Audience members at the Rainforest Fund’s 21st Annual Benefit Concert Thursday night at Carnegie Hall thought nothing could top the always outrageous Lady Gaga and her equally audacious counterpart, Elton John, banging their hearts out on his and her pianos while singing a duet of her touching song, “Speechless” and his famous hit, “Your Song.”
That is, until John took the stage solo and said, “This is one of those moments where you will remember 10 years from now, ‘Elton did that!’ and began belting out covers of Madonna’s “Material Girl” and then “Like a Virgin,” in keeping with part of the show’s 1980s theme.
Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, hosted the evening and stood on the side of the stage laughing aloud as a coterie of nearly-naked male dancers pranced onstage, leaping about and swirling around John as he sang and boogied himself.
Sting and John showed off their more feminine sides when they sang “Big Spender” with Dame Shirley Bassey, with John wearing a boa and Sting in a hat with a huge red flower and dangling diamond earrings. (He refused to wear heels, Styler said after the show.)
Blondie’s Debbie Harry sang her famous hits, “Call Me” and “The Tide is High” and later, Sting danced with and serenaded Styler with the Fine Young Cannibals’ 1989 hit “She Drives Me Crazy.”
One of the biggest highlights of the night came when surprise guest Bruce Springsteen took the stage, saying, “I’m the hired gun for the evening. Sting told me we’re doing a show of ’80s nostalgia. I said, ‘That’s easy! We’re ’80s nostalgia!’
Springsteen closed the show with Sting, Lady Gaga, dressed in a modular Calvin Klein creation with ace bandages on her legs teetering in her heel-less “Tippy-Toe” shoes, John