David Bowie, Leonard Cohen (4x), Prince, Lemmy, The Ramones, Joe Strummer (was so drunk I can’t remember, but it was great), Chuck Berry, Freddie Mercury, Lou Reed and many I can’t think of right now… but I came here to add Charlie Watts.
Just limited to performers:
Leonard Bernstein
Carol Channing
Sydney Chaplin
Cass Eliot
Arthur Fiedler
Ella Fitzgerald
Margot Fonteyn
Mirella Freni
Nicolai Gedda
Jimi Hendrix
Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Janis Joplin
James Levine
Jessye Norman
Rudolf Nureyev
Luciano Pavarotti
Andre Previn
Artur Rubinstein
Beverly Sills
Janos Starker
Leopold Stokowski
George Szell
Mary Travers
Frank Zappa
Hard to believe, they’re all dead.
Gustavo Cerati (Soda Stereo)
Dizzie Gillespie
Charlie Watts. RIP.
I grew up on the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Never saw him/them live, though.
Same for me. Also David Bowie and Lou Reed.
Ray Charles
Peter Steele from Type O Negative
Robbin Crosby from Ratt
Tim Kelly from Slaughter
George Carlin
Oh, yeah, also:
Luciano Pavarotti
Dr John
Jimmy Smith
Michael Brecker
John Martyn
Keith Emerson
Long John Baldry
Roy Buchanon
Ronnie James Dio (his first time in Sabbath)
Brad Delp (Boston)
Andy Parker (UFO)
Doug Bennett (Doug and the Slugs)
Leonard Cohen
Zal Yanovsky (as the owner of Chez Piggy in the early '80s)
Don’t know if anyone pointed this out yet, but Johnny Rotten is still with us. You might be thinking of Sid Vicious.
Off the top of my head I saw:
Jimi Jamison with Survivor just weeks before his death.
Aretha Franklin
Issac Hayes
Lou Rawls
Kinison
Linda McCartney with Wings
Scott Smith (Loverboy)
Greg Allman
Merle Haggard
George Jones
I’m sure I’ll come up with more if I think about it. I see at least 10-15 concerts a year. I’d have to count my stubs but I’m sure I am over 400 in my lifetime.
The Rolling Stones ft Charlie Watts on drums. RIP.
BB King, James Brown, Prince. All awesome performers.
Anyone who would judge you is an idiot. Sure, his looks didn’t hurt, but Ricky Nelson was actually a pretty good singer, and on those original records he had a really solid band, including the great James Burton.
Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band
Jerry Garcia
BB King
Junior Walker
Chris Squire of Yes.
Rick Wright of Pink Floyd
Greg Lake & Keith Emerson of ELP.
Tom Petty
Jon Lord; Keyboardist of Deep Purple.
Ginger Baker of Cream.
John Entwistle of The Who.
Pete Seeger
Odetta
Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary
Rube Dee, she recited a poem at Pete’s 90th Birthday concert.
Richie Havens
I’m sure I’m missing more.
Some I missed:
Dusty Hill (ZZ Top)
Dr John; Billy Preston, Levon Helm & Rick Danko who along with Clemens were all part of the First All-Starr Band
Charlie Daniels
Pete Fountain
Neil Peart (of Rush)
I’d posted that I’d seen the Ramones earlier. That’s a very incomplete list. For some reason I got stuck on bands none of whose members are with us.
Reading through this thread, here’s a longer list (and I’m sure there’s someone I’ve forgotten, so it’s not complete):
Link Wray
BB King
Keith Emerson
Greg Lake
Chuck Berry
John Lee Hooker
Jerry Garcia
Brent Mydland
Dave Brubeck
Brad Delp
Bobby “Blue” Bland
Adam Yauch
Jim Rodford
Ian Gibbons
Rick Nelson (at Madison Square Garden, but not at the infamous Garden Party)
Lux Interior
Merle Haggard
James Levine
Beverly Sills
And last, but very much not least, Charlie Watts. Only once, at the Garden, late seventies sometime. The tour with the giant inflatable dick.
I forgot those two. Saw Rick Wright with Pink Floyd around 1988 and Ginger Baker with a Jazz trio in 1993.
ETA: just thought of another one. Saw Soundgarden with Chris Cornell opening for Guns’n’Roses in 1992.
Others whom I’ve now remembered, thanks to others’ posts here.
- Johnny Cash
- Waylon Jennings
- Tommy Makem
E. Power Biggs, at several New Years Eves performances with the Rector (St Thomas Church?). Even got a handshake and an autograph. Virgil Fox and his traveling pipe organ (maybe mostly electronic?) on a park band stage.
Forgot about another one: saw Townes Van Zandt around 1994, shortly before his death.
Thought of another one I wish I’d forgotten:
GG Allin.
A profoundly mentally unhealthy person who never got the help he needed. He had something of a career as a “musician,” mostly because the people who went to see him perform treated him like an animal in a zoo, an old-fashioned horrible zoo with terrible conditions for the animals, and the people around him were making a few (not many) bucks off his performances. And I was one of those people, one night, for which I am sorry. I didn’t stay for the whole show. I didn’t know who he was then, and went to the club with a few friends who did know. I left after the first couple of songs, if you could call them “songs.”