Last night, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band whipped out a version of “New York State of Mind” with Billy Joel at the first of two giant concerts marking the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Tonight, it was Aretha Franklin who showed some love for the city hosting the gigs, with a stellar “New York, New York.” For more of the night’s awe-inspiring moments as they happen, keep reading.
Check out the Rock Hall shows in killer live photos.
• Annie Lennox joins Aretha Franklin for “Chain of Fools” wearing a maroon felt hat and a T-shirt with a prominent message: “HIV Positive” reads the front; “Fighting HIV/AIDS” is emblazoned on the back. The song was so successful, Franklin gushes, “That was so good” and does little dance.
• Lenny Kravitz blows the crowd away with an amazingly soulful take on his verses of “Think.” Aretha starts to dance off on Lenny’s arm, but it’s just a psych-out. She’s back for a sizzling “Respect.”
• Jeff Beck opens with an homage to Ray Charles: “Drown In My Own Tears.” He wraps with a tribute to the Beatles, laying down a gorgeous, drawn-out “A Day in the Life” that stuns the crowd.
• Beck also brings out the two most spectacularly bearded men in the building: Sting sings “People Get Ready,” Billy Gibbons lends his gravely pipes to “Foxy Lady.”
• Metallica’s James Hetfield gets the crowd head-banging and laughing when he introduces Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” as “one of the songs I wish we would have wroted — and thank my English teacher right now — I wish we had written.”
• The room fills with boisterous “Lllllllouuuus” as Lou Reed joins the band for searing versions of “Sweet Jane” and “White Light/White Heat.”
• Hetfield introduces “the crazy guy who epitomizes the rock & roll singer.” Ozzy Osbourne’s first words: “I can’t fucking hear! Louder!”
• Bono intros “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” with a long speech: “Here in rock & roll’s great cathedral, Madison Square Garden, think about all the pilgrims and pioneers that got us all here, the saints and the heretics, the poets and the punks that now make up the Hall of Fame. It’s a dangerous thing, this business of building idols, but at least, rock & roll is not at its best about worshiping sacred cows. It’s about thousands of voices gathered at once in a great unwashed congregation, like tonight. For a lot of us here, rock & roll means just one word: liberation. Political, sexual, spiritual liberation.”
Bruce Springsteen responds: “Let’s have some fun with that.”
You can find the original article and other great content at this URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/10/30/hall-of-fame-anniversary-rocks-on-with-second-all-star-night/
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