It was Born to Run meets New York State of Mind — with a little bit of Hail to the Chief thrown in for good measure.
Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel joined forces in a concert to raise money for presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama’s campaign and the Democratic Party on Thursday night.
They got a little help from India.Arie, John Legend and Springsteen’s wife, Patti Scialfa, as they tore through the rock legends’ long list of hits.
When they launched into Born to Run, Springsteen said, “This is for the senator.”
As the show concluded, Obama made an appearance onstage. He called the event “a magical evening” and said he would not ruin it with a long speech. However, he did speak about the struggling, everyday people in Joel’s and Springsteen’s songs, comparing them to the people he has met on the campaign trail.
He warned supporters not to get overconfident because he leads in the polls.
“Don’t underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Don’t underestimate our ability to screw it up,” Obama said. “I want everybody running scared.”
Obama also offered a new explanation for his decision to seek the White House.
“I was sitting offstage with [my wife] Michelle, and I ... said, ‘Honey, the reason I’m running for president is I can’t be Bruce Springsteen. I can’t be Billy Joel,’” Obama said.
Springsteen and Joel focused more on music than politics, alternating between each other’s songs — clearly having fun.
Springsteen hugged Joel during Spirit in the Night, then ended up laying across the piano as he sang. Joel left the piano and picked up a guitar for Glory Days. They even stuck a bit of The Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night into the middle of Joel’s song River of Dreams.
When Springsteen suggested they slow things down a bit, Joel began banging out a playful version of Hail to the Chief in honor of Obama’s presidential hopes.
The cheap seats at the “Change Rocks” concert were US$500. Big spenders could shell out US$25,000 each.
Springsteen’s song The Rising has become an unofficial anthem for Obama’s campaign, often playing when Obama bounds onstage at his rallies.
Inspired by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it strikes a defiant tone with lines like: “Sky of longing and emptiness, Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life, Come on up for the rising, Come on up, lay your hands in mine.”
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS