The Byrds’ Turn in the Rock...

NEW YORK —  It was a time for music and a time for comfort Wednesday at the sixth annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner, and a cleansing Byrds reunion helped supply both.

The annual dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria is normally a warm and festive affair as the record industry salutes some of the artists who have helped shape rock ‘n’ roll and pop culture over the past four decades.

This year’s induction class wasn’t as star-studded as past ones, but the artists have all added substantially to the richness and scope of the music, especially in the areas of blues and soul. The inductees: LaVern Baker, John Lee Hooker, the Impressions, Wilson Pickett, the late Jimmy Reed, Ike & Tina Turner and the Byrds.

But the atmosphere in the huge ballroom was understandably subdued. The more than 1,000 guests--most of whom learned of the allied air strikes against Iraq after arriving at the dinner--sat anxiously as the program was delayed about 20 minutes while President Bush’s address to the nation was shown on large screens flanking the stage.

There was scattered applause at three points in the speech, but the crowd seemed mostly hesitant and uncertain--a mood that continued through much of the evening.

Seymour Stein, president of Sire Records and a member of the Hall of Fame Foundation board of directors, told the audience at the beginning of the program that there had been some talk about canceling the dinner, but that the decision was to continue out of respect for the artists.

“Nobody likes what is going on outside, but LaVern Baker, John Lee Hooker, the Impressions, Wilson Pickett, Jimmy Reed and all the others we are inducting tonight . . . we are talking about lifetime careers. This is their night. This is rock ‘n’ roll, and the show must go on.”

There was a sudden, nervous burst of applause, but not everyone in the room agreed. A few people thought it might have been better to cancel the event, but few, if any, left the ballroom. The music promised at least some refuge of emotional comfort.

The Byrds’ induction had been anticipated as the high point of the evening, and it proved to be exactly that--and it was perhaps even more dramatic because of the emotion in the room.

The five members of the folk-rock band, which ranks with the Beach Boys and Doors as the most acclaimed group ever to come out of Los Angeles, hadn’t been together on stage in more than 17 years because of a variety of tensions, including a dispute over the rights to the quintet’s name.

Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman and David Crosby went to court in recent years to prevent drummer Michael Clarke from touring with a band he called the Byrds. Gene Clark had performed under a “Tribute to the Byrds” billing, but stopped after being asked by the others. All five were members of the band when it made its first album in 1965.

The questions Wednesday were whether the musicians would go on stage together during the induction ceremony and whether they would sing together during the traditional closing jam.

The five Byrds provided no clues during the opening two-thirds of the nearly 4-hour ceremony. They sat at the same round table--but McGuinn, Hillman and Crosby appeared to huddle on one side, with Clarke and Clark across from them.

Singer-songwriter Don Henley set the scene for the band with the evening’s most eloquent induction speech.

Henley, whose music with the Eagles and on his own was influenced greatly by the Byrds, described the band’s music in the ‘60s as “a wake-up call for a new generation.”

Tying into the uneasy mood of the crowd, he added, “the mysticism and transcendence, and the peaceful spirituality and optimism of (the Byrds’) kind of music is something that is sadly missing from the airwaves today and in light of our present situation, we could sure use some of it.”

The five Byrds lined up on stage--Crosby, Hillman and McGuinn separated by a few feet from the others. Then, McGuinn reached out and put his arm around Clark, who pulled Clarke along with him. Smiling nervously, they all then posed for a mass of photographers.

Stepping to the microphone, McGuinn said, “When I was growing up in Chicago listening to Elvis Presley, I never thought that I would someday be in the same Hall of Fame with him. . . .”

The others followed with additional words of gratitude--and conciliation.

McGuinn then picked up a 12-string guitar and Hillman grabbed a bass and began playing “Turn, Turn, Turn,” one of the group’s most familiar numbers. All five joined in singing the song (adapted by Pete Seeger from the Book of Ecclesiastes), which expressed precisely the peaceful spirituality and optimism that Henley had described: “A time to gain, a time to lose/A time to rend/A time to sew/A time for love, a time for hate/A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.”

And sure enough: For a moment at least, the spirits of the crowd seemed raised by the gentle, reassuring music.

At the end, Clark and Crosby both held up their hands in the peace sign.

The band followed with Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” its first hit and a song also strongly associated with the idealism of the ‘60s. The mini-set closed with the raucous “Feel a Whole Lot Better.”

There were some other stirring moments in the jam as Bonnie Raitt and, later, Robert Cray joined John Lee Hooker for some sassy blues. John Fogerty and Chaka Khan teamed up on Fogerty’s “Proud Mary” in a tip of the hat to Ike & Tina Turner, who also had a hit with the song. Neither Turner attended the dinner: Ike is confined at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, in the early stages of a 4-year sentence for a misdemeanor drug offense. Tina has recently finished a world tour and chose not to attend.

Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Phoebe Snow, LaVern Baker and Patty Smyth also joined in the 45-minute jam, which ended just before 1 a.m. with Springsteen and Fogerty trading lead vocals on the Wilson Pickett hit “In the Midnight Hour.” (Hall of Fame representatives had tried unsuccessfully to contact and invite Pickett to the ceremony.)

Throughout the jam, the singers seemed to inject the music--whether upbeat numbers such as Pickett’s “Mustang Sally” or the Impressions’ softer, gospel-tinged “People Get Ready”--with the passion and drive of people trying perhaps to confront the helplessness and uncertainty they felt on a night of such troubling and complex affairs.

The cast’s version of “People Get Ready” was especially poignant because Curtis Mayfield, the song’s writer, had spoken to the ballroom audience earlier in the evening via a closed-circuit hook-up from Atlanta, where he has been paralyzed from the neck down since a freak accident during an outdoor concert last August.

Besides the artist inductees, legendary bluesman Howlin’ Wolf (real name Chester Burnett) was named to the Hall of Fame as a “forefather,” while songwriter-record producer Dave Bartholomew and record producer Ralph Bass were saluted as non-performing members. The late Nesuhi Ertegun, a record producer and executive, was honored with a lifetime achievement award.