Natalie Merchant Not Fazed By Security At Lennon Tribute

10/04/2001 12:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Darren Davis

(10/4/01, 12 p.m. ET) -- Security was stepped up at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Tuesday (October 2) for TNT's Come Together: A Night For John Lennon's Words And Music (Dedicated To New York City & Its People). Concertgoers' bags were searched, and the artists' dressing rooms and the venue were cased with anti-terrorist forces and a stepped-up police presence.

Natalie Merchant, who performed a rendition of the Beatles' "Nowhere Man" at the event, told LAUNCH she's all too familiar with terror and threats of a different sort.

"I've done enough pro-choice benefits and had bomb-sniffing dogs backstage that when the bomb-sniffing dog came in the dressing room tonight it wasn't an unfamiliar sight," she said. "I mean, we've had terrorism in this country before. I come from a town called Buffalo, New York and there was a surgeon who was shot in his own kitchen for performing abortions."

Merchant added that the September 11 attacks have profoundly changed her life. "It has affected my life in New York. I live here. I have an apartment here, and I have a lot of friends who are affected by this tragedy. It's changed the way I'm living my life."

Nonetheless, Merchant is set to release a new album, Motherland, which hits stores November 6.

-- Darren Davis, New York

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