Rock stars shine at Hurricane Sandy benefit gig

Rock's elder statesmen, including the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney, were lined up Wednesday for a New York benefit concert to help victims of superstorm Sandy. The "12-12-12" concert at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan was to be broadcast live at 0030 GMT across 37 US television networks, Internet sites and on radio. With international audiences, viewership will reach two billion people, organizers say. The impressive line-up also featured The Who, Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, Billy Joel, Alicia Keys, Chris Martin, Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters, Sean Combs and Kanye West. The music stars were being joined by movie and TV performers including Leonardo DiCaprio, Chris Rock, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, and political humorist Jon Stewart, as well as Chelsea Clinton -- the only child of former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Demand for the arena's 13,000 places quickly turned tickets into gold dust. The StubHub ticket market site listed one ticket at $10,400 early Wednesday. The concert was to kick off with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and was accompanied by a fund-raising telethon. Already, ticket and other sales had raised $32 million for the cause. Sandy hit New Jersey as a hurricane on October 29, then continued up through New York City, leaving massive flooding and ruined infrastructure in its wake. Even now, tens of thousands of people remain without electricity, hot water or heating in the New York area. Many people in the hardest-hit beach communities have lost their entire homes, just as winter strengthens. The White House has asked Congress to send $60.4 billion dollars to aid the post-Sandy rebuild effort, but the money has yet to be approved. The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have estimated the costs to be as high as $82 billion. The storm killed 120 people in the United States after sweeping an earlier deadly path through the Caribbean.