Some of music’s biggest stars — including Billie Eilish, Joni Mitchell, Olivia Rodrigo and many others — are expected to perform Thursday night at FireAid, a star-studded benefit to raise money for fire relief efforts in the Los Angeles area.
The lineup is so extensive that the concert will be held in two separate arenas.
Organizers said that they would distribute donations with the advice of the Annenberg Foundation and that aid will be distributed both for short-term relief efforts and long-term initiatives to prevent future fire disasters throughout Southern California.
In the days leading up to the show, organizers have said that they had already raised more than $60 million from ticket sales and corporate sponsorships.
What time does the show start, and where can I watch?
The benefit concert will begin at 9 p.m. Eastern time, 6 p.m. Pacific time, at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., where Mitchell, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day are among the acts scheduled to perform.
Ninety minutes later, a second show will begin at the nearby Intuit Dome, featuring Eilish, Rodrigo, Lady Gaga and others. Producers split the lineup along rough genre lines — more rock-oriented acts at the Forum, and pop at the Intuit Dome.
Organizers said that the show would be available on platforms including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Hulu, Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and YouTube. It will also be available on SiriusXM and iHeartRadio and screened at some AMC and Regal Cinema movie theaters.
“It’s a once in a lifetime event,” Jenny Chaiyakal, 44, of Irvine, Calif., whose daughter found out about the concert through Eilish’s social media channels, said as she arrived at the Intuit Dome. “The stars were all willing to donate their time and come together to support people in California.”
How the concert came together.
Planning for the concert came together extraordinarily quickly, spearheaded by Irving Azoff, a longtime manager and power broker in music, and his family. Within three days of the fires breaking out, the Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, had been secured and the event — with no artists yet attached — had been announced with the cooperation of Live Nation and AEG Presents, who are usually bitter rivals as the world’s two largest concert promoters.
In a recent phone interview with The New York Times, Azoff said the urgency of the crisis drove the timing of the concert. With the Grammys on Sunday and the Super Bowl the next weekend, organizers felt that the show had to take place as soon as possible or be put off until the end of February. “This is about fund-raising, and you need to get the money in the bank as quickly as you can,” Azoff said.
Organizers have said that artists were quick to join the effort, with Rod Stewart the first to sign on, followed by Stevie Nicks, who plans to perform an unrecorded song.
They were followed by more than two dozen artists — young stars and older legends alike — with a focus on California-based acts, including Mitchell, Eilish, Rodrigo, No Doubt, Lady Gaga, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day. The lineup was announced on Jan. 16.
“We were very lucky in that our thing was booked almost entirely by people volunteering,” Azoff said.
