The Boss was a big get. A year off of his monster Born in The U.S.A. tour, a 15-month steamroll around the globe in support of the album and its seven hit singles, Bruce Springsteen was in the mood to do something different. That’s what Pegi Young was hoping, anyway, in the summer of 1986 when she suggested inviting him to play at an acoustic benefit concert she and husband Neil Young were organizing to raise money for a school to aid special needs kids.

“Knowing Neil as I did — and Bruce had just come off that huge tour and had hit really big — I thought, ‘Well, Neil typically would do one thing and then go to an extreme and do something else musically.’ So I thought maybe Bruce would want to do this all-acoustic format that Neil had come up with.”

Springsteen said yes. So did Crosby, Stills and Nash, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Don Henley, Nils Lofgren and Robin Williams. Annual festivals were in their infancy — Farm Aid and Live Aid had just started the year before — and that many stars on one stage got attention. The novelty of an acoustic format in the days before MTV Unplugged got notice too.

Sixty thousand people entered the lottery to see the show; 20,000 got in. Video clips from the Oct. 13, 1986 concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre reveal palpable joy among the performers as they gathered onstage together to sing “Teach Your Children Well” in a hair-raising finale of the best guitarists and vocalists in rock and roll.

Oddly enough, this jubilant one-of-a-kind event had been born out of frustration.

Pegi Young, speaking to the crowd at Shoreline Amphitheatre, during the 2009 weekend of the Bridge School Benefit Concert. (Photo courtesy of Erika Carrillo)

A 30-year rock show, until it stopped.

Years earlier, Pegi and Neil’s son, Ben, had been born with severe cerebral palsy, which limited both his speech and motor functions. As he grew older, the family searched in vain for a school that focused on education and care for children, like their son, who faced particular kinds of physical and developmental challenges. It was from this frustrated search, that much of the idea for the Bridge School was born: a trailblazing institution of specialized learning and development specifically tailored towards children with severe disabilities.

Yet it was apparent early on to everyone involved that the school would be costly to operate on a year-to-year basis, requiring a sizable qualified staff and a wide array of expensive equipment. For the Youngs, the benefit concert became the logical avenue for that key funding, even if it required a steady longterm approach.

So they began holding the concert annually in 1988, and in 1990 it went to two days. During the last weekend of every October, they delivered on a huge, musically relevant event, which drew immense crowds — and crucial funding — for decades. Acts ranged from Sonic Youth to Elton John, Metallica to Diana Krall. It kept on going like that through 2016, Year 30. And then it stopped.

In June, right when planning for the 2017 concert should have been underway, Pegi Young and Neil Young posted separate letters announcing that the Bridge School Benefit Concert would not take place in 2017. Both expressed their full support for the Bridge School. Neil’s letter said he would not be hosting the concert anymore. Pegi’s said they were proceeding “onward with optimism into the future.” Even still, questions remained about the school’s future.

The Youngs divorced in 2014 after 36 years of marriage. But Pegi Young, who lives with their son Ben (now a successful egg farmer) at the family ranch in La Honda, says everyone knew the concerts wouldn’t go on forever. She also says they might be back. And she makes it very clear that this is anything but the end for the school itself.