Billie Joe Armstrong, Alice Cooper Headline Joan Jett Tribute for Little Kids Rock
By Brian Ives
“Tommy James wrote one of my biggest hits,” Joan Jettsaid of the man who topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1969 with “Crimson and Clover.” She was speaking last night (October 23) from the stage of New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, at the 6th Annual Little Kids Rock Benefit. About a half an hour earlier, James and Jett had performed the song together for the first time ever.
“I was so nervous during rehearsal, I forgot the words!” Jett exclaimed. Happily, their duo performance turned out perfectly, with James starting the song on his own, backed by the house band (made up of members of Jett’s longtime backing band, the Blackhearts). One verse into the song, Jett joined him and the crowd roared.
It was all part of an event that served as a tribute concert to Jett, with artists from several generations and genres performing some of her most well-known songs (and a few rarities as well).
The show raised nearly a million and a half dollars for Little Kids Rock, an organization that helps to keep music programs in disadvantaged schools. Before the Jett tribute began, the organization held an auction that raised quite a bit of cash from the many high rollers in the audience — a dinner with the show’s producers, Steven and Maureen Van Zandt, for example, went for $60,000, while the opportunity to perform on stage (“any instrument you want!”) for the encore last night went for $20,000. The audience might have been, as John Lennon once said, the kind who rattle their jewelry to show their approval. Although in fact, most of them were on their feet throughout the night, whether bidding for some pretty awesome items (other treasures included a guitar autographed by all the members of Metallica, another one bore Slash‘s John Hancock), or to sing along with Jett classics.
