On the night of September 21, 2001, ten days after the attacks, nearly 60 million viewers tuned in to America: A Tribute to Heroes. The two-hour benefit ran without commercials on more than 30 networks, and it ended with Willie Nelson leading a stage full of stars through “America the Beautiful.” Somewhere in that crowd of voices was Stevie Wonder, playing harmonica.
It was not a polished finale. It was not built to be. And the way it ended is the part worth remembering.
A show with no applause
The special was created by the heads of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, with Joel Gallen producing and directing. George Clooney helped recruit the celebrities. The performers donated their time, and the networks covered the production costs.
Nothing about it looked like a normal television event. Performers stood on bare stages lit by banks of candles in New York, Los Angeles and London. There were no title cards and no introductions announcing who was coming next. Salon’s review that night put it plainly: there was no applause. A toll-free number and a web address for donations stayed at the bottom of the screen the whole time.
Bruce Springsteen opened the show with “My City of Ruins,” a song that had not yet been released. Between performances, stars told stories of the rescuers and asked viewers to give. In the Los Angeles studio, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Meg Ryan, Sally Field, Adam Sandler, Whoopi Goldberg and Reba McEntire sat at a phone bank taking pledges.
Clint Eastwood’s last words
Before the final song, Clint Eastwood delivered the closing remarks. According to ABC News, he told the country:
“Oh, they left us wounded, but renewed in strength, and we’ll stand and we will not yield.”
He went on to say that the terrorists who wanted 300 million victims would instead get 300 million heroes. Then Willie Nelson, 68 years old, began “America the Beautiful.”
Willie Nelson and a stage full of stars
Willie Nelson played acoustic guitar and sang lead, and the Los Angeles ensemble came in behind him. Reports from that night and later accounts place Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Robin Williams and Reba McEntire among the crowd singing along. Tom Petty and Mariah Carey were there too.
And then there was Stevie Wonder. He had performed “Love’s in Need of Love Today” with Take 6 earlier in the evening. In the finale, he added chromatic harmonica to the mix of voices around Willie.
It was not perfect
Not everyone heard it as a triumph. Salon’s reviewer wrote that the song came off as a bit shabby and seemingly unrehearsed. The review noted some sound problems, Mariah Carey scatting, and Stevie Wonder’s harmonica coming in with what the writer called “awkward blasts.” It also looked, to that reviewer, as though Willie took the group through the song a couple more times than they had planned.
That is worth knowing, because it makes the ending more human, not less. This was not a rehearsed awards-show number. It was a room full of famous people, ten days after a national tragedy, following a 68-year-old Texan through a song nearly every American knows by heart.
How the night ended
For two hours, the format had held: no applause. When “America the Beautiful” finally finished, the same review reported, everyone who had been singing clapped and cheered.
The telethon raised more than $150 million for victims and their families, and the program later received a Peabody Award. The Peabody profile describes it as opening with Bruce Springsteen and closing with Willie Nelson leading the group.
Twenty-five years later, the clip of Willie Nelson’s finale still comes back around every September. Do you remember where you were watching that night?