National Mall has mega-concert history

WASHINGTON — Next month’s Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day, featuring No Doubt, Mary J. Blige, Usher and Fall Out Boy is big, but certainly not the most whiz-bang bill the National Mall has ever seen. That honor would probably go to 2009’s inaugural concert on the Mall, where Garth Brooks, Jon Bon Jovi and Sheryl Crow rubbed shoulders with Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock.

But there are plenty of other memorable, free performances that have gone down on the nation’s favorite stomping grounds. A few for the history books:

• 1939: Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial

The opera singer performed to a crowd estimated at 75,000 people when DAR Constitution Hall — then a segregated institution — refused to allow her to perform at the venue. A few notable Washingtonians, including Eleanor Roosevelt, intervened, and Anderson landed at the best venue in town.

• 1963: The March on Washington

Joan Baez. Bob Dylan. Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, plus Mahalia Jackson, and a return appearance by the regal Marian Anderson, all with the Lincoln Memorial as their stage. The March on Washington wasn’t a concert, obviously, but the performances of their hymns and protest songs shouldn’t be overlooked.

• 2000: Fugazi at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

D.C., meet Washington. According to the Smithsonian’s archives, the band played “Smallpox Champion,” “Reclamation,” and basically every other song you wished you could have heard had you known about it. The band’s last show together was a couple of years later, in 2002.

• 2003: NFL Kickoff Live

We don’t quite understand what the NFL was doing holding court in a national park, but it happened. Britney Spears was there, Aerosmith was there, and so were logos, in an experiment in which brands such as Pepsi and Coors paid for their billing at the Mall.

• 2009: The “We Are One” concert

Jon Bon Jovi, Mary J. Blige, U2 and Bruce Springsteen are only a few of the boldfaced names who found a reason to bear the 20-degree temperatures and put on a massive show at the Lincoln Memorial for the then-incoming president, Barack Obama. If you were there, you probably couldn’t see thanks to the thousands of visitors in town for the historic inauguration, and you were definitely freezing. Hearing Stevie Wonder made it all seem worth it.

• 2009: Earth Day on the Mall

Memorable mostly for the utter weirdness of the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne crowd-surfing in a bubble, with the U.S. Capitol as his backdrop. We’re trying to think of what the metaphor is here, and, well, we’ve got nothing.

• 2014: Concert for Valor

Who knew the Mall would be the best place ever for Metallica to rip through song after song of pure metal with all the subtlety of a monster truck? We’ve come to expect more chatter than clatter at these mega-concerts, and November’s Veterans Day Concert for Valor surprised us with its entertainment value.