How to make a great set list: Bonnie Raitt, the Who and Squeeze share their secrets. ‘It’s not a drag, it’s an honor’

Midway through a recent Bonnie Raitt concert, a woman shouted “Play ‘Angel From Montgomery.’” The song, a John Prine cover, was an album track for Raitt 50 years ago that became what she calls “so beloved.” Peering into the crowd Raitt slyly said, “Well, if I was a betting woman…” earning raucous cheers. While she’s not wedded to playing the hits — Raitt left out two of her biggest singles, “Love Sneakin’ Up On You” or “Not the Only One” — she cannot imagine a show without “Angel.” “I’m lucky enough to have songs that people will be mad if they don’t hear; that’s not a drag, it’s an honor,” Raitt says. “That’s a great thing, but we’re much slower to move around,” says Tilbrook, whose band recently played four Southern California shows. “So I don’t know how the Stones or Paul McCartney do it.” Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze Tilbrook says that beyond the biggest hits it’s impossible to guess what everyone wants to hear. When I told him how my sons and I had been thrilled by the presence of “Slip Kid” and “A Quick One, While He’s Away” on that tour, he explained there were two obstacles to such additions: one was that guitarist Pete Townshend was always reluctant to go back and relearn his own oldies, and the other is that while a few thousand audience members like me leaped out of our seats, “everybody else just goes to the toilet.” Raitt says she keeps her most played songs fresh “because I just naturally sing them a little differently and play the guitar solos a little differently every night,” she says.