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“Carnegie Hall, I apologize for what I’m about to do,” said surprise guest Patti Smith last night at a Who tribute concert at the famed New York venue before launching into a snarling punk version of “My Generation,” during which she spit on the hallowed stage at least three separate times. (Iggy Pop did some damage to the very same stage at the Tibet House benefit last week.) Earlier in the night, Bobby McFerrin did the same song, though he used no instrument other than his mouth and the sound of his hand banging against his chest. Patti’s was stronger (mainly because it didn’t bear resemblance to the Cosby Show theme), but it proved that the Who’s vast catalog is strong enough to survive nearly any re-interpretation.

Check out our huge collection of Who photos.

The night — which was a benefit concert for numerous organizations including Music Unites — began with a children’s choir and the house band performing “Overture” and “Tommy Can You Hear Me.” They were followed by Living Colour, who did an absolutely killer funk-metal “Eminence Front.” It was a hard act to top, but Robyn Hitchcock’s acoustic “Substitute” and the Smithereens’ fierce one-two punch of “The Seeker” and “Sparks” came pretty close with an incredibly frantic energy. Bettye LaVette slowed things down with a beautiful torch ballad rendition of “Love Reign O’er Me” that was definitely the vocal highlight of the night.

Mose Allison, looking pretty spry for 82, was the only performer who did an original. He played “Young Man Blues” (which was a staple of the Who’s set list in the 1960s and ’70s) and its recent sequel “Old Man Blues.” Beatles cover band Fab Faux stepped one inch outside of their comfort zone by playing “Tommy’s Holiday Camp” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Every note and harmony from the Tommy finale was hit with stunning precision. The Gaslight Anthem tore into “Baba O’Riley” Pearl Jam style, while Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould dipped deep into the Who’s catalog for a frenzied cover of “Can’t Reach You” from The Who Sell Out. The night ended with all the performers jamming on a sloppy but fun “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” featuring an unprecedented two primal screams — one by Willie Nile and another by Nicole Atkins, who nailed it better than Daltrey has in quite some time.

Photo: Tracy Ketcher
About 30 seconds into his opener “The Passenger” at New York’s Carnegie Hall Friday night, Iggy Pop declared, “Aw, fuck this shirt,” tore off his black V-neck sweater and tossed it stage right to a waiting Patti Smith, who caught it and giddily hopped up and down while swinging like she’d just caught a wedding bouquet.

It was a rare moment even for the Tibet House Benefit Concert, an annual event that raises money to preserve the country’s threatened culture. The benefit, now in its 20th year, has hosted unlikely collaborations like Moby and David Bowie performing “Heroes” in 2003 and Ray Davies and Debbie Harry trading verses on “Lola” in 2007. This year marked the 60th anniversary of the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, and the show kicked off with several Tibetan monks performing a haunting chant in front of a large painting of the region’s sprawling Potala Palace.

The setup was sparse: most performers shared the same drums and amps, and the Patti Smith Group acted as house band. Early in the night, composer Phillip Glass introduced Irish singer Pierce Turner, who sat at the grand piano and performed the soaring, Bowie-reminiscent “Yogi with a Broken Heart.” Regina Spektor later played an apocalyptic set including the bone-chilling “Laughing,” which featured gloomy strings. The 30-year-old Bronx singer joked about finally making it to the legendary hall. “I’ve always wanted to play Carnegie Hall,” she said. “And now I have lipstick on my nose.”

Gogol Bordello followed with an acoustic set of revved-up Eastern European punk. Soon, Smith was onstage, looking like a road-tested gypsy. In a baggy white shirt, black vest and work boots, she kicked off with a joyous sing-along of the O’Jays classic “Love Train,” and proclaimed, “Come on everybody! Join hands!” Between songs, someone shouted “Happy birthday.” Smith, who turned 63 more than two months ago, replied, “As the Mad Hatter would say, it’s my un-birthday.”

Smith closed with the epically building “Gloria,” busting out spastic dance moves as the crowd belted the chorus. Afterward, Smith thanked all of the veterans of the cause, then she introduced Pop as “One of our sacred veterans, soon to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

Pop’s three-song set will likely go down in Carnegie Hall history. During “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” he completely defiled the place. He strutted across the stage in tight black jeans, ass crack fully visible, and then dove into the crowd (nobody caught him). As the song later descended into chaos, he smashed his mike stand into the iconic, wood-floored stage repeatedly, trying to make a dent. He gave up and hurled the stand at the grand piano.

Five decades of Raw Power: Iggy Pop and the Stooges in photos.

At the afterparty, Spektor admitted, “I never thought I’d really get to play. I’m used to listening to things from the nosebleed seats. Just being there on that stage is a mind trip.” Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye was still glowing from the special night. “I got to play ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’ with Iggy!” he said. “I’ve been waiting 40 years to play that.” Later, Bordello’s Eugene Hutz added, “It was an atom-smashing experience.”

Related Stories:

• Patti Smith, Vampire Weekend Pay Tribute to Buddy Holly at 2009 Tibet House Benefit
• All-Star Sing-Alongs Abound at 2007 Tibet House Benefit in NYC
• Full Report: 1999 Tibet House Benefit

Photo: Coppola/Getty

John Mayer the musician has been carefully cultivating John Mayer the brand over the last 10 years. He’s merged his acoustic singer-songwriter persona with his blues-virtuoso alter-ego, developed the logos on his tour T-shirts and spat out streams of 140-character tweets that broadcast his most off-the-cuff musings. But though he clearly knows how to get results on his own terms, sometimes the terms aren’t his to define — and as his recent Playboy misadventure demonstrated, even Mayer can hit a painfully wrong note. But at a pair of packed shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden late last week, Mayer proved sometimes he’s able to just let his music do the talking.

John Mayer Uncensored: photos of his most outrageous moments.

“You’re looking at the clean me,” Mayer announced midway through Thursday night’s set. Then he launched into a solo acoustic medley of “My Stupid Mouth,” “Daughters” and “3X5″ that was immediately followed by a groovy cover of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” on electric guitar. It was an impressive display of his sharp guitar playing, appealing sing-alongs and personable wit, and the audience responded generously. Mayer was clearly grateful for the crowd’s warmth. “It means the world to me you’re here,” he said on Friday. “I mean it from the bottom of my dumb heart.”

Mayer was less concerned with sending messages via his song selection than picking tracks that showed off his evolution as an artist: the acoustic (”Why Georgia”), the bluesy (”Crossroads”), the groovy (”Vultures”), the heartbroken (”Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”) and the hopeful (”Perfectly Lonely”). Mayer also acknowledged his inspirations with covers of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” which he cleverly slipped into the Mac-flavored “Half of My Heart.”

Though his winter arena tour comes with hi-tech production — a massive lighting rig, mesh curtain and a giant projection screen — Mayer switched the set up each night, keeping the focus on the music. On Thursday, he honored a fan chant with an impromptu version of his love letter to the city, Room for Squares‘ “City Love,” and pulled in lyrics from Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” during “Gravity.” On Friday he exuded a more relaxed energy, breaking out a sultry take on “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” and a buoyant “Good Love Is on the Way.”

Go inside Mayer’s recent RS cover shoot.

On both nights, Mayer seemed to savor the audience’s reaction to the line “It’s a long night in New York City” from “Who Says.” And perhaps feeling safe in his adopted hometown, Mayer got vulnerable during Friday’s show-closing “Gravity,” and debuted new lyrics that seem inspired by his Playboy fallout. He explained his new theory, that “lovelessness leads to loneliness, which leads to sadness, which leads to anger, which leads to hate” and spoke of imperfect batting averages. Then he sang:

“When you got hurt/it made you beautiful/the cracks around your heart/they let the light shine through./When you got hurt/in pieces on the floor/put them back together/even better than before”

The moment over, he finished the show in expected Mayer fashion: with an explosive solo that had him jamming on his knees with his guitar on the floor, moving forward, in the best way he knows how.

Set Lists:

Thursday, February 25th:
“Heartbreak Warfare”
“Crossroads”
“Vultures”
“No Such Thing”
“Perfectly Lonely”
“Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”
“Assassin”
“My Stupid Mouth” -> “Daughters” -> “3×5″ (medley)
“Ain’t No Sunshine”
“Waiting on the World to Change”
“Bigger Than My Body”
“Why Georgia”
“City Love” (tease)
“Gravity”
Encore:
“Who Says”
“Friends, Lovers or Nothing”

Friday, February 26th:
“Heartbreak Warfare”
“Good Love is On the Way”
“Vultures”
“Perfectly Lonely”
“I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)”
“Comfortable”
“Free Fallin’”
“Waiting On The World To Change (w/ Michael Franti)”
“Assassin”
“Crossroads”
“Belief”
“Half of My Heart”
“Why Georgia”
“No Such Thing”
Encore:
“Who Says”
“Gravity”

Related Stories:

• John Mayer Apologizes for Using “N-Word” in Raw Interview
• John Mayer Debuts Battle Studies at Intimate New York Gig
• John Mayer on His Biggest Hits, Tabloid Enemies and Endless Search for Love

Photo: Mazur/WireImage

As the final notes of “Cocaine” rang through Madison Square Garden last night, Jeff Beck quietly walked onto the stage next to Eric Clapton, sarcastically saluted his fellow guitar legend and launched into a jaw-dropping cover of Elmore James’ “Shake Your Money Maker.” For the next 40 minutes the former Yardbirds guitarists traded licks on songs by everyone from Willie Dixon to Sly Stone to Henry Mancini as the sold-out crowd reached a state of air guitar nirvana never before witnessed by man. At the end of the night they bowed to each other, as if they had just completed a karate match.

Forty years ago these two men — who are currently sharing the cover of Rolling Stone — were widely regarded as the two greatest guitarists of their time. After brief back-to-back stints in the Yardbirds (Beck replaced Clapton) they went on to the Jeff Beck Group and Cream, laying the groundwork for Led Zeppelin and all blues rock that followed. Since the early 1970s, however, the two men took radically different paths as Clapton made highly commercial rock and pop while Beck churned out highly un-commercial jazz-fusion and other instrumental projects. Beck went far off the pop grid, but his reputation survived fully intact and when he announced a co-headlining show with Clapton in Japan last year it created a frenzy that lead to a brief international tour.

Check out all of Rolling Stone’s guitar coverage and join the debate: who’s the best of all time?

Beck took the stage first, opening with “Eternity’s Breath” by the 1970s jazz-fusion group the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It’s hard to keep the attention of massive arena with a 40-minute instrumental set of largely unknown songs, but Beck pulled it off — aided by his killer band and a large string section. Some members of the crowd screamed for anything remotely familiar, like Beck’s famous cover of “People Get Ready,” but most sat quietly in awe as Beck’s guitar soared on songs like “Corpus Christy Carol” and the Puccini aria “Nessun Dorma.” The only song familiar to a classic rock audience was the Beatles “A Day In The Life,” which earned Beck a Grammy a few weeks ago.

After a brief break, Clapton opened with a brief acoustic set that mixed blues standards (”Driftin’ Blues,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out”) with Clapton originals like 1983’s “I’ve Got A Rock And Roll Heart.” He plugged in for a five-song set highlighted by the Derek and the Dominoes chestnut “Tell The Truth” and his famous cover of “I Shot The Sheriff.” The Bob Marley cover and J.J. Cale’s “Cocaine” were the only nod to his arsenal of radio hits, leaving tunes like “Wonderful Tonight,” “Tears In Heaven” and even “Layla” and “Sunshine Of Your Love” behind. Every basketball arena in this country has seen those songs about 87 times and he wisely realized enough’s enough.

The show reached a whole other level when Beck came out, as both guitarists were clearly playing at the absolute top of their game. An unexpected “Moon River” was particularly otherwordly, as Beck played the vocal melody on his guitar before Clapton stepped up to the mic and did his best Andy Williams. Cream’s “Outside Woman Blues” rocked significantly harder than when Cream themselves played it at MSG five yeas ago, and Sly Stone’s “I Want To Take You Higher” had the two guitarists trading solos back and forth so quickly it was often hard to tell who was playing what. It ended with Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” a song that hasn’t had much oomph for Clapton since his Cream days — but with Beck playing about three feet away from him it sounded fresh again.

Related Stories:

• Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and the Way of the Guitar: The New Issue of Rolling Stone
• Eric Clapton On Jeff Beck’s Singing and Having An Old Man’s Voice
• Eric Clapton Announces 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival: Jeff Beck, B.B. King, John Mayer, More

Photo: Mazur / Wireimage

Just before the final song of Yoko Ono’s first performance in four decades with founding members of the Plastic Ono Band, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 16th, her son Sean told a short story: At soundcheck that day, Sean remarked to guitarist Eric Clapton that he had never played slide guitar before and wanted to know how Eric and Sean’s father, John, played slide on the early, chaotic Plastic Ono Band records. Clapton replied that, at the time, he had no idea what he was doing.

Yoko turned to the BAM crowd with a coquettish grin. “I knew what I was doing,” she cracked. Then she leaped into the white-noise boogie of “Don’t Worry, Kyoko” from 1969’s Live Peace in Toronto with rusted shrieks and air-raid-siren whoops as Sean and Clapton played twin grinding slide guitars over a steady thundering rhythm section: original Plastic Ono bassist Klaus Voorman and drummer Jim Keltner, who played on John and Ono’s 1972 album Sometime in New York City.

Check out photos from the Plastic Ono Band show.

Coming two days before her 77th birthday, “We Are Plastic Ono Band” was a two-set revue of Ono’s musical life, with the first half focused on her new album, Between My Head and the Sky. The second part featured friends and disciples performing songs from her previous records, as far apart in temper and touch as “Mulberry” – a wordless memoir of Ono’s World War II childhood in Japan, in raw ecstatic yelps to the free-guitar discord of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon – to Bette Midler’s canny rearrangement of “Yes I’m Your Angel” from Double Fantasy into a saucy sister of “Makin’ Whoopee.” You could almost hear the clinking of martini glasses amid the brass and penthouse-party piano.

The connective momentum in Ono’s art is her declarative instruction and participatory assurance, from the early-Sixties action works shown in a biographical film at the start of the night – Cut Piece; the ceiling painting with a microscopic “Yes” at the center – to recent songs in the first set like the victory mantra “Rising” and “Higa Noboru,” a ballad from the current album. “I write/I light/My message/On an invisible wall/Of prison cell hell,” she sang in the latter, in a tender but direct voice to Sean’s firm piano work. And inside the extreme confrontation of records like 1970’s Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and 1971’s Fly was always a love of surging rhythm. At BAM, her new Plastic Ono Band – led by Sean, now 34, and including drummer Yuko Araki and Yuka Honda on keyboards – updated the railroad racket of Ono’s 1972 single “Mind Train” with percolating dancefloor electronics. Ono shimmeyed to the beat as she wailed.

Performance artist Justin Bond turned “What a Bastard the World Is” from 1973’s Approximately Infinite Universe into a blur of gender: a man dressed like a 1920s ingenue, singing a song of feminist outrage, in a hard deep tenor dotted with girl-ish flutter. Paul Simon and his son Harper, made a short poignant medley of “Silverhorse” from 1981’s Season of Glass, the album Ono made after John Lennon’s death, and his “Hold On,” from John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band record. Played like a pair of traditional English folk ballads, with familial harmonies and two acoustic guitars, the songs captured, without melodrama, the weight of Ono’s loss and her faith in unbroken connection.

The three-song set with Sean, Clapton, Voorman and Keltner was hardly as ragged as that ‘69 Live Peace show. But it was good rough fun – Voorman was beaming all through “Yer Blues,” the only Beatles song of the night – and Clapton soloed in the Approximately Infinite Universe blues “Death of Samantha” with sharp tortuous cries, like the song was an old Mississippi Delta lament.

The evening ended with Ono and Sean leading a full-cast singalong to “Give Peace a Chance.” But the audience gave its own encore too: a spontaneous rendition, for Ono, of “Happy Birthday.” Her “Yes” piece had come to life.