Joel Peresman's office isn't very rock and roll. Peresman works out of a small, windowless room tucked away in the editorial headquarters of Rolling Stone on Avenue of the Americas, right near Rockefeller Center. Far from looking like a hotel room freshly trashed by Keith Moon or a paraphernalia-strewn shrine to rock history, Peresman's workspace, no bigger than his desk, is tidy, as befits a man with the job title of president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.

You don't hear of many presidents and CEOs in rock. The Boss (as in Bruce Springsteen), yes. But president and CEO? It doesn't quite sing.

This week, the president and CEO and the Boss, as well as an all-star lineup of musicians including Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Simon and Garfunkel, U2, Metallica, and others will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a two-night event at New York's Madison Square Garden.

The I.M. Pei-designed Museum, built in 1998, is in Cleveland, Ohio, but Peresman works mostly from New York, where the museum has an annex in Soho that opened in December 2008. He works out of Rolling Stone's offices because Jann Wenner, founder and editor of the magazine, is on the board of the Hall of the Fame and is himself an inductee for lifetime achievement. (At least one critic, former Fox News gossip columnist Roger Friedman has been extremely critical of the relationship Wenner—and the Foundation itself—has to the actual Hall, quoting an unnamed source in 2007 saying, "Jann treats the museum like a toy.")

This week's concerts at MSG, co-presented with American Express, went on sale in July and ranged in price from $75 to $25,000 and $100,000 for VIP packages, the bulk of them selling for $450. Aside from some VIP tickets, the two nights are sold out.

"If we can make $3 million to $4 million with this, that's something we're really shooting to do," Peresman tells Portfolio.com. The money will go to the Foundation, which, in addition to the museum and its annex, has education and community outreach programs. "A lot of that [money] will be through our great corporate sponsorship." Those sponsors include Bacardi, Continental Airlines, Hard Rock Cafe, T-Mobile, and Canon. "They help not only financially"—specific figures were not discussed—"but they help from a marketing standpoint," he says.

A version of the shows will be broadcast on HBO starting November 29.

With all this heavy corporate sponsorship, one might be prompted to ask: Is this what rock and roll has come to? Was rock—historically the expression of youthful rebellion, the lynchpin holding together the holy trinity of hedonism along with sex and drugs—meant to be celebrated with $25,000-a-head, American Express-sponsored events?

"Sometimes it has to be," Peresman says, explaining that a big institution needs a lot of funds to operate, and $22-per-adult admission isn't going to pay for everything. "We're the only institution out there that's putting forth and preserving rock and roll." As for the artists involved, they don't seem to mind mixing a lot of business with what's supposed to be pleasure too. "Ninety-nine percent of the inductees understand, and they know the importance of this place and are supportive of it."

And as for that remaining 1 percent? "Some people just don't think it's right to be in a museum," Peresman says, pointing to the Sex Pistols. The short-lived (but much fetishized) British punk group declined to attend their own induction in 2006, writing in an open letter, "We're not your monkeys," and calling the museum "a piss stain." (On the other hand, Country Life Butter, for whom former Pistol Johnny "Rotten" Lydon was a commercial pitchman last year, is creamy and delicious and is in no way a piss stain.)