Superstars Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N'Dour led off Thursday night's Amnesty International Concert for Human Rights at Bercy Stadium in Paris with a cover of the late reggae great Bob Marley's defiant anthem "Get Up Stand Up."

In his first public performance since the release last month of Tracks, a four-CD box set of rare and unreleased material spanning 26 years, Springsteen, also known as "the Boss," treated a crowd of more than 16,000 to a short four-song set. The songs included his signature song "Born in the U.S.A." and the politically conscious "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (RealAudio excerpt).

"It has been an absolutely fantastic night. The whole thing has been incredible," Mark Ogle, media director for the London-based Amnesty International, said in a BBC report. "It has been a great night for music and human rights."

The more than eight-hour concert also featured country star Shania Twain and multicultural modern-rock band the Asian Dub Foundation. It was designed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration spells out the basic rights of world citizens and was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948.

The evening's festivities also included a nine-song set from British art-rock act Radiohead, culminating in the song "Paranoid Android" (RealAudio excerpt) from the critically acclaimed 1997 album OK Computer.

Other highlights included performances by Canadian pop singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette, former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page and a speech from Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

In a statement issued through Amnesty International, Radiohead explained their decision to participate in the event.

"The Amnesty International human rights concert in Paris will be our only European appearance this year. We hope that this is an effective way to support AI in their positive work to promote the human rights enshrined in the UDHR," read the statement. "Without the work of organizations like AI, the UDHR would be mere rhetoric."

The concert took place 10 years after Springsteen, art-rocker Gabriel, folkie Tracy Chapman and world-music star N'Dour performed as part of Amnesty's Human Rights Now! tour.

A cable-TV pay-per-view film of the concert is being planned for the U.S. in early 1999, according to Heidi Kelso, a spokeswoman for event publicists Rogers & Cowan.