UPDATED: Neil Young würdigt Tom Waits als Magier

Neil Young hat als Laudator Songwriter Tom Waits in die "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" eingeführt. Die Zeremonie im New Yorker Waldorf-Astoria Hotel fand am 14. März zum 26. Mal statt. Neben Tom Waits wurden unter anderem auch Alice Cooper, Neil Diamond, Dr. John und Leon Russell in die Ruhmeshalle aufgenommen. Neil Young beschrieb Waits in seiner Einführungsrede als eigentlich "unbeschreiblich", trotzdem müsse er ihn beschreiben. Waits sei "Magier, geistiger Führer und Wechselbalg". Waits bedankte sich für die "schwere Trophäe", die es auch in einer Version als Schlüsselanhänger geben sollte. Im anschließenden Musikset begleitete Neil Young mit der Gitarre Tom Waits bei "Get Behind the Mule”.Auszug der Einführungsrede von Neil Young (zitiert nach "New York Magazine":

"I don't have a TelePrompTer. I don't have any notes.
I don't have any real … thoughts. I'm kind of blank.

But I will say that this next man is undescribable
and I'm here to describe him, or I'm going to try to
describe what he does and why he's here.

I can't tell you much about his life, because I don't really
think that matters in the scope of things.

This man is a great … he's sort of a
singer-actor-magician-spirit-guide-changeling kind of performer.

And I've seen him standing in the middle of dust [indecipherable]
and I thought I saw little sparkle things coming out from him,
and I looked down while he was singing and I said,
"This man is performing and I'm seeing maybe three or four of him up there,
and they all seem to be waiting for the other ones to finish
so that they can come in." And one of them was whistling at me
and one of them was singing in Tom's kind of voice, and then the Eagles covered it."
(...)