The Artist — who, as Prince, wrote "1999," the song that would become the anthem of the New Year's Eve just passed — passed up playing live on the last night of the year.

But a host of other major performers — ranging from Metallica to Phish to the Eagles to the Red Hot Chili Peppers — marked the occasion with live shows that featured visual and aural surprises, along with the expected release of balloons and renditions of "Auld Lang Syne," which was performed by the Eagles, Billy Joel and Blondie, at their separate concerts.

Metallica's concert at the Pontiac Silverdome near Detroit climaxed with a cover version of Kiss' "Detroit Rock City," with openers Kid Rock and Ted Nugent joining in on guitar and vocals, according to concert-goers. Kiss themselves played the same song during their show in Canada, fans said.

"We're trying not to be too fancy — doing it on some barge in the middle of nowhere, or the North Pole or something crazy," Metallica frontman/guitarist James Hetfield said recently. "We thought we'd be real with some real fans."

At the Eagles' show at the Staples Center in their native Los Angeles, singer/guitarist Glenn Frey played "Auld Lang Syne," the traditional New Year's Eve singalong, before the veteran country-rock band moved into its own New Year's Eve song, the 1978 B-side "Funky New Year."

"They wished everybody prosperous times and [expressed hopes] for peace," Staples Center spokesperson Michael Roth said Monday (Jan. 3).

But before the clock struck midnight Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department's bomb squad was called to the Staples Center, where Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt were helping the Eagles usher in the new year. An arena employee had discovered a package in a freight elevator that bore "writing mentioning explosives," Roth said. Three venue suites were evacuated, but the package proved to be empty.

Several artists welcomed the new millennium by playing covers. Pop-rockers No Doubt performed R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" (RealAudio excerpt) just after the ball dropped in New York's Times Square. The show, broadcast live from MTV's studio, also included hit-dominated performances by rockers Bush, Blink-182 and the Goo Goo Dolls as well as rappers Sean "Puffy" Combs and Jay-Z.

Combs, who was arrested last week on weapons charges following three shootings in a New York club, performed such tunes as "It's All About the Benjamins" and cuts from his latest album, Forever. (SonicNet is a division of MTV Interactive).

While No Doubt were singing about the end of the world, Sting plugged his new album by playing its auspicious title track, "Brand New Day," during a show at NBC-TV's studios in New York. He followed the tune with "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You" (RealAudio excerpt).

Singer/songwriter Elliott Smith paid homage to George Harrison by playing the ex-Beatle's hit "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" at midnight, according to Jennifer O'Connor, promotions manager for the Knitting Factory, the New York club in which Smith played. Harrison was stabbed last week, allegedly by a mentally ill Beatles fan.

Pop-rock band Wilco, meanwhile, saw their Chicago show interrupted at midnight by a gang of "aliens" in silver suits, who turned out to be the country band Cowlily. Fronted by an Elvis Presley imitator (Wilco guitar tech Jonathan "JP" Parker), Cowlily played a version of Presley's hit "Hound Dog" (RealAudio excerpt) before Wilco reclaimed the stage to cover the Beatles' "Revolution."

While some of his former Beach Boys bandmates entertained fans in Las Vegas, singer/songwriter Brian Wilson did more than ring in the new year at his show at the Redondo Beach (Calif.) Performing Arts Center. He also marked the 38th anniversary of his former group's first concert, held in Long Beach on New Year's Eve 1961.

Also in the Los Angeles area, funk-rockers the Red Hot Chili Peppers showered their fans with balloons when the clock struck midnight at the Great Western Forum. Fans counted down the seconds to the new year along with a large screen behind the band that flashed numbers starting from 30, a Chili Peppers spokesperson said. The band began the new millennium by jamming on a James Brown song before moving into "Easily," off their most recent album, Californication.

On the opposite coast, the improvisational rock band Phish ended their two-day millennium festival at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in Florida with an all-night New Year's Eve set that lasted just under eight hours, according to one attending fan. The set, which began with the band riding a giant hot dog float over the crowd to the stage shortly before midnight, marked the fifth set the band played over Thursday and Friday, Garrett Phillips, a stand-up comic from Atlanta, wrote in an e-mail. The festival was marred only by a 17-mile traffic jam on Interstate 75 and the death of one concert-goer Thursday, prior to the event.

Though the Gin Blossoms reunited for their first show in exactly three years to headline a multiband lineup in downtown Phoenix, the successful pop-rock group didn't welcome the new year onstage. Phoenix mayor Skip Rimsza took their place to launch a countdown to the new year, according to a show spokesperson.

Several New Year's Eve concerts fell by the wayside prior to the big night, including Jewel's headlining show in her home state, Alaska, and a New York concert planned to feature Sting and Aretha Franklin, among others. The "Capital Countdown," a Washington, D.C., New Year's Eve concert featuring pop-rockers Third Eye Blind and Fuel, also was nixed.

The Artist formerly known as Prince made this year's New Year's Eve his own 17 years ago, with his 1983 hit "1999" (RealAudio excerpt). On Friday, his only musical appearance was on a pay-per-view TV special, which included versions of "1999" and "Let's Go Crazy." He spent the evening having an intimate dinner at an Italian restaurant in his native Minneapolis.

(Staff Writers Chris Nelson and Christopher O'Connor contributed to this report.)