The Severance Hall, Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame, Cleveland, OH29th September 1996 |
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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is celebrating the induction of Woody Guthrie with a concert. Bruce Springsteen sings Car Car and jokes about Woody muscling in on his specialist subject; Ani DiFranco brings the house down with her radical interpretation of Do Re Mi; Pete Seeger leads the congregation through an emotional This Land Is Your Land; and Arlo Guthrie, Springsteen and Billy Bragg argue backstage about the tune to Hard Travelling and after ooh, minutes of rehearsal, present it as an appropriately shambolic encore. "I've been asked," says Billy at one stage, "to do something in the spirit of Woody Guthrie. So I'm gonna go up and have a piss from the balcony, and then I'm gonna steal all the cutlery backstage...". A small, dark-haired, middle aged lady laughs her socks off.
Taken from Mojo November 1997. Written by Colin Irwin