“NO NUKES Concerts” held by Musicians United for Safe Energy, 1979

Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, was an activist group founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall of Orleans. The group advocated against the use of nuclear energy, forming shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979. MUSE organized a series of five No Nukes concerts held at Madison Square Garden in New York in September 1979.

The No Nukes Concerts were the main political effort of MUSE. Other musicians performing at the concerts included Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, James Taylor, Carly Simon, The Doobie Brothers, Jesse Colin Young, Gil Scott-Heron, Tom Petty, and others. The album No Nukes, and a film, also titled No Nukes, were both released to document the performancese.The profits of all this effort went to various anti-nuclear groups.

In 2007, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash and Jackson Browne, as part of the No Nukes group, recorded a music video of the Buffalo Springfield song For What It's Worth.

The No Nukes Concerts were a particularly significant event because it was one of the first times that a large-scale concert was organized not around support for a particular cause (e.g. charity performance for Third World poverty), but rather in protest of a national policy and a rather hot-button issue in the U.S. at the time.

The No Nukes Concerts raised millions to donate to various anti-nuclear groups around the country. Also they probably greatly aided in raising public awareness and encouraging greater safety measures. MUSE founder John Hall was elected to the U.S. House in 2006 on an alternative energy platform, so there's at least one MUSE member who's still making a real difference.

The group faced considerable scrutiny from the press, who tended to hardball the founders with questions about whether it was an artist's place to try to change public policy. However, the prickly Bonnie Raitt would often respond that if the press had done their job reporting on the risks of nuclear energy in the first place, they wouldn't have had anything to protest!

The No Nukes protest concert in 1979 was one of the defining '70s events for aging '60s hippies, a way to prove that they held political and social power. In many ways, the concert worked: by the end of the '80s, nuclear weapons and power eventually faded away (All music)

References:
www.ugo.com
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://wc09.allmusic.com


some songs from these concerts in you tube:

Bobbie Raitt

James Taylor and Carly

The times they are a changin'

Bruce Springsteen

And the 2007 video by No Nukes artists, mentioned above, about the campaign against nuclear nightmare who came back in clean-energy-disguise, with a cover of Buffalo Springfield highlight "For What It's Worth"