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McCartney to help restore Motown piano

DETROIT

During a summer visit to a Motown recording studio, former Beatle Paul McCartney wanted to run his fingers along an 1877 Steinway grand piano played by some Detroit music greats he considers idols.

“He was disappointed when we told him it didn’t play,” Motown Historical Museum chief executive Audley Smith Jr., told The Detroit News for a story Saturday.

Undaunted, the legendary rock ’n’ roller from England told museum officials after a July concert at Comerica Park that he wanted to help restore it.

On Monday, the piano will be picked up from the Detroit museum and shipped to Steinway & Sons in New York for restoration. The work is expected to take up to five months.

The piano company has to assess the piano’s condition before a cost can be determined.

“Steinway & Sons is honored to restore the historic Steinway piano that was used by such legends as Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder — and to do so in the very same New York factory where it was originally built in 1877,” Steinway & Sons President of Americas Ron Losby told the newspaper in a statement.

“We’re especially proud, as an American company, to help the Motown Museum in preserving the legacy of the Motown Record Company, whose artists and albums played such a vital role in one of the great eras of American music.”

Sugarland: ‘We are all changed’ by collapse

INDIANAPOLIS

Country duo Sugarland delivered a rousing show Friday night for a packed house of fans — some of whom were injured in a deadly stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair in August — and singer Jennifer Nettles told the crowd the tragedy had changed them all.

Nettles opened the 21/2-hour show at a packed Conesco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis by telling audience members they were in store for an emotional night that would also be part celebration. She also told fans that Sugarland had visited the fairgrounds, where high winds toppled scaffolding and stage rigging Aug. 13 into a crowd awaiting a performance by the country duo. Seven people were killed.

“Obviously, we are here in October — we were supposed to do this show in August. Obviously, the stage is different, you are different and we are different. We are all changed by what happened then,” she said. “But we are going to try to give you the best show that we can and to celebrate healing with you and to celebrate life and music with you here tonight.”

Sugarland’s free concert came 10 weeks after the stage collapsed as a storm neared the fairgrounds’ grandstand a few miles north of Friday night’s venue.

Attendees were asked to donate to a victim-relief fund that already has raised nearly $1 million.

Associated Press