Neil Young Announces the End of an Era (?) for the Bridge School Benefit
Neil Young announced yesterday that after 30 years, he will no longer host the annual Bridge School Benefit. It was also announced that there will be no benefit concert at all in 2017.
The Bridge School was founded in 1987 after getting its initial funding via its inaugural benefit concert the year before hosted by Neil and then-wife Pegi Young, with a bill featuring their friends Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Tom Petty, Robin Williams, and Nils Lofgren. The Bridge School was founded when Pegi Young and others saw the lack of support and adequate education for special needs children, specifically those with severe physical and speech impairments.
The concert has been held every year since 1986, traditionally at the Shoreline Amphiteatre in Mountain View, California, and all proceeds have gone straight to funding the Bridge School. Past guests include David Bowie, Ryan Adams, Jack White, and Metallica.
At this time, it is unknown whether the concert series will return or if the tradition has permanently come to an end.
Lennon-Ono Track “Imagine” Named ‘Song of the Century’
The National Music Publishers Association has officially awarded the title of Song of the Century to John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
The ceremony took place last night in New York, and while Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon had were honored to attend and receive the award in John’s honor, NMPA president and CEO David Israelite had a surprise up his sleeve. Audio was played from a vintage BBC interview with John Lennon where he admitted that “Imagine” should have actually been credited as a Lennon-Ono song, but at the time, “I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution.”
Following the audio clip, Yoko Ono was officially given a well-overdue credit as “Imagine”’s cowriter. Sean Lennon gushed on the moment afterwards to Billboard, saying, “When they officially acknowledged—through my father’s account—that my mother co-wrote ‘Imagine’, the Song of the Century, it may have been the happiest day of mine and mother’s life.”
-Taylor Wallace
