Rihanna, Bruce Springsteen and Metallica are part of a superstar concert lineup taking over Washington DC. On Tuesday evening, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the free, three-hour show at the National Mall.
Road closures began on Monday in some parts of the city in preparation for the Concert for Valor – a Veterans Day celebration to honor American soldiers that could lure up to 800,000 people.
The order of play is being kept secret, but the lineup includes Jessie J, Eminem, the Black Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Carrie Underwood, the Zac Brown Band and Dave Grohl. John Oliver, Bryan Cranston and Jamie Foxx are also set to appear on the stage, which faces the Washington Monument.
The show will be televised by one of the event sponsors, HBO, even to non-subscribers, and streamed online internationally, at 7pm ET. The event is first come, first served, with people expected to queue up on Tuesday morning when the Mall opens at 10am.
Washington commuters are preparing for the worst as even more streets will be closed on Tuesday and many will not re-open until Wednesday morning. The Metro stop closest to the venue will also be closed.
The show is being produced by Gary Goetzman, Joel Gallen and Tom Hanks, who is appearing in pre-recorded tributes alongside Steven Spielberg. Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep and Will Smith will also appear in tributes during the broadcast.
Felix Sanchez, the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, criticized the sponsors, who include Chase and Starbucks, for not including any Latino musical acts. About 1.2m veterans identified as Hispanic in 2011, according to the US census.
“If you’re going to honor veterans and they don’t make it reflective of the veteran community, it’s kind of a sham to have such an event,” Sanchez told VOXXI.
Conservative estimates put the crowd at up to 250,000 people, which would be more than the 200,000 people estimated to have attended Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity in October 2010.
The event sponsors requested a park permit for a maximum of 800,000 people. An estimated 1.8m people that attended Obama’s first inauguration in 2009.
