UK: Tom Jones, Nelly Furtado, Duran Duran talk to Reuters backstage at Diana concert about the late princess

Pop stars of yesteryear and today got together to perform before a crowd of 60,000 at London's new Wembley Stadium for a special tribute concert to the late Princess Diana on Sunday (July 1). Elton John, a friend of the princess who sang at her funeral, kicked off the show with "Your Song" in front of giant black and white photographs of Diana taken by Mario Testino that were beamed on to the stage backdrop. He was followed by veterans Duran Duran, Status Quo, Bryan Ferry, younger acts The Feeling, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas, Orson, Lily Allen and U.S. rapper Pharrell Williams as well as The English National Ballet, a favourite of Diana's. "Maneater" and "Promiscuous Girl" singer Nelly Furtado said her music was indiscriminate: "Literally I make music for princes and paupers." Duran Duran, one of Princess Diana's favourite bands talked about their performance: "Well it all happened so quickly we were sitting backstage for a minute and we thought, god, there is ten minutes and we are going to be on. Rush back there, get ready, get on, the audience were great, they had all just come in. Obviously with all the extra security today, it took people a lot longer to get in than they thought. So people were just settling in and suddenly it had all begun so it was a real surge of energy and that was great," said Nick Rhodes, a guitarist from the group. Sir Tom Jones said his performance was a mixture of new and old songs with a special duet thrown in. "I wanted to do something different, so I'm doing the Arctic Monkeys song 'I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor'. I'm doing 'Kiss' because Princess Diana loved that song, she told me. And I'm doing a duet with Joss Stone which I've never sung with Joss Stone. And that's going to be new and I think she would've loved it because Princess Diana loved music. She was going to concerts. She loved to go see different artists. I don't think you could pay a better tribute to the princess than doing a concert like this." Sunday would have been Diana's 46th birthday.

ITN Source | July 7, 2007

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