
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 22, 1990                   TAG: 9007220144
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: EAST BERLIN                                LENGTH: Short

BERLIN BENEFIT CONCERT FEATURES FALL OF WALL

About 200,000 rock music fans cheered as a mock Berlin Wall came tumbling down midnight Saturday at a benefit concert where the real divider once stood.

Cyndi Lauper, Sinead O'Connor, Joni Mitchell and other stars performed songs from Pink Floyd's 1979 rock epic "The Wall" on a stage flanked by the massive plastic-foam wall meant to mimic the dismantled Berlin Wall.

Organizers sold 180,000 tickets but finally ordered the removal of security fences to accommodate a huge crush of people. They streamed onto the strip of land where trespassers during Communist rule would have been shot instead of serenaded.

"There was so many people - a lot of people without tickets - that in the end it was safer to just put the fences down," said concert spokeswoman Wendy Laister. She estimated the crowd at 200,000.

The 6 1/2-hour concert was billed around the world as the biggest rock benefit ever. Proceeds were go to a fund for disaster victims.

- Associated Press

by CNB