There were many things for hard rock and heavy metal to be upset about, whether it's the fact that the one metal award is not on the main broadcast, or that two-time Grammy winner Jeff Hanneman was shut out of the In Memoriam package, or perhaps that the Nine Inch Nails/Queens of the Stone Age performance was cut off. All of these things were covered in our initial report on the Grammys earlier this week.
The executive producer of the Grammys, Ken Ehrlich, was interviewed by the Hollywood Reporter earlier this week about the show, which by the way had the second-best ratings of the last 20 years, and asked about the NIN snub, and he offered the most Hollywood-esque non-apology I've ever seen:
I’m sorry he was upset. I was really thrilled that we were finally getting him on the Grammys. The final jam started with Arcade Fire a few years ago, and LL Cool J last year. I want to end on a high, an up note. I did tell them we’d take it as long as we could. The number was about five, six minutes long, and we got to within a minute twenty of the end. We got as close as we could possibly get.
"I'm sorry he was upset" is not an apology. He couldn't care less, he had to get those Delta plugs in before they went off broadcast.
This is the perfect quote to show how little Ken cares about rock, or about any music really. Ultimately, he cares about ratings, and NIN isn't exactly on the tip of everybody's tongues.
