A Time for the Audience to Take the Concert Spotlight

“The Concert for New York” was memorable, but not for the reasons you might have expected. This was surely the first time Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Elton John were upstaged by the audience.

The musical performances during Saturday’s Madison Square Garden concert, broadcast by VH1, were generous, but mostly predictable.

None of the almost two dozen acts matched the drama of repeated scenes of widows, children and co-workers talking about or holding up photos of colleagues or loved ones among the police, firefighters and rescue workers killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

When we think of McCartney or the other pop-rock stars, we have scores of images to choose from--all the times we’ve seen them in videos, concerts and magazine spreads.

Remembering this night, however, it’s going to be hard to shake the memory of Yankee manager Joe Torre, taking a break from the World Series race, to stand on stage next to a youngster who spoke tenderly about missing his father.

We can, too, see Meg Ryan and other film stars all over movie and TV screens, but probably never again accompanied by an attack victim’s widow and children wiping tears from their eyes.

If one of the inspired moves of the Sept. 21 all-network telethon, a far more compelling show musically, was to have no studio audience so that all viewers felt equally close to the music, a key decision Saturday was to showcase 6,000 emergency workers and relatives so that the audience would serve as a living memorial to the men and women whose bodies are still trapped in the rubble at the World Trade Center site.

There’s always talk at benefits about leaving egos at the door, but this was one of the few times when the phrase didn’t seem hyperbolic. Invariably, the musicians, and the film-TV stars who introduced them, went out of their way to salute the audience.

Despite the many poignant scenes, the tone of the benefit concert was mostly upbeat.

David Bowie got things off to an uplifting start by transforming “Heroes,” an idealistic 1977 song about trying to reach for your dreams, into an emotional salute to the courage of the New York fire, police and rescue crews.

Billy Crystal eliminated any lingering tendency toward somberness. After referring to the anthrax scare, the comedian said things were so tense backstage that it was the first time he had ever seen rock stars “run away from white powder.”

Setting us up by suggesting the need for the country to pull together, he delivered another stinger: “Whether we are Christians or Jews or Muslims, we all have to agree on one thing,” he said. “We can never, ever again ... let Mariah Carey make a movie.”

In their eagerness to have a mammoth event, the concert organizers were guilty, from a television standpoint at least, of falling into the more-is-better trap with a nearly six-hour program.

Except for the comfort of James Taylor, who sang “Fire and Rain” and “Up on the Roof,” and the local-hero spirit of Billy Joel, who contributed “New York State of Mind,” the highlights were generated by veteran British rockers.

Just the presence of such major figures as McCartney, Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, the Who, John and Bowie was touching.

They have each spoken over the years about how inspired they were by the music and culture of America and how excited they were just to be able to come here as young musicians. On this night, they appeared to be trying to repay the country with some inspiration of their own.

Clapton teamed with guitarist Buddy Guy on spirit-raising blues numbers rather than turn to the heartache sentiments of his 1992 hit, “Tears in Heaven,” which was written after the death of his 4-year-old son in New York.

The surviving members of the Who lifted the crowd’s spirits even more with a strong four-song set that included “Baba O’Riley,” “Behind Blue Eyes” and the ferocious “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Jagger and Richards lacked the Who’s command. With its blue-collar chorus of “Let’s drink to the hard working people,” the pair’s “Salt of the Earth” may have seemed like a fitting tribute to the night’s subjects, but it’s too obscure a number, relatively, to stir much response. “Miss You” fared better, though its theme of romantic breakup seemed off-center as a message of support.

John’s “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” a song with numerous references to New York City, as well as his teaming with piano partner Joel on “Your Song,” were both understated notes of innocence that seemed unusually sweet under the circumstances.

Wearing a New York Fire Department T-shirt, McCartney closed the show on a nice low-key mix of old songs, “I’m Down” and “Yesterday,” and new. Besides two songs from his upcoming album, he introduced “Freedom,” a song he wrote after the terrorist attack. He also led the cast in a cleansing rendition of “Let It Be.”

But even the Beatles classic didn’t shift the spotlight from the audience.

Though there were moments of bonding among the surviving firefighters calling out their ladder company number, time and again they wanted to bear witness to those who weren’t there, the dead--whether by holding up laminated cards with their names or climbing on stage to recite their names.

In one of the evening’s defining moments, someone in the crowd caught Jim Carrey’s eye as the actor was about to introduce McCartney. Carrey then leaned down and was handed a framed photo of a missing policeman. He held the photo high for the camera to see and stared at it admiringly himself. “That’s what a hero looks like.”

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Times staff writer Paul Lieberman contributed to this report. Robert Hilburn can be reached via e-mail at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.