Stop this benefit!

McCartney, Jagger, Bowie et al. turn out for a benefit show that was long on schlock and short on facts and truth.

By Jim DeRogatis

Oct. 21, 2001 | Critic Nick Tosches once wrote a piece called "The Heartbeats Never Did Benefits," not long after George Harrison organized a 1971 concert for Bangladesh's starving masses. Noted Tosches of that night's sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd: "Da people didn't give a fuck about Bangla Desh."

Tosches then posed a question that, 30 years on, is just as relevant to another benefit at the same venue organized by Harrison's former band mate Paul McCartney -- "The Concert for NYC," broadcast live on VH1 on Saturday night.

"Does rock 'n' roll have anything to do with anything?" Tosches asked. "Once it adopts pretensions of meaningfulness outside of that of a self-contained expression, matrical and flashing, doesn't it become art or pop/kitsch?"

Yes, it does -- though it's hard to complain when it reaches the level of the former. "America: A Tribute to Heroes," the Sept. 22 televised concert organized with lightning speed by veteran MTV producer Joel Gallen and the vile music impresario Jimmy Iovine just days after Sept. 11's terrorist attacks, was presented with a striking spareness and taste and included a surprising number of performances that rivaled Jimi Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock for their urgency and emotional wallop -- that did, indeed, smell a lot like art.

The highlights of that night included Paul Simon delivering a hymnlike reading of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Wyclef Jean singing a heartbreaking version of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," the ever-crotchety Neil Young envisioning the utopia of John Lennon's "Imagine" and Bruce Springsteen investing "My City of Ruins" with the same immediacy he'd brought to the cop-critical Amadou Diallo tribute, "41 Shots."

Although it was three times as long (clocking in at a marathon six hours), much more heavily hyped and fat with corporate underwriting, McCartney's "Concert for NYC" produced nowhere near as much memorable music. In place of its predecessor's understated dignity, it substituted annoying telethon glad-handing, unbearable bathos and disturbing outbursts of unrestrained blood lust and blatant jingosim, mostly from the procession of New York public safety workers who were trotted out like props to stand beside the celebrity emcees. (It was also unbelievably weird to see Sen. Tom Daschle dressed and talking like Phil Donohue, and Bill Clinton saying he hoped Osama bin Laden was watching on TV. Do evildoers have VH1 in those caves that we're trying to smoke them out of? Can't we ask their cable providers for their address?)

The performances that were not just imminently forgettable pop stars doing their usual awards-show shtick (Five for Fighting, Jay-Z, the Backstreet Boys, Bon Jovi, the Goo-Goo Dolls and Janet Jackson) were mostly just incredibly lame (Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy's bluesy shucking and jiving, or David Bowie's weak rendition of the obvious "Heroes," both of which were driven by the ubiquitous Paul Shaffer and his bland band of Musician's Union hacks).

Then there were the tunes that were astoundingly wrong-headed, given the ostensible cause of the event. Melissa Etheridge emoted solo-acoustic through Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," a song about desperately wanting to escape from a city that has become "a death trap," while the rock band formerly known as the Who rotely thundered through "Baba O'Reilly," urging a crowd that included thousands of young rescuers still mourning the loss of their peers to sing along in homage to a "teenage wasteland."

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