Bruce with full gospel (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
Who knew Jon Bon Jovi had it in him? Color me impressed by the Jersey rocker's gorgeous duet with gritty soul veteran Bettye LaVette on 'A Change Is Gonna Come' - a song of incomparable beauty and also one that's easy to mess up, so indelibly delicate and haunting is the Sam Cooke original treatment. But they pulled it off, and so doing, provided the first emotional high point of the 'We Are One' mega-concert Sunday afternoon on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, before a crowd of - well, no one knows exactly how many, but certainly several hundred thousand freezing but happy people packing the Mall back to the hillock of the Washington Monument.
The Bon Jovi-LaVette combo, bridging race, gender, region (Jersey and the South), and musical styles, epitomized the approach taken by the concert's programmers - not exactly a subtle method, but highly effective when executed properly, and this concert was an impeccable production. It was concise (clocking in just under two hours), the stagecraft was terrific, and the performers on tip-top behavior: only Challenger the bald eagle seemed to pitch an artist's hissy-fit, flapping his wings in unseemly fashion after being presented to the crowd and generally looking disgruntled. (Perhaps his concert rider wasn't honored.) But everyone else was lovely and from Beyonce to Usher to Bono, dressed with understated, casual elegance; Pete Seeger wore jeans, but hey, he's Pete Seeger.
And that's only part of the crowd
And the music? Well, it took few risks, and it worked. Artists played from their own repertoire when appropriate to the day's reflective themes (America, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and unity across barriers and in the face of challenges): thus Bruce Springsteen's post-9/11 song, 'The Rising,' with full gospel choir backing; thus Stevie Wonder's 'Higher Ground,' with Usher and Shakira; and thus also U2 - not just Bono but all the lads - with their Dr. King tribute 'In The Name Of Love.' Others, like the Bon Jovi/LaVette duo, covered classics not their own. This didn't always work: I thought will.i.am and Sheryl Crow doing Bob Marley's 'One Love' was an ultra-corny pick, wasting Herbie Hancock's backing talents and predictably, further marred by will.i.am's rapping interlude (Rakim he ain't). But Garth Brooks' medley, which began with 'American Pie' and moved on to 'Shout,' was the concert's high-energy moment, with the whole crowd jumping up and down in glorious rippling tumult, illuminated by flashbulbs erupting like fireflies.
Get up and groove
The presidential (do we still have to say -elect?) party was manifestly thrilled by the entertainment. The Obama family and Joe and Jill Biden stayed for the whole show, and Barack Obama in particular was seen grooving throughout, his head nodding back and forth like one who knows all the songs and genuinely likes them. Everyone got up and boogied to Stevie Wonder and a few other acts, and during the lulls Sasha squirmed and Malia took pictures.
America (and Beyonce) the Beautiful
This concert was not just a musical program, of course. It began with a powerful and pluralistic invocation by Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson, asking the God of our multiple understandings to 'bless us with tears' for the plight of the hungry, with anger at discrimination, and so forth. It was also a recital of presidential performances of yore, from Abraham Lincoln confronting the union's secession to Kennedy asking us to 'ask not...' et cetera. The readers were straight-up Hollywood, from Tom Hanks and Laura Linney to Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson (who got a giddy wave from Michelle), Rosario Dawson, Kal Penn and many more. But there were more subtle historical teachings as well, as when Queen Latifah told the story of the great singer Marian Anderson being denied by the D.A.R. the right to play Constitution Hall in 1939 on account of her race, until Eleanor Roosevelt intervened.
By his physical presence at the concert Barack Obama underscored the sense that he is in touch with this history, and at some level comfortable with it: comfortable, that is, with the expectations his election has raised and with the prospect of comparison with America's greatest presidents. Those who consider him cocky will find in this plenty of material for their analyses. But really, was there any alternative? Anything less would be shying from the moment. This is a transformative inauguration no matter what comes of the new presidency. And the fact that Obama and his party were sitting level with the artists and just a few feet away from them reinforced the notion - no more so than at the end, as the show's entire roster returned to stage behind Beyonce for the 'America the Beautiful' finale - that we are all in this together.