Grammys producer: "I don’t think there’ s a single moment I wish we’d done differently"

Variety

Basking in the glow of mostly glowing reviews, Ben Winston discussed Sunday's ceremony that had to shake things up due to the pandemic. "Was there anything you wish you’d done differently? "I don’t mean this in big-headed way, but I don’t think there’ s a single moment I wish we’d done differently, and that’s very rare — I think that’s one of the only shows I’ve done that I can say that about, and I’m a cynical Brit!" he tells Variety. "But those performances were what the artists wanted to do — we staged and helped and directed in the ways that we could, but I can take very little credit for the performances." Winston also addressed the controversy over Eddie Van Halen's brief In Memoriam tribute. "As for Eddie, we had a call with (Van Halen’s son) Wolfgang before the show, and I asked him if he’d be willing to come on and play. He felt he didn’t really want to do that, and I offered up eight or nine guitarists who maybe could," he said. "But instead, he felt like we should play a video of Eddie himself, because nobody could play like him, so that’s what we did. I would have loved for it to be longer than it was, but Eddie was the only person in the whole 'In Memoriam' to play their own music, with no other faces being seen. I felt that was an appropriate tribute to him, but if Wolfgang didn’t, I’m sorry about that, of course — it’s such a horrific thing to lose a parent. We did the best that we felt we could." ALSO: FCC received 80 complaints over Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's "WAP" performance, which is less than last year's Jennifer Lopez-Shakira Super Bowl halftime.