Small point of historical interest: I was not a Bonnie Raitt fan…
Tuesday, December 24th, 2013Small point of historical interest: I was not a Bonnie Raitt fan until I saw her perform this song at the 1992 Grammy Awards. I’d looked for that performance on YouTube and elsewhere many times without finding it. But apparently it’s there now, so I’ve just rewatched it for the first time in more than 20 years.
One interesting thing for me is how the staging differs from my memory. It feels kind of glitzy and glammed up. Whereas in my memory it was very stripped down, with just her and Bruce Hornsby on the piano.
I’m not sure why that mismatch exists between my memory and the performance. It might be that I simply pared away the parts I found less compelling. Or it might be that in the context of the time, this performance was stripped down, that the early 90s were so over-the-top that this actually was a very restrained staging in a 1992-TV-awards-show context, and that it’s only in a modern context that the little rococo flourishes seem dated.
Probably a little of both.
Anyway. It’s still a beautiful performance.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/71011688246.
