Mick Jagger's Grammy Appearance Stuns NARAS President

Posted on Feb 11th 2011 4:00PM by Steve Baltin
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This year's Grammys lineup is turning into an embarrassment of riches with the recent additions of Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand and Dr. Dre, who's making his first performance at the award show alongside Eminem. Still, it's hard to top the anticipation of Mick Jagger's first-ever Grammy appearance, a fact that even blows away NARAS President Neil Portnow.

"It is first time he's ever performed on the Grammy stage. Pretty stunning that is the case, isn't it?" Portnow asks Spinner.

So, how did it come to pass that Jagger, who's played everywhere from Fenway Park to the Super Bowl, is finally coming to music's biggest awards show?

"We do a segment called 'In Memoriam' because we lose so many wonderful people and we want to recognize that. When we saw that Solomon Burke passed we thought that maybe we'd wind up at the end of this segment with a musical tribute to Solomon," Portnow says. "If you think about Mick's generation, growing up in the UK, and how much most of those young musicians really idolized American R&B, soul, blues and so on, we thought this might be something that would resonate with Mick and it sure did. He was very quick to say 'I love that idea.'"

The 53rd Grammy Awards air at 8PM ET on Feb. 13 on CBS.

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