Top US musicians launch of anti-Bush music blitz

Tue Sep 28, 8:19 AM ET

SEATTLE, United States (AFP) - A coalition of top US musicians led by Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt were poised to launch a two-week concert blitz aimed at persuade US voters to oust President George W. Bush.

The famed singers were due to headline Monday's concert in Seattle, the first in a manic series of "Vote for Change" concerts that will be headlined later in the tour by rock legend Bruce Springsteen.

The boss and other musical stars including REM, Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt will perform in around 36 cities in nine electoral swing states, culminating in a huge concert on October 11 in Washington DC.

The loose coalition of musical stars is launching the series of mini-tours with "a single goal through the tour: to get people to the polls on November 2 to vote for a change," according to the organisers' website.

The tour will roar through the crucial Midwestern swing states such as Ohio and Michigan where Kerry and Bush are running neck and neck before hitting the equally critical Florida on October 8.

Other musician's hitching the wagons to Kerry in the "Vote For Change" concerts are Dave Matthews Band, James Taylor, John Fogerty, the E Street Band, and John Mellencamp.

Proceeds from the tour will go to America Coming Together (ACT), a voter mobilisation organisation committed to defeating Bush.

The concerts get off to their true start on October 1 in Seattle when the 55-year-old Springsteen will make his first appearance.

One of the emotive highlights of Monday's concert in Seattle was expected to be "The Boss's" rendition of his stirring anthem, "Born in the U.S.A.," which is likely to become the musicians' battlecry.

Springsteen explained to Rolling Stone magazine in an interview published last week that he felt America had been misled by the Bush administration into going to war in Iraq.

"It made me angry ... I felt we had been misled. I felt they had been fundamentally dishonest and had frightened and manipulated the American people into war," the 55-year-old legend.

President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and his policies had convinced Springsteen to break with his career-long aversion to partisan politics, he said.

"It was something that gestated over a period of time, and as events unfolded and the election got closer, it became clearer," he told the music magazine.