Rock’s Royal Genes, in Endless Recombinations

Performers at Thursday's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame benefit concert included John Fogerty, left, who joined Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band onstage to play tunes by Creedence Clearwater Revival and Roy Orbison.

Music Review
By JON PARELES
NYT

History lesson, star showcase, oldies singalong, canonization and romp — on Thursday night, the first of two Madison Square Garden celebrations and benefits for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was all of those.

The headliners were Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Crosby, Stills and Nash, and a dozen of their fellow members of the hall, along with some aspirants, joined them onstage to share songs, trace connections, offer praise and spark one another. The nearly six-hour concert was to be edited into an HBO program to be shown on Nov. 29.

Yet even with cameras rolling, most of the performers stayed loose, whooping it up as they played unexpected songs in combinations that might never happen again.

The two concerts — a Friday show featured U2, Aretha Franklin and Metallica — were billed as the hall’s 25th anniversary, although the foundation behind the hall was incorporated in 1983, and its first musicians weren’t inducted until 1986. (One of them, Jerry Lee Lewis, led off Thursday’s show with a two-fisted “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”) The museum in Cleveland opened in 1995. The “25th anniversary” tag anticipates the 25th induction ceremony in March. If the hall were a musician, it could now be inducted into itself, since to ensure historical perspective, its founding rule is that nominees must have started their recording careers a quarter-century earlier. Decades can take a toll on voices and lives, but Thursday’s performers were still vital.

(Original here.)