meters, Link Wray, the Zombies, LL Cool J and Rufus featuring Chaka Khan.

More than 900 artists, journalists, historians and other members of the music industry will vote for the inductees, while a public vote to create a single "fans' ballot" begins today (October 5) at RockHall.com., with voting running through December 5. The inductees will be announced later that month.

Rage guitarist Tom Morello, who went on to work with Rage mates Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford in Audioslave and now in Prophets of Rage, tells us that the politically charged rap-rock crew had no clue at the beginning that the band would one day be in contention for the Rock Hall:

"There was no expectation. I had literally zero expectation...At the time were combining genres of music. It's very different now; Everybody's got Lil Wayne and Metallica in their IPod. That was not the case in 1991. They were opposing musics. To combine sort of traditional black and white music and then to have a band, a multi-ethnic band, and then have the lyrical content, I didn't think we would be able to book a club show and didn't expect any reaction...1.20] There's no crystal ball that we could've looked at when we were writing these songs in 1991 that we'd be talking about this...over two decades later."

The 2018 induction ceremony takes place April 14 at the Public Auditorium in Cleveland and filmed by HBO for subsequent broadcast. More details about the ceremony will be announced later.

Gary Graff is an award-winning music journalist who not only covers music but has written books on Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.