ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

A first-time nominee though having been eligible for 35 years, the late Joe Cocker is finally getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The announcement was made on Sunday April 27, 2025 during ABC's TV show American Idol.

Cocker joins the 2025 class of new inductees which also includes Chubby Checker, Cyndi Lauper, Bad Company, The White Stripes, Soundgarden and Outkast. Prior to the vote, Cocker had received strong support from Billy Joel, Paul McCartney and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons among others.

Joe Cocker sang at Woodstock and is best-known for his cover of The Beatles' With A Little Help From My Friends in 1968, the emotional You Are So Beautiful in 1974 and the Grammy-winning duet with Jennifer Warnes Up Where We Belong in 1982.

A Yorkshireman like Robert Palmer, Cocker was also an Island Records artist in the early 1980s, with his album Sheffield Steel being produced by Chris Blackwell and recorded at Compass Point in the Bahamas.

Cocker met Palmer there. Palmer invited him at his house just across the street from the studios and contributed vocals alongside Barry Reynolds on So Good So Right, a track from the album.

In 2004, only a few months after Robert Palmer's passing, Joe Cocker released a cover of Every Kinda People (Palmer's first US Top 20 hit) as the lead single of his new album.

In interviews, Cocker paid tribute to Palmer and remembered his time in the Bahamas: "We were just two Yorkshire lads from not dissimilar backgrounds meeting up in a far away place. It was a shock and great personal sadness to lose him so unexpectedly at at so relatively young an age. He was a very, very gifted man."

Joe Cocker's official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction will take place on November, 8th 2025 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, California.

Eligible since 1999, Robert Palmer has never been nominated for induction.