Billie Eilish guested with Green Day. Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills conjured a Laurel Canyon vibe. Jelly Roll sang a Bob Seger song with Blink-182’s Travis Barker pounding away on drums.
No Doubt reunited – for one night only. Dr. Dre came out for “California Love” with Anderson .Paak and Sheila E. Nirvana made an even rarer reunion with St. Vincent and Joan Jett among its guest vocalists.
The Red Hot Chili Pepper‘s bassist Flea performed their set at the Kia Forum in his underpants, and then put his clothes back on and raced a mile down Prairie Avenue to join Stevie Wonder and Sting on stage at Intuit Dome after midnight.
FireAid, a sprawling benefit concert in response to the Southern California wildfires that killed at least 29 and devastated wide swaths of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, brought together dozens of superstars at the Kia Forum and Intuit Dome in Inglewood for nearly six hours of music on Thursday, Jan. 30.
The event was produced by Irving and Sherri Azoff and their family, with Live Nation, AEG Presents, and the Los Angeles Clippers, whose owners Steve and Connie Balmer pledged to match every donation made during the live show. Its goal was to raise millions of dollars through ticket sales, donations from viewers of the concert livestream, and contributions from famous donors such as U2 whose $1 million contribution was announced early in the night.
It also raised spirits, too, as some of those impacted by the wildfires delivered poignant messages from the stage and celebrated the selfless heroism of first responders.
“I had no idea that I was going to be able to attend this event,” said Altadena resident Aurora Barboza Flores backstage at Intuit Dome before the concert. “And this is a result of a tragedy happened, right? But I think we’re seeing everybody you know, stepping up, and that’s been nice.”
A Glendale high school math teacher, Flores was later introduced on stage by actress Quinta Brunson, who plays a teacher on “Abbott Elementary,” growing emotional at times as photographs her home after the fire flashed across the huge screens in the arena. Earlier, she’d talked about how everyone in her world has stepped up to offer help and support, from local businesses and restaurants to her students and their parents.
“That’s been a help, you know,” Flores said. “I guess that kind of like shows where your community is, right? Like, who your people are. That it’s not just my loss individually, even though the loan is under my name. That’s where you realize you belong to something bigger.”
For a huge event announced just 20 days earlier, the experience inside both arenas felt remarkably smooth. Inside the Kia Forum, where the show began 90 minutes before Intuit Dome, Green Day arrived on stage at 7 p.m. sharp.
“As soon as we heard about it, we knew we wanted to be part of it,” singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong told the crowd. “We really wanted to help lift the spirits of Los Angeles.”
“Last Night On Earth” opened their three-song set, with Billie Eilish joining the band for that song hours before she’d play her own set down the street at Intuit Dome.
Actor-comedian Billy Crystal followed Green Day, saying that he was wearing the same clothes he had on as he fled his Pacific Palisades home of 46 years before it burned to the ground. His descriptions of his family’s experience, and the significance of FireAid, were both poignant and funny.
“Our goal is simple tonight,” Crystal said. “To raise more money tonight than the Dodgers spent on free agents.
“I ran into this girl who said, I understand your pain,” he continued, relating how disorienting it was to be a fire victim. “Because she had lost TikTok for 24 hours. Everybody had their thing.”
Alanis Morissette, and then Anderson .Paak, followed, each setting a tone that would be continue for the rest of the night, choosing songs that mixed gratitude and hopefulness – Morissette’s “Thank U” – with love and pride for Los Angeles and California – .Paak and his band Free Nationals backing Dr. Dre on “California Love.”
At times, the night felt like hopscotching through the musical history of Los Angeles. After Joni Mitchell sang “Both Sides Now,” the contemporary L.A. folk rock band Dawes, two of whom lost their Altadena homes to the fires, followed. Dawes were then joined by Stephen Stills, singing his Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth,” and then Dawes and Stills welcomed Graham Nash, one of Stills’ oldest musical collaborators, for Nash’s “Teach Your Children.”
More people who lost homes and livelihoods in the fires added to the emotional heft of the night. Eshele Williams, with her three sisters and their mother Matilda, lost four homes when the Eaton fire tore through Altadena, she said from the stage at the Kia Forum. At Matilda Williams’ home, the only thing left standing was her front door.
“It’s a sign because that door was always open,” Williams continued. “That door was the gateway to love.”
After three songs from Pink, dressed entirely in black, including a wailing cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,” the show shifted from the Kia Forum to Intuit Dome where Samuel L. Jackson introduced Rod Stewart for songs that included “Maggie Mae” and a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.”
From there, the venues swapped back and forth, livestreaming every performance on most of the major streaming services as well as inside the arenas.
John Mayer played a solo set at the Kia Forum that included his “Gravity” as well as Tom Petty’s “Free Falling,” a song he said had provided him, like many others, a kind of sense of Southern California. As Mayer performed, fans watching the livestream inside the Intuit Dome were distracted by the buzz of excitement as former Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff were spotted inside that venue.
As Dawes had done with Stills and Nash, the Black Crowes did with John Fogerty and Slash. After playing their own hit “Remedy,” the Black Crowes were joined by Fogerty, who after announcing his song “had a rainbow in it just for you,” played Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” Black Crowes’ brothers Rich and Chris Robinson finished as an acoustic trio with Guns N’ Roses’ Slash for “Going To California,” the second Led Zeppelin cover and another in a line of California-themed numbers.
Highlights as the second half of the show unfolded included No Doubt, playing for only the third time in a decade after a pair of appearances at Coachella in 2024. The Kia Forum crowd erupted in cheers and screams the moment they came out, injecting a welcome jolt of energy and excitement into a show that at times tilted toward the solemn.
Singer Gwen Stefani hyped up the crowd on “Just A Girl,” “Don’t Speak,” and a raucous “Spiderwebs” before the show shifted back to Intuit Dome again for country star Jelly Roll’s moving hit “I Am Not OK,” and then a rocking roll through Bob Seger’s “Hollywood Nights.”
Stefani popped back out to introduce Stevie Nicks, who got a huge response with “Stand Back” and “Edge of Seventeen,” and had many in the crowd wiping away tears and hugging friends or family during a gorgeous take on “Landslide,” which she dedicated to the Santa Rosa firefighters who had saved her Pacific Palisades home and those of her neighbors.
Nicks wasn’t the only performer with a direct, personal connection to the fires. Singer Gracie Abrams, who was accompanied on guitar by the National’s Aaron Dessner, who co-produced her latest album, grew up and still lived in Pacific Palisades.
“My heart is with all of my neighbors and everyone in Altadena,” she said between songs. “We’re just so deeply blown away by and grateful for all of the first responders and firefighters who have put their lives on the line to protect all of us. And I think this is just such a beautiful reflection of what music does is bring people together in this way and I’m just inspired by all of you and this community and I love Los Angeles very much, it is home.”
Katy Perry opened her performance with “Rise” for which she was joined onstage by the Pasadena Chorale, which lost its rehearsal space when the Altadena Community Church burned to the ground, and whose director, Jeffrey Bernstein, also lost his home in the fires. Perry shifted into a cheerier mood with “Roar,” before finishing with “California Gurls,” carrying a large California state flag as she danced and skipped across the stage.
The Kia Forum show included with a surprise reunion by the living members of Nirvana – drummer Dave Grohl, bassist Krist Novoselic, and touring guitarist Pat Smear – and guest vocalists St. Vincent, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Joan Jett, and Violet Grohl, Dave Grohl’s daughter. Nirvana fans were thrilled and casual fans confused – the first three songs were angrier, punkier cuts such as “Breed,” “School,” and “Territorial Pissings,” before Violet Grohl wrapped it up with the gentler “All Apologies.”
The Red Hot Chili Peppers then closed out the Kia Forum night, like many, with such geographically apt tunes as “Dani California,” “Californication,” and “Under the Bridge.” As with No Doubt and Stevie Nicks, the crowd response was huge, and presumably not just because of Flea’s homage to the band’s tendency to be very lightly clad during its L.A. club days in the ’80s.
Intuit Dome took over for the final hour and a half of FireAid, with fans at the Kia Forum invited to stick around and watch it on the video screens there. Breakout star Olivia Rodrigo, like many FireAid performers, is a Southern California native, and noted those roots between singing tunes such as “Driver’s License,” which seemingly everyone sang along to, and “Deja Vu.”
Sting chose to tackle the serious nature of the night, picking songs such as “Fragile” and “Driven to Tears,” which went straight to the emotional heart of the disaster, and “Message in a Bottle,” which spoke to the hopefulness of recovering.
After Peso Pluma played, Billie Eilish, accompanied by her brother Finneas O’Connell, did an acoustic set that included “Birds of a Feather” and “The Greatest.”
“It feels all hopeful and good in here and I just appreciate all of you,” Eilish told the audience. “It’s a really scary time and its been so devastating, and L.A. is my favorite place in the world and my only home.”
Now past midnight, Stevie Wonder came out, thrilling fans first with the healing message of “Love’s In Need Of Love Today,” and then getting the room dancing with “Superstition,” which included Sting on bass and vocals, and “Higher Ground,” which kept Sting and added Flea, too.
Then, with Lady Gaga at the piano, her band around her, the final set of the night opened with “Shallow,” her song from the movie “A Star Is Born,” the ballad “Always Remember Us This Way,” and then, well, let her tell you, about how she worked around the challenge of finding a hopeful song for the close of the show.
“It’s just for tonight; it’s just for you,” Lady Gaga said of her decision to write a new song with her fiance Michael Polansky especially for FireAid. “I think we all need a lot of things right now, but I think something we also need is time.
“Time is a healer,” she said, and it most definitely was the message of a powerful night. Of music, of hope, and, yes, healing.
Social media producer Carolyn Burt also contributed to this story.