The Beatle industry rocks on, hitting two anniversaries this autumn. John Lennon would have been 60 on 9 October, and on 8 December it will be 20 years since he was murdered. For reasons that lie somewhere beyond good taste, Yoko Ono has included the glasses he was wearing when he died and the Roosevelt Hospital bag containing his death clothes among the hundreds of items in an exhibition devoted to Lennon that opened last week at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, in Cleveland, Ohio. Meanwhile, a permanent Lennon museum has just opened its doors in Tokyo, suggesting that the diehard fan's credit card will be painfully squeezed in the coming months.
The Ohio exhibition runs until next September. Here is the moody leather jacket from the red-light Hamburg days, and the naff collarless number that the fastidious Brian Epstein forced a reluctant Lennon to wear. There's the 'All You Need Is Love' frock coat, a Magical Mystery Tour costume, and the embarrassing 'Starting Over' kimono. There are dozens of scruffy, scribbled lyrics that changed people's lives. The shop-load of guitars include the 12-string Rickenbacker of the Beatle days, and the Telecaster he used in his last concert. His bed and his piano, artworks and ephemera, in addition to films, videos, lectures and events, make up a massive tribute.
Rock Hall, as it is less cumbersomely known to Cleveland cabbies, is expert at such exercises. A Jimi Hendrix exhibit was up and running before Lennon opened, and I was recently invited over to help celebrate Muddy Waters in a week of loud music, films, lectures and ageing blues writers nattering their way from bar to bar. Waters followed Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Rodgers, Robert Johnson and Louis Jordan in Rock Hall's annual American Music Masters series. The reason for my involvement, as the token white Englishman at the event, was the publication in 1998 of my book The Story of Chess Records , a long fan letter to Muddy's record label.
Although Cleveland by and large ignores the fact that it sits beside nearly 10,000 square miles of Lake Erie, the Hall of Fame is one building that does make the most of its waterfront setting. Walk gently downhill through the downtown area - and this is a city where a wandering Brit is not seen as a dangerous madman - and it is waiting in front of the sparkling lake.
At its core is a tower, 162ft high, but it is the glass that takes the breath away - a vast tented pyramid, standing in a sculpted plaza. If a similar structure in the Louvre courtyard comes to mind, well spotted - Chinese architect I.M. Pei designed them both. From the air, my guide Santina Protopapa tells me, the plan of the building represents an old-fashioned record player. We both have to take Mr Pei's word for it.
Rock Hall is educational and archival, but above all entertaining. In 1983 various music-business worthies created the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, an idea without bricks and mortar, to honour their heroes. Starting with Chuck Berry, they have been adding names ever since.
The search for a permanent site began in 1986 and numerous cities put in bids, Cleveland won and opened for business in 1995. The huge basement museum, a roller-coaster ride through the history of rock, is an object lesson in how to nail rock'n'roll to a wall but still let it wriggle. Britney Spears isn't here, of course, but her fans can feel what made Elvis so dangerous, Howlin' Wolf so inspiring, Hendrix so revolutionary.
Any museum that even remembers politico-rocker Phil Ochs, let alone has obtained the gold lamé suit that he wore to tease his purist folk fans, has a lot going for it In the punk exhibit, a long way from home, I am con fronted with a death threat - an issue of Sniffin' Glue fanzine dedicated 'to John Collis - RIP'. It was prompted by something I once wrote about the musical intricacy of punk rock, no doubt. Upstairs, the Sun Studio equipment on which Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison created their uncanny noise is on display, together with constantly looped movies and rock videos ('Advisory: contains adult themes'). Higher still is an interactive juke-box stocked with 25,000 tracks, and a film show on rock history - this time the themes are 'mature'. At Rock Hall's summit, the significance of hip hop as today's blues is given due prominence.
Until Rock Hall opened, Cleveland had an international reputation for two other cultural institutions. The Cleveland Orchestra plays at the baroque Severance Hall, at the east end of town across from the university. Behind the Hall, in elegant parkland, is the Cleveland Museum of Art, an architectural clash between 1916 neo-classicism and vast modern marble slabs. From ancient Greece to the US avant-garde, the artistic collisions inside are just as striking.
Cleveland itself is caught halfway between its industrial past and its future as a cultural and educational centre. The relics of industry, on the west side, are so dominating that they have now achieved their own rusty grandeur. Traffic is fed in and out on a series of Brobdingnagian viaducts, spanning the twists of the Cuyahoga River. Beneath one of these, monumental in blue metal, huddles The Flats, centred on a street of bars and restaurants that pretend 1967 never ended. Each is decorated with hippy splashes of colour, announcing Crabs and Liquor and Fine Dining.
In the Warehouse District, gaunt and windswept but showing signs that the loft-and-bistro generation is moving in, I found a rarity - a shop. Cleveland, by and large, prefers malls to shops, but this one advertised 'Newspapers and Magazines'. I entered in innocence, buying a copy of the world's dullest daily, the Cleveland Plain Dealer . I immediately realised that the newspaper business was a trivial sideline. This was a temple to gaudy videos of a specialist nature. At nine in the morning, some of the images make the eyes water. 'Have a nice day,' said the cheerful shopkeeper. 'Er, yes. Just browsing.'
The two most imposing skyscrapers in the adjacent district, Tower City, have the dignity and detailing of a past age, more Empire State than Canary Wharf. Beneath the tallest is one of those 1930s granite civic halls that America excels at, each like a tiny Grand Central Station. Ten years ago it was extended backwards in the same architectural style, with waterfalls, elegant staircases and shops.
Nearby is the gigantic revolving guitar of the Hard Rock Café, and the baseball stadium where the Cleveland Indians play. Around here, pub rock lives. The former Band drummer Levon Helm, cheerful though gaunt in cancer remission, was at Fat Fish Blue while I was there, and the city's own Mississippi bluesman Robert Jr Lockwood, now in his mid-eighties, is a regular. A block east on Prospect Avenue SE, Baron's is one of half-a-dozen Cleveland bars giving the lie to the belief that Americans drink only Homer Simpson's Duff Beer. Baron's is a brew-pub, offering a wide choice from an authentic pilsner to a sweet, dark-brown ale.
Bars like Baron's, with bluesmen on the balcony and beer bubbling in the basement, along with Rock Hall and the stunning Museum of Art, point a way forward for Cleveland now that its industrial base is shrinking. It must be admitted that the city is not a picturesque paradise, but as a stopover on a musical pilgrimage, moving on to the blues clubs of Chicago and maybe to Rock Hall's rival attraction, The Experience in Seattle, it is a rewarding and exciting town.
That's where the music takes me
The Motown Museum, Detroit
Housed in the small, clapboard house which was a recording studio for the Tamla Motown artists in the 1960s, this museum pays homage to Motown's golden era. Studio A where Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, and Smokey Robinson recorded their hits and wander next door to see the gold discs and Motown memorabilia.
Country Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry, Nashville
The home of country music celebrates its stars with a collection of personal possessions and studio tours at the Country Music Hall of Fame. The Ryman Auditorium, venue for the legendary radio show The Grand Ole Opry has live performances and tributes in the evening.
Graceland, Memphis
The city which spawned the blues and rock 'n' roll has plenty of attractions and live venues for music lovers, but the most famous is Elvis Presley's former home, Graceland. Audio-tours guide loyal subjects through the King's mirrored TV Room and Hawaiian-themed Jungle Room, complete with waterfall and green carpet on the ceiling.
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is at One Key Plaza, Cleveland, Ohio 44114-1022 (www.rockhall.com).
