In 1979, the President of the United States was the gentle and reasonable Jimmy Carter. One of the headaches he had to deal with happened in March of that year: an incident at one of the reactors of the nuclear power plant in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. Compared to Chernobyl, it was a trifle, but still a very serious event.
Four environmentally-minded singer-songwriters, namely Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, and John Hall, got busy organizing a four-day anti-nuclear protest concert at Madison Square Garden in New York, involving a lot of other more or less important, more or less top-of-the-wave names at the time. Over the four dates, spread between September 19th and 23rd, the following artists took turns and sporadically gathered on stage for some numbers together:
_Doobie Brothers
_Bonnie Raitt
_John Hall
_James Taylor
_Carly Simon
_Jackson Browne
_Nicolette Larson
_Ry Cooder
_Sweet Honey in the Rock
_Gil Scott Heron
_Jesse Colin Young
_Raydio
_Chaka Khan
_Poco
_Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
_Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
_Crosby Stills & Nash
Things were done properly… a film was shot, which then came out in mid-1980, and a triple album was released almost immediately at the end of 1979, and later also in a digital version, limited to two CDs.
It's curious that a product of civil protest, because that's what it is, is filled with harmless music… by artists who are brilliant but anything but provocative, including the most fortunate and iconic of all present, the future billionaire Springsteen who in these tracks appears as the furious rocker, compared to the others. The couple of concerts (on two different days) held by the boss on this occasion were released many years later in complete version both on album and video. So the social-democrat Bruce is the one who eventually made the most money from the deal. For himself, not for denuclearization.
It's normal, though, that downstream of such a resonant initiative… nothing changes. The nuclear power plants remain, and this group of activists are left with nothing but their sacred ideals, as happens a bit all over the world, especially with us.
But let's get to the music itself: the array of excellent pop rock tracks is led by the Doobie Brothers, at the time in the midst of their "Michael McDonald phase," which means high-class funky rhythm & blues but equally ingratiating, especially in remembrance of the blood-pumping and galloping rock blues performances that accompanied them when powerful Tom Johnston was still leading them (then fortunately recovered and reinstated). On the record, "Depending on You" and "Takin' It to the Streets" remain immortalized with its proverbial, sculpted piano riff.
The Poco are impeccable with "Heart of the Night," a semi-country soul ballad chiseled by Rusty Young's precious steel guitar and the alto saxophone. These were their years (few) of great success and in this ensemble of long-standing artists, they stand out a bit like Cindy Lauper and Kim Carnes will do years later in "We Are the World," the charity mishmash against hunger in Africa; unfortunately, also still present like the nuclear power plants.
I like how James Taylor moves on stage, who with his then-wife Carly Simon and activist friend Graham Nash intones a choral "The Times They Are A-Changin'," predictably outstripping the minstrel Dylan's original. Taylor appears on the record, alone or with the beautiful Carly by his side, on three other occasions, rather in shape and dominant in this soft Californian context.
The best, however, is Tom Petty. Straight, honest, and direct, he intones an overdone cover of Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me" (even Iva Zanicchi had attempted it) and makes it his own due to that impressive band he has, the excellent Heartbreakers. On the other hand, CSN are unsinkable, who in those late seventies were experiencing a great revival thanks to the pearls contained in the '77 album titled precisely with their acronym.
One might wonder at this point: who the heck is John Hall? In fact, he is the weak link of the quartet of promoters of the event, but only from a musical point of view, because from an ideological and organizational standpoint, things are reversed. The guy actually soon gave up being a singer-songwriter and turned to a political career, becoming a Representative in the United States Congress in the 2000s.
That's all, nothing transcendental, good social-democratic music and vaguely radical chic, as usual impotent against those in the halls of power. Sort of like a May 1st concert in yankee sauce, certainly musically much more significant than our flat events in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome, filled with young "musicians" preferably Apulian: overweight pasta eaters who babble endless liturgies, words in liberty over the same groove(?) as always, carried on for minutes, without variations. Non-music that doesn’t stop harassing us.
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