photo: Paul Marotta
Willie Nelson, the ‘Hippest Octogenarian,’ Honored at Berklee
www.rollingstone.com
by James Sullivan
If Berklee College of Music President Roger H. Brown gets 100 percent cooler every year over the next two dozen years or so, he said Friday, he figures he’ll be about half as cool as Willie Nelson.
The “hippest octogenarian on planet Earth,” as Brown called the country legend, will be awarded an honorary doctorate today at Berklee’s commencement alongside fellow innovators Carole King and Annie Lennox. All three were on hand last night at Boston University’s Agganis Arena (which can accommodate about 8000, far larger than the Berklee Performance Center) for the class of 2013’s annual Commencement Concert.
From the Archives: Willie Nelson: Holy Man of the Honky Tonks
Nelson was a “surprise” guest onstage, leading the huge, and hugely talented, student orchestra on a big band arrangement of his own standard “Night Life.” “Listen to the blues,” he sang in his inimitable honk, taking a couple of idiosyncratic solos on his trusty Trigger, the battered old classical guitar he’s played for decades.
photo: Paul Marotta