Recorded a month after the 9/11 tragedy, Come Together: A Night For John Lennon’s Words And Music is an interesting amalgamation of music, archival Lennon video and audio and bolstering patriotic speeches intermixed with the former Beatle’s vision of peace . With celebrities Kevin Bacon, James Gandolfini, Steve Buscemi and more, plus host Kevin Spacey introducing each of the 16 different songs performed, we get as much Lennon music this night as we do congrats and teary-eyed tribute to NYC firefighters, police and rescue workers.
The highlights of this show includes a solo Dave Mathews warbling through “In My Life”; Moby, Sean Lennon and Rufus Wainwright harmonizing on “Across The Universe”; Marc Anthony singing the hell out of “Lucy In The Sky Diamonds” (not a surprise seeing as the guy never disappoints with those fantastic pipes of his); and Spacey himself performing a competent “Mind Games.” Sean Lennon ends the regular set (I say regular because everybody is on stage singing “Give Peace A Chance/Power To The People” as the finale) with “This Boy” and a really spot-on perfect “Julia.”
The surprise for me and maybe the best performance of the night (certainly the most original take on a Lennon/Beatles classic) was the rap of Craig David on “Come Together.” A truly poignant musical moment — though only poignant in hindsight — is Billy Preston playing organ on a gospel rendition of “Imagine.” Other than Sean Lennon and his mom Yoko, Preston is probably the only other musician here really connected to Lennon (remember his Rhodes solo of “Get Back”). With Preston’s 2006 death, it really is sad seeing him performing at this show.
Come Together: A Night For John Lennon’s Words And Music is a nice 90 minutes of song, video and NYC back-patting (though that is warranted in light of the tragedy of 9/11 and how the city responded with unprecedented heroism). Though the show seems a bit contrived at times, none of my petty quips diminish the performances. I guess if you’re going to cover a John Lennon song then these 16 are as good as any, and in the case of Craig David’s rap or Sean Lennon’s plaintive “Julia,” better than most.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
