Robert ‘Kool’ Bell says getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the last item on his bucket list.
The “Celebration” hitmaker – who is the only surviving member of the original Kool and the Gang line-up – is currently waiting to hear if the group has been accepted for induction this year and admitted it’s one of the few accolades he’s still excited about receiving.
“We have had many accolades but the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is one of the last on the bucket list. It took 60 years but we were just nominated,” he told Big Issue magazine.
“This business can be up and down. We wrote a song called ‘Hollywood Swinging’ but it took us 20 years to get a star on Hollywood Boulevard. So it’s about staying positive and working hard. We’ve played with Elton John, Dire Straits and we did 48 shows with Van Halen so we have been with the rockers. Right now, we’re waiting on the vote,” he added.
The 73-year-old singer is proud his band is the “most sampled” in the world.
“We are the most sampled band in hip-hop – which means we are the most sampled band in the world because hip-hop does most of the sampling,” he said.
“Questlove did the breakdown and said our songs had been sampled 1,800 times, the drumbeats, guitar lines, bass lines. It’s great. Madonna used one of our songs, Janet Jackson, Jay-Z.”
Bell said that the group loved that their music is usually associated with fun and positivity.
“‘Celebration’ was played on a space station. The astronauts were floating around listening to our song. It is the biggest song we have, they played it at the Super Bowl the other night and it’s always played at weddings. It feels so great that our songs are part of people’s good times,” Kool said.
