By Tom Siebert

Folk-rock legend Graham Nash and country-music queen Emmylou Harris played a twilight doubleheader of storied songs on July 26 at the historic Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, 22 miles north of downtown Chicago.

The iconic duo quickly showed the audience of more than 5,200 that they were a musical match made in heaven, opening the show with an operatic version of “Bird,” a 1970 Neil Young tune from his critically acclaimed album After the Gold Rush.

Then Nash, Young’s former bandmate, exited stage right to let the lady go first with her concert set.

Harris, still beautiful at 79, was regally dressed in a deep-gray blouse and multicolored bellbottoms. She was holding a ginormous acoustic guitar, her angelic face garlanded by a flowing white mane. Can you say stage presence?!

Her first solo song was Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl,” covered by Harris on her 1996 album Wrecking Ball. The lyrics perfectly summarized Emmylou’s incandescent 50-year career, during which she has collaborated with many musical giants while standing tall on her own.

In her still-crystalline voice, she sang: “I am an orphan on God’s highway/But I’ll share my troubles if you go my way/I have no mother no father/No sister no brother/I am an orphan girl.”

Then the stage atmosphere shifted dramatically with Delbert McClinton’s “Two More Bottles of Wine,” a rollicking honky-tonk of a song that has been a fan favorite and staple of Harris’ concerts since 1978.

Emmylou, a 14-time Grammy winner, performed a career-spanning 17 songs at Ravinia, seamlessly weaving together the musical genres of Americana, Appalachian, bluegrass, country, gospel, and rock ‘n’ roll.

Her eclectic set also served as a stirring tribute to the many musical luminaries who were her songwriting peers and collaborators, most of them now sadly deceased.

With “Pancho and Lefty” she managed to pay homage to the ballad’s writer, Townes Van Zandt, as well as Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, who had a number-one country hit with the song after hearing Harris’ 1977 version.

Country and Western immortal Johnny Cash was remembered by “Help Him, Jesus,” with Emmylou recreating the song that he sung on the 1980 concept LP The Legend of Jesse James.

The Alabama native also performed some of the classic songs that she herself wrote, including “Red Dirt Girl,” from the 2000 album of the same name.

It is a picturesque Americana song with acoustic instrumentation, narrated by Harris in a haunting, melancholy tone.

“There’s not much hope for a red dirt girl/Somewhere out there is a great big world/That’s where I’m bound/And the stars might fall on Alabama/But one of these days /I’m gonna swing my hammer down/Away from this red dirt town/I’m gonna make a joyful sound.”

As the seemingly autobiographical ballad unfolded, Emmylou’s band, fittingly called the Red Dirt Boys, showed off their exquisite musicianship.

They are Phil Madeira on keys; Will Kimbrough, guitar; Chris Donohue, bass guitar; Bryan Owings, drums; and Eamon McLoughlin, fiddle and mandolin.

After introducing the band, the divine Ms. Harris made a halting statement that may have surprised many in the almost-completely white crowd.

“One of the reasons I had a happy childhood growing up in the South was because I was born white.”

Then she and her “boys” proceeded to perform “My Name Is Emmett Till,” about the 14-year-old Black youth from Chicago who was horrifically murdered on a vacation in Mississippi, prompting the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

The first-person-singular song, which appeared on Emmylou’s 2011 album Hard Bargain, was indeed hard to listen to last night.

“They took me from my uncle’s house/Mose Wright was his name/He’d later stand and without hesitation point the blame/At the ones who beat and cut me/Shot me with a gun/And threw me in the river/Like I was trash when they were done.”

Then the Country Music Hall of Famer and the backup band went on to play “From Boulder to Birmingham,” a lovely ode to country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons, who “discovered” Harris and helped launch her recording career in 1975.

Emmylou concluded her set with Neil Young’s “Long May You Run,” from his 1976 album with Stephen Stills.

Rumor had it that Harris was retiring after her “farewell” European tour is scheduled to conclude in September. But she put those ugly rumors to rest at Ravinia.

“I want to thank all of you who have been coming to see me all these years,” Emmylou told the cheering crowd, “so I can keep doing what I love to do.”

After a 20-minute intermission came Nash again. An age-defying 84, he began his set with the epic, peaceful-protest anthem “Chicago/We Can Change the World” from his best-selling 1971 solo album Songs for Beginners.

Seated on account of recent kneecap surgery following a fall near his home in New York City, strumming an acoustic guitar, and backed by his young three-piece band, Graham sang the opening verse in his still-sweet high tenor as the cheers of the audience slowly rose.

“Though your brother’s bound and gagged/And they’ve chained him to a chair/Won’t you please come to Chicago/Just to sing?”

The lyrics refer to the 1969-70 trial of the Chicago 8, who were charged with conspiracy to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention. One of the defendants, Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, was muzzled and tied to his chair because of his protestations of innocence in court.

The song also recounts Nash’s unsuccessful pleas to his then-bandmates––David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Neil Young––to participate in the protests supporting the alleged conspiracists, who were eventually cleared of all charges.

But when Graham got to the chorus, it was clear that the song was not just a golden oldie but a renewed cry to alter the course of the planet, with its raging wars, environmental perils, widespread famine, and political corruption.

“We can change the world/Rearrange the world/It’s dying/To get better.”

I saw Nash and Crosby perform when I was a student at the University of Illinois in 1975. So I knew that Graham did not mince lyrics, like this one, which may have shocked some in the festival audience.

“Don’t ask Trump to help you/’Cause he might lose the other ear/Won’t you please come to Chicago/Or else join the other side?”

More would be sung and said about history rhyming, particularly in America. But Nash’s second number, “Wasted on the Wind,” from the 1982 Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) album Daylight Again, focused on the years-long squabbles among the members of that fabled supergroup.

Nash reminded us of the days that we all squander, singing: “And there’s so much time to make up/Everywhere you turn/Time we have wasted on the way/So much water moving/Underneath the bridge/Let the water come and carry us away.”

Next up was “Marrakesh Express,” a popular track from CSN’s self-titled, landmark first album. Some at Ravinia chimed in during Graham’s playful ditty about his 1968 Morocco vacation.

However, the concert’s vacation from current affairs was short-lived as the band launched into “Immigration Man,” a Top 40 hit off the 1972 LP David Crosby/Graham Nash. It’s about a clash that the British-born Nash had with a U.S. Customs official on the American-Canadian border in 1969.

The searing, electric-guitar-driven song foreshadowed today’s immigration nightmare, when undocumented men, women, and children are being violently arrested and detained in inhumane ICE facilities. And immigrants and protestors alike are being gunned down in U.S. cities.

In Highland Park, scene of a mass shooting itself in 2022, Nash earnestly sang these lines from “Immigration Man,” as if an urgent warning:

“So go where you will/As long as you think you can/You better watch out/Watch out for the man/Anywhere you’re going.”

But perhaps the most relevant song that Nash performed at Ravinia was “Military Madness,” from Songs for Beginners. It is an autobiographical peace song for the ages, written during the Vietnam War but applicable to all the wars that the United States has fought since.

“In an upstairs room in Blackpool/By the side of a northern sea/The army had my father/And my mother was having me/Military madness was killing my country/Solitary sadness comes over me/After the school was over/And I moved to the other side/I found a different country/But I never lost my pride/Military madness was killing the country/Solitary sadness creeps over me.”

Graham, a naturalized U.S. citizen, made another last-minute lyric change to make sure everyone knew that he was singing in the present tense.

“And after the wars are over/And the body count is finally filed/I hope that Trump discovers/What’s driving the people wild/Military madness is killing your country/So much sadness/Between you and me.”

And he got much of the crowd to join in the closing chant: “No more war/No more war/No more war.”

“Just a Song Before I Go,” off of 1977’s CSN, was Crosby, Stills & Nash’s highest-charting single. And on this Sunday night he and his band served up a gorgeous rendition of the short ballad, which Graham wrote in 20 minutes to win a $500 bet with a “low-level drug dealer” before hopping on a plane from Honolulu to Los Angeles.

Nash was backed by Todd Caldwell on keys; Adam Minkoff on drums and bass guitar; and Zach Djanikian on guitar, mandolin, and saxophone. These musicians are also gifted singers, holding their own with Graham’s signature high harmonies.

Then came two tender-hearted hits from the 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young masterpiece Déjà Vu: “Our House,” memorializing Nash’s two years of domestic tranquility with superstar singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell; and Graham’s “Teach Your Children,” a topical counterpoint to Trump’s 10-year lesson to America’s youth that it’s okay to lie, smear, and sexually abuse.

And from that same album, Nash and his band went back to the garden with Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” where CSN played their second gig ever before more than 500,000 people in August 1969.

They went back ever farther with 1966’s “Bus Stop” by the Hollies, one of the most highly successful British Invasion bands, which Nash co-founded and performed with for six years.

Graham is a two-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of the Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash. He has sold a combined 50 million records with those two bands, as a solo artist, and when Young recorded and toured with CSN.

Nash is also in the Songwriters Hall of Fame and he was appointed as an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his music and charity work.

My ex hated Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With,” claiming the 1971 smash single was a permission slip for infidelity. But listening to Nash perform it on this evening, harmonizing perfectly with the younger singers, I saw the tune as an impassioned plea to cherish the ones who remain in our lives.

Many of the Baby Boomer couples in the audience sang along, looking like they had been together for a long time, and thereby seeming to agree with my sentiment of the song.

And the 81-year-old Stills, who performs only rarely, must have been honored that Nash closed the set with Stephen’s magnum opus, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” with much of the crowd helping out with the “doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo” coda.

It was an upbeat, happy ending from the gentleman singer/songwriter who still believes that music can be a force for positive change, notwithstanding the dreadful state of the union.

“If you love yourself, love your family, and love your friends,” Nash told the crowd, “we’ll get through these next two years of madness, together.”

Ravinia was founded in 1904 and is the longest-running music festival in North America. Located on 36 acres of parkland, it hosts summer-long concerts from June through September, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra its seasonal resident.

Artists who have performed at the venerable venue include Louis Armstrong, The Beach Boys, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Bennett, Glen Campbell, Aaron Copeland, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, George Gershwin, Dizzy Gillespie, Janis Joplin, Lady Gaga, Yo-Yo Ma, John Mellencamp, Steely Dan, Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton, Itzhak Perlman, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Sting, Tina Turner, John Williams, Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention, and Earth, Wind & Fire.

On July 26, 2026, Graham Nash and Emmylou Harris were written into Ravinia’s rich history book, after performing some of the most humanitarian music ever made, songs that will hopefully continue to echo and inspire throughout the ages.

Rock icon Neil Young and his new band the Chrome Hearts performed classic songs and deep-cut gems, ranging from the reflective to the revolutionary, in a breathtaking two-hour concert in Chicago on Wednesday night.

More than 7,300 showed up at Huntington Bank Pavilion on gorgeous Northerly Island during the Windy City stop of their 28-date Love Earth Tour of the U.S., Europe, and Canada.

After the sun set along the shores of Chicago, Mr. Young, 79, opened with “Ambulance Blues,” a slow, stream-of-consciousness ballad from his 1974 album On the Beach.

“It’s hard to say the meaning of this song,” he sang in his still-strong, high-tenor voice, while strumming an acoustic guitar and intermittently playing a brooding harmonica.

But during the final verse, which originally alluded to a Watergate-plagued Richard Nixon, Young’s voice rose and so did the roars of the crowd as they realized that he was now referring to another president, Donald Trump, who makes Tricky Dick look like Honest Abe.

“I never knew a man could tell so many lies/He had a different story for every set of eyes/How can he remember who he's talking to?/’Cause I know it ain't me and hope it isn't you.”

And if anyone thought that the legendary musician wasn’t singing in the present tense, he left no doubt in his new song “Big Crime.”

“Don’t need no fascist rules/Don’t want no fascist school/Don’t want soldiers on our streets/There’s big crime in DC at the White House/No more money to the fascists/The billionaire fascists/Time to blackout the system.”

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Young sued Trump to stop him from playing “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his rallies, claiming copyright infringement and stating that he “cannot allow my music to be used as a ‘theme song’ for a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate.”

Moreover, on April 1 of this year, Neil wasn’t fooling when he expressed his fear that Trump would detain and deport him, despite his dual citizenships in the U.S. and his native Canada.

As he wrote on his website: "When I go to play music in Europe, if I talk about Donald J. Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminum blanket."

Then, on April 12, Young performed at an anti-Trump rally in downtown Los Angeles. And on April 18, he and his wife, actress/activist Daryl Hannah, protested the president’s policies at another gathering in Thousand Oaks, CA.

But unlike Bruce Springsteen, who verbally excoriated Trump during his recent European dates, Young has let his music do most of the talking on this tour, which began in Sweden on June 10 and is scheduled to conclude in Minneapolis on Sept. 20 for the 40th anniversary of Farm Aid, the annual benefit concert that Neil founded with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp in 1985.

So current events were temporarily set aside during the Chicago show’s performance of the classic “Cowgirl in the Sand,” a bittersweet love jam from Young’s 1969 album Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere, his first gold record.

He seemed to be singing directly to his audience on Northerly Island, a 119-acre homemade peninsula, nature preserve, and site of Meigs Field airport until 2003.

“Is this place at your command?/Can I stay here for a while?”

I last saw Neil in Costa Mesa, CA, in 1986, and if he has lost a power chord or staccato note in his lead guitar playing, I could not tell.

And the Chrome Hearts are all virtuoso musicians. They are 35-year-old guitarist Micah Nelson (a son of Willie); bassist Corey McCormick, 48; drummer Anthony LoGerfo, 42; and 82-year-old organist Spooner Oldham, who has backed up such Motown greats as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and Percy Sledge.

Oldham was wheelchair-bound, having broken his pelvis playing basketball, Nelson explained to the audience.

Young was scheduled to perform at this very venue in May 2024, but two members of his longtime band Crazy Horse became ill, forcing a cancellation of 16 tour dates.

“How ya’ doin’ out there?” Neil asked the Baby Boomer-heavy crowd, much of whom cheered in response. Then he quipped, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here the last time I couldn’t be here.”

Wednesday night’s 17-song set list included two of the most important ever written.

“Southern Man,” an epic Civil War-themed jam from 1970’s magnificent After the Gold Rush, has renewed resonance after Trump erased Black History from government websites, renamed military bases for Confederate generals, and said that the Smithsonian museum shouldn’t show “how bad slavery was.”

During last evening’s performance of the classic song, Young’s guitar screamed and wailed, echoing the horrific sounds of slaves crying out while their masters beat and whipped them.

Then he longed for the last gasp of racism in America: “Southern man, better keep your head/Don’t forget what your Good Book said/Southern change gonna come at last/Now your crosses are burning fast.”

“Ohio” is a sacred protest anthem that Neil quickly wrote and recorded in May 1970 with folk-rock royalty David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash (CSNY) in the aftermath of the Kent State Massacre.

That national tragedy is just waiting to happen again after Trump sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, DC.

So when LoGerfo kicked off the military-style drumbeat of “Ohio,” it was as chilling as the late-summer breeze coming in from Lake Michigan.

“What if you knew her and/Found her dead on the ground?” Young sang in a high-pitched howl, memorializing one of the four killed by Ohio state guardsmen at a campus rally protesting Nixon’s expansion of the Viet Nam War into Cambodia.

“Some songs sound just like they were written yesterday,” Young told the audience.

And in the wake of Trump rolling back clean air and water laws and adopting a “drill, baby, drill” energy policy that expands oil exploration into national parks and forests, Neil and his band performed two tunes from his 2003 environmental concept-album Greendale.

“There’s corruption on the highest floor,” he shouted into a spinning stage-floor megaphone on “Sun Green.” And during the hard-rocking, save-the-planet “Be the Rain,” Young, Nelson, and McCormick put on a blazing guitar show at center stage.

Watching a man pushing 80 match energy and enthusiasm with the younger musicians, I couldn’t help but think about the serious health issues that have beset Young and his family.

He is a survivor of childhood polio and later overcame epilepsy, Type 1 diabetes, drug addiction, and in 2005 a near-fatal brain aneurysm.

In 1972, Young and his then-partner, actress Carrie Snodgrass, had a son, Zeke, who was born with a mild form of cerebral palsy. And in 1978, Neil had another son, Ben, with Pegi Morton, whom he later married.

Ben was born with debilitating cerebral palsy, inspiring Pegi to found the Bridge School for children with severe speech and physical impairments in Hillsborough, California.

The couple also had a daughter, Amber, now 40 and an interdisciplinary artist, who has been diagnosed with epilepsy.

Snodgrass, who captured Neil’s heart of gold in the 1969 movie Diary of a Mad Housewife, and for whom he wrote the song “A Man Needs a Maid” for his album Harvest, was 57 when she died of liver failure in 2004.

Pegi Young died of cancer at 66 in 2019. And since 2018, Neil has been married to Hannah, who struggles with Asperger syndrome, a form of autism.

Despite his personal challenges, Young has written 1,180 songs, has sold an estimated 92 million records, and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as a solo artist and with the pioneering rock-band Buffalo Springfield.

Chicago fans were treated to a cut from 1967’s Buffalo Springfield Again, “Mr. Soul,” a frenzied-stanza rocker that Neil wrote while he was recovering from epilepsy and dismissing his burgeoning celebrity status.

Backed by the younger guitar duo, LoGerfo’s propulsive drumming, and Spooner’s high-speed organ playing, Young sang:

“I was down on a frown when the messenger brought me a letter/I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her/Any girl in the world could have easily known me better/She said, ‘You’re strange, but don’t change,’ and I let her.”

Always inventive in his words and melodies, Young is also an actual inventor. He has patented several devices to make model trains accessible to special-needs kids; helped build a hybrid engine for a 1959 Lincoln Continental; and developed Pono, a music download service and player focused on high-quality uncompressed digital audio.

Well, the audio was just fine on Northerly Island as Neil and his band performed “Harvest Moon,” a 1992 bayou beauty of a song and the title track of one of his many “comeback” albums.

He played his harmonica as richly as ever and strummed the chords on an acoustic guitar once owned by country-music visionary Hank Williams. The tender love ballad prompted some in the outdoor amphitheater to slow-dance with a sweetheart.

The food court at Huntington Bank Pavilion reflected Young's homegrown, eco-friendly ethos. Served up by smiling staff were organic pizza and locally sourced hot dogs as well as water, soft drinks, and crafted beer in cans––not plastic bottles that damage the environment.

And then there was the Love Earth Village of tents, chairs, and tables where local social justice, voting rights, green energy, and organic farming groups met with interested concertgoers.

Young crooned another lovely song from Harvest Moon called “One of These Days,” which almost every older person could relate to:

“I'm gonna sit down and write a long letter/To all the good friends I've known/And I'm gonna try and thank them all/For the good times together.”

“Name Of Love” is a song that Young contributed to 1988’s American Dream, the second of three studio albums that he made with Nash, brother-in-arms Stills, and Crosby, who died at 81 in January 2023.

Neil played his trusty pump organ on “Name of Love,” while the other musicians sang backup in perfect four-part harmony, sounding uncannily like CSNY.

In June, Young and the Chrome Hearts released Talkin’ to the Trees, Neil's 49th studio effort. And from that album, they played a new song, “Silver Eagle,” an elegy to Young’s old tour bus.

“We hit big traffic, we saw big things/As we remember and the roadway sings/You carried my friends, you carried me/Silver eagle, I'm feeling free.”

“Like A Hurricane” is the standout track on 1977’s American Stars ‘n Bars and it was introduced last night with great fanfare: a swinging angel-winged piano dropped down onto the stage and Nelson took to its keys to start the hypnotic rhythm of the long elegant jam.

Young’s guitar work and lyrics were altogether magical: “Once I thought I saw you/In a crowded hazy bar/Dancing on the light from star to star/Far across the moonbeam/I know that's who you are/I saw your brown eyes turning once to fire.”

No doubt Neil can afford to buy a new electric guitar. But most of his playing is done on two ancient ones: a 1953 Gibson Les Paul named “Old Black,” which he acquired in a trade with his Buffalo Springfield bandmate Jim Messina; and an orange Gretsch 6021 that he sold in 1965 and recently retrieved on eBay with the help of fellow Canadian rock-legend Randy Bachman.

Throughout the years, Young has reinvented his musical style many times over, encompassing such genres as jazz, rockabilly, punk rock, synth pop, and electronica.

Plus, his amped-up, fed-back, heavily distorted guitar playing earned him the moniker Godfather of Grunge by groups such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

Just before the final song of the main set, Neil addressed the concertgoers: “Thanks for coming out. I really appreciate it. We love you. Take care of one another.”

Then he and the band launched into “Old Man,” a fabled folk song from his masterpiece Harvest, the best-selling album of 1972.

Neil sang it beautifully from the other end of the generation gap. “Love lost, such a cost/Give me things that don't get lost/Like a coin that won't get tossed/Rolling home to you.”

And for those struggling with people-pleasing, “Old Man” contains one of the most clever lines ever written: “Doesn’t mean that much to me/To mean that much to you.”

The encore was the thunderous three-chord rock-anthem "My, My, Hey, Hey (Into the Black)" off the critically acclaimed 1979 LP Rust Never Sleeps.

The scorched-earth version of the famed song was propelled by LoGerfo’s booming drums and McCormick’s slam-bang fuzz bass. And when Young loudly snarled, “Rock and roll will never die,” much of the crowd responded with cheers, fist pumps, and peace signs.

Neil then took a final jab at the president by inserting his name in a key verse:

“The king is gone but he’s not forgotten/Is this the story of Donald Trump?/It’s better to burn out/’Cause rust never sleeps.”

Despite Young’s deep concerns about the state of the country, he remains an eternal optimist. As he sang earlier in the concert on “Looking Forward,” title track of his final album with CSNY in 1998:

“Looking forward/All that I can see/Is good things happening/To you and to me/I'm not waiting/For times to change/I want to live/Like a free-roamin' soul/On the highway of our love.”

Sixty years into his incandescent career, Neil Young shows no signs of rusting, fading away, nor burning out.

He is in fact lighting a path for us during these new Dark Ages.

By Tom Siebert

I once interviewed actor Peter Graves, co-star of the innovative espionage show Mission: Impossible, which ran from 1966–73 on CBS-TV and as a revival series on ABC-TV from 1988–90.

The gray-haired, good-looking Graves played Jim Phelps, leader of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) that used explosives, electronic devices, and realistic masks to save the world every week from Communist dictators, corrupt industrialists, and Third World evil geniuses.

Mr. Graves, who died in 2010, had opted out of the original, 1996 Mission: Impossible (MI) movie because the film’s script portrayed his heroic character as a bad guy and even had him killed off (sorry for spoiling the ending to anyone who may have been stranded on a desert island for the past 29 years).

Now comes Mission: Impossible –– The Final Reckoning, an epic, exhilarating conclusion to the famous film franchise, unless of course, this eighth installment makes so much money that in a few years we are gifted with Mission: Impossible 9 –– We Were Just Kidding about the Last One Being the Last One.

Supernova Tom Cruise, Hollywood’s most-renowned stuntman who showed that he can be a brilliant actor in 1988’s towering Rain Man, opens the nearly three-hour spectacle as himself, thanking moviegoers for their faithfulness and promising the best cinematic-experience possible.

However, Mission: Impossible –– The Final Experience is sometimes impossible to follow because of its dizzying flashback scenes from the previous MI films. There is even a callback (unintentional?) to Cruise’s breakthrough movie, 1983’s Risky Business, in which he is wearing only underpants.

But the snappy expository dialogue in “Mission: Impossible 8” explains to us that there is a rogue artificial intelligence (AI) called “The Entity” that threatens to trigger an international nuclear war. In this final MI episode, it’s not just the tape recording that “will self-destruct in five seconds” but all of humankind will be destroyed “in the blink of an eye.”

Cruise again plays Ethan Hunt––the impossibly handsome, daredevil, secret-agent man––who is given the AI source code and tasked with saving the global landscape by going below and above it in death-defying scenes.

And speaking of death, The Entity has a worldwide cult following, sort of like the real-life end-timers who are rooting for the apocalypse. Hunt takes out some of these shady characters in hand-to-hand combat, one with a meat cleaver, the bloody killing taking place mercifully off-screen.

When not breaking into a shipwrecked Russian submarine at the bottom of the Bering Sea or hanging onto a dogfighting biplane in the South African sky, the superhuman Hunt is surrounded by his sensational IMF members, who first meet up and then say goodbye in London’s Trafalgar Square.

There's Geek Squad-like Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames); wisecracking field-agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg); and ex-pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), who has chemistry with Cruise but not sex.

And we at last get a Black female president, played by Angela Bassett, who steals every tense scene that she is in.

Rounding out the incandescent cast are Esai Morales as the debonair villian Gabriel; Pom Klementieff, French assassin-turned-IMF ally Paris; Greg Tarzan Davis as friendly federal agent Theo Degas; Shea Whigham as CIA agent Jim Phelps Jr.; and returning from the first MI film, Rolf Saxon, as a CIA analyst.

Nick Offerman, known for his droll demeanor in NBC-TV’s comedy Parks and Recreation, is a surprising standout as U.S. General Stanley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Offerman is a Joliet native who graduated from Minooka High School and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie and co-produced by him and Cruise, Mission: Impossible –– The Final Reckoning has already made more than half of its $400 million budget, since opening worldwide earlier this month.

Moreover, the eight Mission: Impossible films have grossed more than $4.35 billion, making them the 17th most-successful movie franchise in Hollywood history.

Fun facts: the number of MI sequels has now surpassed 1950’s Francis, about a talking mule, with six follow-ups that starred actor/dancer Donald O’Connor; and 1934’s The Thin Man, which kept husband and wife detectives William Powell and Myrna Loy snooping around for five more of their fabled screwball comedies.

But the number of James Bond films, 25, is probably out of reach for even the most productive producers, a la Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

And as for a personal disclosure, action/special effects is not my cup of genre. I prefer 1940s’ film noir like The Big Sleep and The Postman Always Rings Twice; the classic movies of the 1970s such as The Godfather Part II and All the President’s Men; and recent social-justice dramas Till and Spotlight.

However, I did like Mission: Impossible –– The Final Reckoning, which I went to see only because my brother Don asked me to take him. And he loved it.

Finally, I don’t want to give away any imagined scorched-earth ending to this ambitious thriller. So let’s just say that we are still here.

As the closing narration states: “Nothing is written. We are the sum of our own choices.”

So each of us can save a piece of the planet a little bit at a time? Not a bad message for a movie, nor a philosophy of life.

By Tom Siebert

Rock legend John Fogerty vigorously ripped through his revered Credence Clearwater Revival songbook in a powerful two-hour concert before more than 6,000 fans at scenic RiverEdge Park in Aurora on Wednesday night.

The John Fogerty Celebration Tour of the U.S., Canada, and Europe made this stop along the Fox River, 40 miles west of downtown Chicago, to share the good news that the heralded songwriter recently won a decades-long legal battle to regain the rights to his iconic music catalogue.

“I got my songs back!” he announced to the Baby Boomer-dominated audience on this last evening of July. “And I’m so happy, I’m gonna play everyone one of them for you!”

Fogerty opened with “Bad Moon Rising,” one of an astonishing 14 consecutive Top Ten hits that Credence Clearwater Revival compiled between 1969 and 1972.

Many in the lawn chair-sitting audience sang happily along, as if to rejoice in the fact that the song’s apocalyptic lyrics never came to pass:

“Don’t go around tonight,” Fogerty sang in his high-pitched howl. “Well, it’s bound to take your life. There’s a bad moon on the rise.”

The next number was “Up Around the Bend,” with its immediately recognizable, screeching guitar riff. Then came the title track from Green River, one of three landmark albums that Credence Clearwater Revival released in 1969, surpassing The Beatles in sales.

Like many of CCR’s songs, “Green River” evokes the American South through an eclectic blend of rockabilly, Delta blues, and country music.

Fogerty is an age-defying 79 who can still hit the hard notes, play complex guitar solos, and strut across the stage with obvious joie de vivre.

And he has to stay young because his guitar-playing sons Shane, 32, and Tyler, 31, are in his band.

The brothers Fogerty did double duty on this hot sticky night. Their psychedelic garage band Hearty Har was the opening act for their famous father.

The elder Fogerty still sounds as if he were born on the bayou. But John actually hails from El Cerrito, California, a San Francisco suburb, where he learned to channel the voices and spirits of black blues greats such as Lead Belly, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson.

He, his fellow guitarist brother Tom, bassist Stu Cook, and drummer Doug Clifford began performing around the Bay Area at sock hops and banquet halls as early as 1959, taking ten years to become an “overnight success.”

John Fogerty emerged as the primary artistic force of the group, writing and singing some of the most enduring songs in rock history but leaving the other band members feeling left out and resentful.

After Credence broke up in 1972, Tom Fogerty launched a solo career that lasted until 1990, when he died at 48 from tuberculosis complicated by an AIDS-infected blood transfusion that had been performed on him during the late 1980s.

In 1995, Cook and Clifford formed Credence Clearwater Revisited, recruiting well-known musicians and performing CCR’s songs throughout the U.S. and overseas for nearly two decades.

John wrote “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” following the band’s storm-swept performance at the seminal Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August 1969. The beautifully bittersweet ballad has come to represent the rainbow that is his life today.

Fogerty told the attentive Aurora audience how he dejectedly gave away his Rickenbacker 325 Sunburst electric guitar in 1974, only to have his wife Julie secretly hunt down and repurchase the prized instrument and place it under the couple’s Christmas tree in 2016.

So tonight’s lucky concert-goers got to hear “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” with the guitar on which it was written.

Many of them heartily joined the plaintive chorus: “I wanna know. Have you ever seen the rain? Coming down a sunny day.”

And the hits kept coming, sometimes one segueing right into another, while others were interrupted by just a brief change of guitars.

The Prairie State crowd roared at the line “just got home from Illinois” from the 1970 tune “Lookin’ Out My Backdoor,” so much so that Fogerty repeated it at the end of the rollicking toe-tapper.

He dedicated “Joy of My Life,” first heard on his 1997 Grammy-winning album Blue Moon Swamp, to Julie, who sat stage-side while her husband and sons performed. The couple has been married for 33 years and has four other adult children from their previous marriages.

John Fogerty grew up as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, developing a relentless sense of right and wrong. So he was deeply disillusioned when Fantasy Records owner Saul Zaentz literally stole the rights to his songs and sold them for use in movies and TV commercials.

Eschewing Credence songs for years, John emerged as a solo star in 1985 with the hits “Centerfield” and “The Old Man Down the Road,” over which Zaentz sued him, claiming the song sounded too much like CCR’s 1970 single “Run Through the Jungle.”

At last night’s concert in Aurora, Fogerty busted out his bat-shaped guitar for “Centerfield,” which drew cheers from much of the RiverEdge audience.

The ode to the national pastime is played at ballparks at every level across America and is on a continuous loop at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

With CCR and on his own, Fogerty has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. His 2009 induction speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was delivered by longtime fan Bruce Springsteen.

“As a songwriter, only a few did as much in three minutes as John Fogerty,” Springsteen said at the time. “He was an Old Testament, shaggy-haired prophet, a fatalist. Funny, too. He was severe, he was precise, he said what he had to say, and he got out of there.”

Fogerty is a Vietnam-era veteran who wrote perhaps the most important anti-war song of all time, “Fortunate Son,” which Ed Sullivan allowed CCR to play on his variety show in 1969, after the TV giant had tried to squash the performances of other controversial songs by Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and The Doors in prior years.

The hard-rocking “Fortunate Son” was the showstopper and “ender” Wednesday evening. The song’s searing lyrics recall English author Samuel Johnson’s quip about patriotism being the “last refuge of scoundrels.”

“Some folks are born made to wave the flag. Hoo, they're red, white and blue,” Fogerty screamed. “And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief’, ooh, they point the cannon at you!”

When the somehow-patriotic anthem ended, the crowd exploded in cheers, hand-clapping, and peace signs as the house lights dimmed.

About two minutes later, Fogerty reappeared, tearing into the Little Richard-inspired “Travelin’ Band” off the 1970 masterpiece album Cosmo’s Factory.

And the grand finale was––What else?––“Proud Mary,” the instant classic that propelled Credence Clearwater Revival to global renown and has been covered by more than 100 recording artists, most popularly by Ike and Tina Turner in 1971.

Seemingly everyone at RiverEdge Park knew the words and sang along:

“Left a good job in the city. Workin' for the man every night and day. And I never lost one minute of sleepin’, 'worryin' 'bout the way things might have been. Big wheel keep on turnin'. Proud Mary keep on burnin'. Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river.”

At song’s end, Fogerty waved at his fans and shouted: “Thank you! God bless you! I love you!”

Then, the once-troubled troubadour departed the stage for parts well- and lesser-known to make joyful sounds for many more.