You may have seen the ceremony – it was broadcast live on VH1 for the first time. After raising the roof with her rocking three-song set, inductee Patti Smith came backstage and said, “I’m slightly hyperventilating.” Smith’s son, Jackson, joined her onstage, and she’s a proud rocker mom. “I love my band, and Jackson is a great addition. He’s my boy.”

Keith Richards reminisced about a Rolling Stones tour with the limelight-stealing Ronettes back in the 1960s. “We were top of the bill, but they were a hard act to follow”, he said.

Aretha Franklin came backstage after her gripping tribute to the late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who she said was a close friend. She’s casting a play based on her bestselling autobiography, “From These Roots”, and hinted that there have been movie offers.

Michael Anthony and Sammy Hagar of Van Halen vaguely explained David Lee Roth’s refusal to appear at the event, and also, for the umpteenth time, said they’d be happy to do a reunion tour. Velvet Revolver's Scott Weiland and Slash were both smoking cigarettes backstage, a no-no in New York State. Weiland explained that all parties handled the contretemps in a very adult fashion: basically, the Velvet Revolver guys didn’t want to sing this song, and Roth didn’t want to sing that song, so nyah, nyah, nyah.

Susan Sarandon’s cell phone rang while we were chatting with her in the On 3 swag suite, and she pulled it out of her bag, looked at it, and said, “One missed call. Did you hear Common? He was my ringtone. And I was sitting next to him the other day, and it went off with him singing. How weird is that? I love him.”