The powerfully emotional backdrop of Neil Young’s annual Bridge School Benefit Concerts is evident in the faces of the nonprofit school’s disabled students and those of their families, which were flashed on video screens throughout Saturday’s 6 1/2-hour show.

On occasion, the performers’ feelings burst to the surface as well. Event co-organizer Pegi Young’s voice cracked at the outset of the show as she introduced each of the students who watched from a riser on stage behind the performers.

Then during No Doubt’s set, singer Gwen Stefani had to reach for a tissue after singing “Simple Kind of Life,” the song she wrote shortly before having the first of her two kids with husband Gavin Rossdale, who played his own set earlier in the evening. In that song, she wrestled with conflicting drives of career and motherhood, and looking into the faces of the children for whom the yearly fundraiser was launched back in 1986 — right about the time No Doubt got started — Stefani choked up.

“This is very emotional,” she said. The acoustic arrangements the band used — including a string quartet for about half the set — brought out the sweetness and vulnerability of that song, “Don’t Speak” and even the usually feisty “Just a Girl.” Apparently big girls do cry.

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