VA – The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame [25th Anniversary Concerts] (2010)
Filed Under: blues-rock, country-rock, folk, rock by driX — Leave a commentJuly 25, 2011
The Hall of Fame presents the history of rock, plausibly, as a giant family tree, branching from profound ancestors — blues, country, gospel, pop, folk ballads, jazz, R&B — to wild offspring, legitimate and illegitimate. That makes its induction ceremonies, and made the two Madison Square Garden shows, the kind of family reunions where distant cousins finally meet. Friday’s headliners were U2, Jeff Beck (replacing an ailing Eric Clapton) and Aretha Franklin. Fellow hall members, including Sting, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Ray Davies of the Kinks and the bluesman Buddy Guy, sat in. Jerry Lee Lewis, from the first group of musicians inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1986, started the concert with “Great Balls of Fire.”Where the first concert, October 29, 2009…
…with Mr. Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Crosby, Stills and Nash — fell within a classic-rock radio format, Friday’s pushed the timeline forward with the postpunk of U2, the thrash-metal of Metallica (which joined the hall this year) and a glimmer of hip-hop with Black Eyed Peas. And where Thursday’s show concentrated on song craft, Friday’s reveled in untrammeled sound: Ms. Franklin’s churchy improvisations, Mr. Beck’s eruptive guitar solos, Metallica’s ironclad blasts of hard rock and U2’s oceanic reverberations. With guests coming and going, and bands playing songs by others, the concerts broke musicians out of their routines.
There may have been some battle-of-the-bands competitiveness when U2 followed Metallica’s gargantuan riffs with the aggressive blare that starts “Vertigo.” But U2 was, as usual, striving for uplift. During the set Bono called Madison Square Garden “rock ’n’ roll’s great cathedral” for “the saints and the heretics, the poets and the punks, that now make up the Hall of Fame.”
“It’s a dangerous thing,” he continued, “this business of building idols, but at least rock ’n’ roll is not, at its best, about worshiping sacred cows. It’s about the thousands of voices gathered in one great unwashed congregation.”
U2 plays arenas with a garage-band informality, proffering vulnerability as much as grandeur. The first attempt at “Because the Night” went awry — U2’s rippling beat was too subtle for Ms. Smith, who started in the wrong place, and the band later botched a chord change — so Bono ruefully called for “take two,” which was an improvement.
Bono preached that rock ’n’ roll was about “political, sexual, spiritual liberation,” and Mr. Springsteen, no stranger to earnestness himself, interjected, “Let’s have some fun with that.” Then they performed “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” together, singing lines in call and response. Eventually Bono switched to singing lyrics from “The Promised Land,” a Springsteen song.
And from there U2 was as much host as headliner. During “Mysterious Ways” the Black Eyed Peas arrived onstage, and U2 segued into the Black Eyed Peas’ wide-ranging protest song, “Where Is the Love?” U2 started playing a limpid, meditative but still recognizable version of “Gimme Shelter,” with Fergie singing the introductory oohs, before Mr. Jagger strode onstage and took over, answering Fergie’s vampy body language with his angular rock-scarecrow moves. He stayed onstage to sing U2’s “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” finding its kinship with the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden.”
Metallica’s own thrash-metal songs had the unified, accelerating thrust that make it unstoppable onstage. During the set Metallica’s singer, James Hetfield, admitted to the curatorial hand of the Hall of Fame. The band was joined by an obvious guest: Mr. Osbourne of Black Sabbath, whom Metallica had inducted into the Hall of Fame. The band’s two other guests, Mr. Reed and Mr. Davies, Mr. Hetfield said, had initially seemed to fall outside Metallica’s sphere. But Mr. Reed sang his primal Velvet Underground songs, “Sweet Jane” and “White Light/White Heat,” bolstered by Metallica’s mighty impact. Before Mr. Davies had Metallica backing him for the Kinks’ riff-rocking “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” Mr. Hetfield said, “We got schooled on early, early riff-rock,” as if he had just met Neanderthal Man.
Ms. Franklin, reveling in her upper register on Friday night, was less accommodating to her guests. She allowed them to wedge themselves into her hits: Annie Lennox in “Chain of Fools,” reclaiming the low notes as Ms. Franklin soared higher, and Lenny Kravitz rushing through a verse alongside her in “Think.” But Ms. Franklin was following her own program. Between soul songs she performed numbers from musicals, dodging the beat and rasping like a jazz singer in “New York, New York” and treating “Make Them Hear You” from “Ragtime,” a song about justice, like a gospel hymn. She wouldn’t be confined to the category of soul music.
In the Hall of Fame’s taxonomy of styles Mr. Beck represents the British blues movement from which he emerged in the 1960s. But since then he has applied the tension and release of blues guitar to other structures, particularly jazz-rock fusions. He had Sting as vocalist for “People Get Ready,” but for most of his set, the guitar did the singing: crooning long melodic phrases in “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” and the Ray Charles hit “Drown in My Own Tears,” spiraling toward a frenzy in “Freeway Boogie,” using bent notes and distortion to make sustained lines seethe with tension in “A Day in the Life.”
Mr. Beck gave the concert its most familial moment. He acknowledged that seeing Mr. Guy “inspired me so much in 1962 that I never got over it.” And he hung back, sticking mostly to rhythm guitar, as Mr. Guy tore into “Let Me Love You Baby,” singing with a blues shout that built toward raspy hysteria and playing solos that cut across the blues shuffle like strokes of a machete. Afterward Mr. Beck knelt worshipfully at Mr. Guy’s feet, paying homage to a venerated ancestor who can still whop him.
Tracklist:
1. (00:01:21) Intro – Intro
2. (00:01:51) Jerry Lee Lewis – Great Balls Of Fire
3. (00:04:22) Crosby, Stills & Nash – Woodstock
4. (00:04:21) Crosby, Stills & Nash – Almost Cut My Hair
5. (00:05:10) Crosby, Stills & Nash with Bonnie Raitt – Love Has No Pride.mp3
6. (00:05:45) Crosby, Stills & Nash with Jackson Browne – The Pretender
7. (00:04:12) Crosby, Stills & Nash with James Taylor – Love the One You’re With
8. (00:03:04) Stevie Wonder – For Once In My Life
9. (00:04:02) Stevie Wonder with Smokey Robinson – The Tracks of My Tears
10. (00:03:48) Stevie Wonder with John Legend – The Way You Make Me Feel
11. (00:05:03) Stevie Wonder with B.B. King – The Thrill Is Gone
12. (00:07:25) Stevie Wonder with Sting – Higher Ground/Roxanne
13. (00:04:31) Stevie Wonder with Jeff Beck – Superstition
14. (00:05:16) Paul Simon – You Can Call Me Al
15. (00:03:31) Paul Simon with David Crosby and Graham Nash – Here Comes The Sun
16. (00:03:21) Paul Simon with Dion – The Wanderer
17. (00:03:17) Little Anthony & the Imperials – Two People in the World
18. (00:04:46) Simon & Garfunkel – The Sounds of Silence
19. (00:04:51) Simon & Garfunkel – The Boxer
20. (00:05:22) Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water
21. (00:03:36) Aretha Franklin – Baby I Love You
22. (00:04:01) Aretha Franklin – Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)
23. (00:03:06) Aretha Franklin with Annie Lennox – Chain Of Fools
24. (00:05:06) Metallica – For Whom the Bell Tolls
25. (00:05:24) Metallica with Lou Reed – Sweet Jane
26. (00:04:35) Metallica with Ozzy Osbourne – Iron Man/Paranoid
27. (00:02:37) Metallica with Ray Davies – All Day and All of the Night
28. (00:06:06) Metallica – Enter Sandman
29. (00:03:57) U2 – Vertigo
30. (00:05:19) U2 – Magnificent
31. (00:04:24) U2 with Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith – Because The Night
32. (00:04:48) U2 with Bruce Springsteen – I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
33. (00:05:14) U2 with Mick Jagger, Will.I.Am and Fergie – Gimme Shelter
34. (00:04:27) U2 with Mick Jagger – Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
35. (00:05:25) U2 – Beautiful Day
36. (00:04:55) Jeff Beck Band with Sting – People Get Ready
37. (00:03:41) Jeff Beck Band with Buddy Guy – Let Me Love You
38. (00:05:13) Jeff Beck Band with Billy Gibbons – Rice Pudding/Foxy Lady
39. (00:04:43) Jeff Beck Band – A Day In The Life
40. (00:02:35) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with Sam Moore – Hold On I’m Coming
41. (00:03:37) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with Sam Moore – Soul Man
42. (00:01:09) Bruce Springsteen – Introduction
43. (00:07:58) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with Tom Morello – Ghost Of Tom Joad
44. (00:03:58) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with John Fogerty – Fortunate Son
45. (00:03:18) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with John Fogerty – Pretty Woman
46. (00:11:16) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Jungleland
47. (00:03:48) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with Darlene Love – A Fine Fine Boy
48. (00:06:51) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with Billy Joel – New York State Of Mind
49. (00:05:21) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with Billy Joel – Born To Run
50. (00:04:19) Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with others – Higher & Higher
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