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Rock Hall of Fame Concerts

NOVEMBER 23, 2009
MSG marquis
One of my favorite aspects of illustration is making an image in my studio and seeing it take off and have a life of its own out in the culture. Such was the case with the painting I did for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts. The concerts took place on October 29th and 30th at Madison Square Garden and I was given tickets to attend the events. I love it when an image becomes a sort of passport for my family into worlds I never would have imagined myself being in when I was a kid. With this in mind, I asked my dad to come up to New York for the concert. Everything is so much more fun when I'm able to share it with my parents, he had a really great time. It was his first time at a rock concert and the fiirst time in Madison Square Garden. I saw a few dozen top performers over the course of both nights, most of which I hadn't seen before (Lou Reed, Patti Smith, B.B. King, Simon and Garfunkel, U2, Springsteen with Tom Morello, and many others). Many of them played with each other's bands, which made it a unique experience. The final night had U2, Patti Smith, and Springsteen together performing one of Smith's songs. We were ensconced in a celebrity filled area of the audience the whole time and were able to meet a lot of them in between sets. "Hi, I did that painting on the program", was a great ice breaker with Catherine Zeta-Jones! It was a treat to see the painting on the marquis at Madison Square Garden and to see it later pop up on a billboard under the news ticker in Times Square of all places. Here are some photographs from all the festivities. The concerts will be televised on HBO next Sunday, November 29th at 8pm.  Many thanks to Joe Hutchinson, Rolling Stone AD, Jann Wenner, RS editor, and Joel Peresman, Hall of Fame CEO, for bringing me in on this project.

© 2024 Edel Rodriguez