REVIEW
Singing for peace at Bridge School benefit Young, R.E.M., Pearl Jam speak to troubled times

Neva Chonin, Chronicle Pop Music Critic

Monday, October 22, 2001

Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit has always boasted surprises. Still, it's a safe bet that not even Nostradamus could have predicted the all- star performance that closed Saturday's concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre. At night's end, the performers -- R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, Billy Idol, Ben Harper and Jill Sobule -- gathered onstage for the traditional group jam. But this was an extraordinary finale for an extraordinary time: Instead of playing, the musicians silently held hands and embraced while the sold-out crowd serenaded them with John Lennon's paean to pacifism, "Imagine." Young, wearing a New York Fire Department baseball cap, provided guitar accompaniment as lyrics were projected onto an overhead screen.

When the audience reached the final refrain, R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe flashed the peace sign. This call for tolerance in the midst of war was a courageous gesture and a fitting climax to the benefit's first night (there was a second concert yesterday).

The slogan of the 15th annual fund-raiser for the Bridge School, a Hillsborough nonprofit serving children with speech and physical impairments, was "Free Speech." Young drove the point home by covering Bob Dylan's ClearChannel-blacklisted "Blowin' in the Wind" twice -- first in his brief appearance to open the concert and again during his full set at evening's end. ("Imagine" also made that regrettable list.)

Social commentary turned up in other Bridge sets. Idol, whose rockabilly- and-leather routine was one of the show's big hits, delivered a furious rendition of Buffalo Springfield's anti-war anthem "For What It's Worth." Pearl Jam denounced "neurotic, psychotic pigheaded politicians" in a cover of Lennon's "Give Me Some Truth." R.E.M. closed with "Losing My Religion," a song whose title carries new resonance in an era lousy with holy warriors and crusaders.

By injecting some consciousness-raising into their set lists, the Bridge artists reiterated music's role as a medium of communication. Music can also be fun and enthralling on a gut level, and Saturday's show offered plenty to satisfy audience members -- including Harper's girlfriend Laura Dern, Sean and Robin Wright Penn and comedian Will Durst -- seeking either of those listening experiences.

R.E.M. played a tremendous set marked by sweeping arrangements and Stipe's playful stage presence. The band shifted between new material (a lush, dramatic "Imitation of Life," a hushed, emotional "I've Been High") and older favorites ("Cuyahoga," a bass-heavy "Let Me In" and a hip-swinging "Lotus"). Despite Eddie Vedder's apologies for rusty musicianship (all musicians should sound so rusty), Pearl Jam played a compelling array of material highlighted by the always moving "Better Man," "Drifting," the country- inflected tune written on a drive back from Young's Bay Area home and a duet with Harper on "Indifference." A solo Matthews bemoaned feeling nervous but offered a smooth and seemingly nerve-free roundup of favorites such as "All Along the Watchtower," "The Space Between" and "Bartender," as well as a new song and a cover of the dark country classic "Long Black Veil."

Young's set had some popular choices -- "Long May You Run" and a cover of the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" -- and one showstopper: a new song titled "Mideast Vacation" that contained the warning "You'll never be a hero/ Stop sniffin' that smokin' gun." "It's hard to know what song to play these days," Young noted before performing "Mother Earth" on a pump organ. "Every song sounds different. Every word means something different."

Wise words from a maverick who endures as a musical icon precisely because he's an iconoclast, one who isn't afraid to speak his mind or fight for his right to keep on rocking in a free-speech world.

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