This week Neil Young played two great shows at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, with his new band Chrome Hearts. He kicked off both nights with “I'm the Ocean,” one of his strongest songs, from the 1995 Pearl Jam collaboration. Mirror ball. “People my age don't do the things I do” – that was a great line when he was about to turn fifty, but it's a whole other experience to hear him growl now at seventy-eight. On Monday night he sang that verse twice, then ripped the wires off the broken teleprompter with his bare hands and threw them to the side of the stage, without pausing the music. His anger just dissolved into the electric turmoil of the guitars.
At 78 years old, Neil Young is living in his house down the road, and he's not alone. Think about The last waltz – It's That Time of Year – A 70s movie full of rock 'n' roll veterans trying to get off the highway before it kills them. But there were still Neil, Van Morrison, and Bob Dylan, none of whom delivered their greatest hits or did it the easy way. Hell, even Joni Mitchell started playing live again after her near-fatal aneurysm. It's as if these veterans are stuck in these long stories that they started telling decades ago and can't let go. So they hit the road, because that's where the stories are.
This week, he's back on the road again, after canceling his triumphant spring tour with Crazy Horse when a band member fell ill. The performances were very powerful – a conscious, ritualistic return to the road, after an unexpected turn and an affirmation of its strange vitality. He revisits songs from throughout his history – including “Journey Through the Past” itself, on piano.
On both nights, a highlight was “Big Time,” a deep piece he never played without the horse. It's from Broken arrowa mostly forgotten album he released in 1996, filled with songs mourning his friends, after the death of his old producer David Briggs. As guitarist Poncho Sampedro once said: “We were playing David on his way.” As is the case with Tonight is the night or Rust He never sleepsYoung made timeless music out of grief with his trusted bandmates. But he played it both nights as elegiac guitar music. “I'm still living,” he sang in the dream we had. “For me, it's not over yet.”
He plays the monster guitar on “Big Time” – his fingers and wrists haven't lost anything, and they can tell any story he wants them to tell. It's touching to hear him put that song out now, after experiencing this tour with his old friends in Crazy Horse. They couldn't finish due to their age and health, but he kept moving the song forward, with them in it. The shows were full of moments like this.
If Young had had experts, he would have spent this week with the Horse, playing the Bourbon & Beyond Festival in Louisville, then heading west for the Hollywood Bowl and Eddie Vedder's Ohana Festival. The Chrome Hearts — same initials — came together out of dire need, so Young could play a Farm Aid game and Painted Turtle Camp/Bridge School benefit next week on Oct. 5, with John Mayer and Young's old Buffalo Springfield figure Stephen Stills.
Chrome Hearts made their debut at Farm Aid last weekend, with guitarist Micah Nelson, who has been a fan since he saw Neil play at his father's Fourth of July picnic. (His father's name is “Willie.”) These impromptu Capitol Theater gigs may have been a test of the band's new experience, but if there were any doubts, the second song on Monday night was gone. He posted a photo on Neil Young's archive website, saying: “The beginning of a new era.”
His Crazy Horse shows this spring were a triumphant success, with drummer Ralph Molina and bassist Billy Talbot. The three have been playing together since 1969 in the classic game Reactions Everyone knows this is not going anywhere. With Talbot and Molina both 80, Young was one of the youngest men in his band. Micah Nilsson was 34, having been born a few months earlier Jagged gloryseveral dozen Neil Young comebacks since then. “It's as if you asked me when you were 15, 'What band would you most like to play with and be in in your wildest vision?'” he told Rolling Stone's Andy Green this spring. “It's probably Crazy Horse. It's so surreal that you ended up here.”
The horse had been in top form all spring, making a powerful, inept stroke that no one could figure out how to replicate. At their show in New York's Forest Hills, the spirit was festive: with one minute to go before curfew, they played a 60-second rerun of “Roll Another Number.” When the power went out during the song “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” the horse didn't miss a step, but rather kept playing until the power came back on, which is basically what the song is about. Unfortunately, this horse could only make it halfway through the round. When the band fell ill in June, the tour was cancelled, with summer and fall concerts remaining to play.
Capitol's shows were heavy on incendiary twin-guitar instrumentals like “Powderfinger” and “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” with country-style harmony daydreams like “Comes a Time” and “Harvest Moon.” Monday night saw a 13-minute “Down by the River” jam. And on Tuesday, he played the 1977 tune “Hey Babe” for the first time ever. Young kept roaring away from his 1953 Old Black Les Paul. On Tuesday night's “Big Time,” he walked over to turn up his amp in the middle of his solo, while the band exchanged sly “did you see that” glances. A roadrunner came out to play the piano, and the notes were more felt than heard, part of the noise
A highlight of both nights was “One of These Days,” in which he reminisces about old friends, lovers, and bandmates, admitting, “I left some good things behind.” He made the call and response at the end, chanting “It won't be long” with the band. (It's a sly echo of a moment deep in his personal history, when he sang the Beatles' “It Won't Be Long” the first time he mustered up the courage to perform in the school cafeteria.)
He played all these great songs from Harvest moonBut it's strange to realize that now Harvest moon It was in the first half of his career. In the '90s, he seemed like rock's wisest and bravest sage when he made it Jagged glory and Harvest moon – No rock star of his age was as important or influential as Nirvana and Pearl Jam were flying vanilla. However, he was in his mid-forties. His reviews were already circling the term “grizzly veteran”. Rust never sleepsthe final album that lasts forever, comes just twelve years into his then-shocking 33-year-old recording career. But he had barely begun to grey.
Nelson learned pedal steel guitar parts from the late Ben Keith Tonight is the night Last year, he played it on his streaming device, so he could echo Keith without trying to imitate him. The band includes the rhythm section of Promise Real, bassist Corey McCormick, and drummer Anthony LoGerfo. They all spent years playing Young with Promise of the Real (alongside Mika's brother Lucas), and backed him on albums. Monsanto years and Visitor. Eight years ago, around the same time in late September, they played two concerts at Capitol, where Neil kept surprising them with songs they'd never played before. After the beautifully tumbling “Speakin' Out,” Mika said, “Not bad for the first time.”
On organ is Spooner Oldham, an old-school Memphis legend who has played soul classics by Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin, along with many smaller projects. (Oldham went on Friday night to the Music Hall of Fame in Memphis; Neil was there to honor him, and spoke of hearing Spooner on Percy Sledge's “When a Man Loves a Woman.”) The setlist included additional unplayed songs that the musicians on deck had for these shows; Including deep cuts like “Song X,” “Prime of Life,” “The Old Country Waltz,” and “Long May You Run.”
“There's something very primal about Neil, especially when he's with Crazy Horse,” Nelson told Andy Green when he joined the band. “I saw them in Golden Gate Park at the Outside Lands Festival in 2012, and it was a full circle moment and just a slap in the face. It reminded me of what I felt I had gotten so far away from. I saw that night too – Neil telling the audience 'It's time for some reflection'” Before dropping the 20-minute feedback lament “Walk Like a Giant” Crazy Horse always represents Young at his most free and chaotic. We don't know if they'll ever play together again, but he's determined to keep that spirit alive.
Until this week, he had not played any Broken arrow Songs without Crazy Horse. It always sounded like a mourning album, as on “Slip Away” (“When the music started, I slid away”) and “Scattered (Let's Think About Livin').” One of the highlights of his spring offering was “Scattered,” a song he dedicated to Briggs — even inserting his friend’s name (“Daaave”) into the verses. It's hard for Young to carry all that history with him, but that's always been his way, even in his youth in the Sugar Mountains.
As Young sang “Hey Babe” this week for the first time ever, the echo of the hook was impossible to miss: “I know all things pass, let's try to make this the last.” (As young scholar Andy Green points out, this leaves “Will to Love” as the only song from his 1970s studio albums that has never been played live.) The flip side of that is on “Ambulance Blues”: It's easy to Buried in “Ambulance Blues.” The past is when you try to make a good thing last. But this is the story Neil Young has been telling on stage throughout his career.
