Ahh, let me saviour that again. Neil Young and Crazy Horse. The gig’s
been a bloody long time coming since I saw Neil in Melbourne on his legendary
debut Australian tour in 1985. On that
tour, perhaps mindful of how long he had taken to come here, the show contained
a healthy selection of solo acoustic material, a country set with The
International Harvesters (The A Treasure CD gives a pretty good indication of
what I heard) and a second half with Crazy Horse. That show was, more or less, the equivalent
of hearing the Decade compliation live and has very few contenders for the title of
the finest show I’ve ever seen.
That gig was when I became completely sold on Neil and
realised that this was a talent worth following. I hadn’t fully appreciated the vast scope of
his achievements up until then and became determined to remedy that
mistake. Since then I’ve heard almost
everything he’s put out commercially, attempting to make sense of the stylistic
turns he’s made but always appreciative of his desire, as he once put it, “to head for the ditch” rather than travel
along the middle of the road. Very few
acts have the courage to run their careers this way and I think this is why he
is held in such esteem by just about every act passionate about rock. Put another way he is one of the few acts
that has earned musical integrity. It
doesn’t necessarily mean that everything he’s released is of the highest
quality but the very last thing you could accuse him of is being boring or
stale.
The next occasion I saw him live was an April 1989 show with
The Lost Dogs at the National Tennis Centre.
This was seen as a controversial show by some quarters and any blame
should sit squarely with the local mainstream commercial radio station that advertised
the performances. The adverts played
nothing but tracks from Harvest as background music causing more than a few
people to think it was going to be an acoustic show.
Yeah, an acoustic show with a band called the Lost Dogs; I figure anyone
who didn’t figure out it was going to be a noisy electric show deserved to do
their dough. Anyway, this tour seemed
to mark part of Neil’s re-emergence from his supposedly “non-commercial” era of
the 80s and the show packed quite a punch.
I remembered a blistering version of Cocaine Eyes, and
On Broadway (both from then Australian and Japanese only mini album El
Dorado) and Touch The Night, the only track of any note from Landing On Water,
my vote and only candidate for the honour of his worst album. Unfortunately, I didn’t attend the previous
night when the opening number was the completely unknown Ordinary People which
wasn’t to be released for another 20 years.
A mate of mine who call with me that night is certain he played out but
this hasn’t made its way onto the set list recorded on the Sugar Mountain
website.
A lengthy gap ensured until he returned for the Geendale
tour and a single Melbourne show on 22 November 2003 at the Myer Music
Bowl. The first half of the show was the
Greendale album in its entirety. How
anyone regarded that show will have depended in part upon their reaction to
that album; personally, I didn’t have a problem with it and the presentation
actually helped me make greater sense of it, except for the artists painting on
stage. But it was the second half that
everyone remembers with Crazy Horse. This
was one hour of classic music – Hey Hey My My (Into The Black), a cover of All
Along The Watchtower, Powderfinger, Love And Only Love, Like A Hurricane and
Rockin’ In The Free World – just about every track greeted with a roar of
recognition from the audience.
The 28 February 2009 performance, also at the Bowl with his
Electric Band, is remembered primarily for two reasons. These were the unbelievable near 40 degree
Celsius temperature at the start of the show and the resultant look of Neil in
shorts. But it was a great opportunity
to hear a different selection of tracks with Words and Unknown Legend to the
fore but, for me, the highlight came right at the end with his audacious cover
of The Beatles A Day In The Life.
And so, with this overview, you can see the reason for my
excitement. This will be the first, and possibly
only time, I get to experience a gig of nothing but Crazy Horse. With respect to all of Neil’s staggering
achievements with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Pearl
Jam, Booker T & The MGs and his myriad of backing bands, Crazy Horse is the
best context in which to hear his most inspired music. But I do understand why he needs other
outlets for his work. Not everything is
suited to this band, and let’s face it, they aren’t regarded for their high
levels of musicianship but they provide exactly
the right type of intense garage band backing necessary to these particular songs. Most importantly, they provide the correct
level of support that enables Neil’s incredible guitar playing to soar.
In his Year Of The Horse documentary, Neil explained that
when he gets the need to rock out, he gets on the phone to the members of Crazy
Horse and tells them the coming year is to be The Year Of The Horse. Well, to prepare myself for the gig, I have
deemed today to be the Day Of The Horse, staring with;
(203) Neil Young And
Crazy Horse – Live Rust
Happily this was the first Young album I bought with my own
money which I did so on the day of release.
Released following Rust Never Sleeps and in anticipation of the concert
movie of the same name, it is roughly divided into acoustic and electric halves. The lengthier electric tracks work best with
a mighty Cortez The Killer and great versions of Like A Hurricane and Tonight’s
The Night. The acoustic selection is
superb but, if I have a problem with the album today, it is the extent to which
the sound of an over enthusiastic crowd intrudes on this tracks. After The Gold Rush, in particular, is badly
affected.
(204) Neil Young And
Crazy Horse – Re-ac-tor
This was the last Neil Young album before his non-commercial
period and could have been regarded as a classic. It features 30
minutes of some of his most underappreciated music including real gems such as
Opera Star (which incredibly he’s been playing on the Australian tour), Surfer
Joe And Moe The Sleaze and the extraordinary closing track and lost classic
Shots. However, it’s the other 9 minutes
of album that people tend to remember, namely the infamous T-Bone. This is simply the band riffing away whilst Neil
randomly, repeatedly and pointlessly sings the less than memorable line “Got
mashed potato/Ain’t got no t-bone”. Urgh!
(204) Neil Young And
Crazy Horse – Ragged Glory
Never has an album been so aptly titled only for it to
become a cliché employed by lazy journalists. (I’ve made a point NOT to use it
here.) It is arguably Neil’s greatest
studio guitar fest (I say arguably because the tracks were recorded live in the
studio), the headline acts being Young concert staples such as Over And Over,
Love And Only Love and Fu%!in’ Up. Other
tracks such Love To Burn, Mansion On The Hill and his cover of Framer John are
just as good. And just to throw everyone
off guard he concludes the albm with the weirdness of a live Mother Earth
(Natural Anthem).
(205) Neil Young And
Crazy Horse – Weld
This is to Ragged Glory what Live Rust was to Rust Never
Sleeps. Love To Burn, Over, Mansion,
Fu%!in’ Up and Framer John all get second lives here but the highlights are
elsewhere. It opens with a ferocious
version of Hey Hey My My (Into The Black) which leads to an even more brutal
Crime In The City followed by an apocalyptic rendering of Dylan’s Blowin’ In
The Wind . Roll Another Number is an appropriate closer. For added weirdness, you can buy this double
CD with a third disc containing Arc, a 30 feedback collage.
Even with wealth of music listened, the day seems to drag forever,
especially after I read a review Young’s first Melbourne show on
Wednesday. Playing at the 5,000 capacity
Plenary in the Convention Centre , Neil appeared to dramatically overhaul the
standard set he’d been playing on all of the other Australian dates of the
tour. My hopes rise for a similar
overhaul tonight.
At lunchtime I speak to some colleagues of mine who are
also going. One of these is worried that
a relative who’s going with him might not enjoy the show because she loves the
Harvest album. After lunch I check for
starting times and find The Drones have been added to the bill. I contact Mikey to organise an alternative
collection time, not even bothering to check whether he’s a fan. (Mikey is one of the best fans of Australian
music you’d ever want to meet and so I know he’d want to see them.) I also let “M” know that we’ll have to
condense our after work activities even further.
She’s understands, bless her.
Eventually my uneventful work day ends. I collect “M”, do a frantic bout of grocery
shopping, wolf down dinner and head off to the gig, collecting Mikey on the
way. He’s got a seat in a different part
of the venue but we go together anyway chatting excitedly just like we did when
we went to our first gig together as teenagers.
At the venue we take photos of each other in front of the giant
advertising billboard. We'd gone together to the 1985 show; Mikey still has and proudly wears the tour t-shirt from that tour.
We separate and I find my seat in the second last row on the
side at the mid point between the stage and the rear. I’m seated just in time
for The Drones who deliver a crowd pleasing half hour set. How they didn’t get the support gig
originally has me beat. During their set
MJ joins me. Like Mikey and Derek, MJ is
my oldest friend going right back to my secondary school days. His musical tastes have generally not
proceeded beyond 1990 with a distinct fondness for 60’s music, electric blues
and guitars. Neil Young is thus right up
his alley.
Gig # 699 Neil Young
& Crazy Horse, Rod Laver Arena, National Tennis Centre, Melbourne
The lights go down and The Beatles A Day In The Life comes
over the PA bringing us back to how Neil’s last show in Melbourne ended. As it plays his roadies, dressed in white lab
coats and wearing face masks, scurry around the stage, attending to chores and
lifting the covers over the oversized amps.
The amps are the same oversized Fenders that were used on
the Rust Never Sleeps movie/Live Rust album and the Weld album. It then occurs to me that the current Alchemy
tour to support the Psychedelic Pill album might represent the third act of a
concept going back to Rust Never Sleeps that seems to imply continual
improvement or development from a common starting point. My (or should that be Neil’s?) logic goes
thus:1) Neil unleashes Rust Never Sleeps, the concert movie of the same name and the harsher Live Rust
2) Neil releases Ragged Glory and the very much harsher Weld. Apparently, by welding in new steel you can patch up rust, which as he had previously advised, never sleeps.
3) Neil releases Psychedelic Pill and the resultant tour is called Alchemy. According to www.yourdictionary.com alchemy is a power or process of changing one thing into another (usually gold); especially a seemingly micraculous power, or “changing a thing into something better”. Is the instrument of change the psychedelic pill? Who knows. But the claim is being made that each show on the Australian tour is being filmed for a concert movie. I briefly wonder if a live album is also in the works.
My musing is brought to an end when Neil and band casually
saunter onto the stage. Band,
roadies and others are lined up to attention, Advance Australia Fair
is played and an Australian flag unfurled; the bemused audience stay in their
seats. Then everyone clears the stage
and the band starts to play. I pull out
a pen and try to write down each song title in the darkness of my nosebleed
seat.
As if to confirm my theory, the first number played is
Powderfinger from Rust Never Sleeps, always a welcome addition. Next comes the first surprise, apparently an
Australian debut for Love To Burn from Ragged Glory. The unfamiliarity of the tune appears to
catch out Crazy Horse a couple of times during the number but its more than
satisfactory. This is the followed by,
you guessed it, the first selection from Psychedelic Pill, the jaunty Born In Ontario.
The first of the night’s extended workouts follows with Pill’s
Walk Like A Giant leading to an unreleased tune everyone is citing as Hole In
The Sky. It’s a pleasant enough tune but
scarcely worthy of the esteemed company with which it finds itself. Then comes the acoustic section led off by
Heart Of Gold, the start of which garners practically the biggest roar of the
night. Neil naturally heads for the ditch. He kills off any audience expectation of
more acoustic classics of that ilk by sitting behind a piano and
playing a fairly faithful rendition of My Heart, the opening cut from Sleeps
With Angels. Twisted Road from Psychedelic
Pill follows and then comes the night’s bizarro moment. It’s another unreleased song, that is being
titled on websites as Singer Without A Song.
On first listen, it sounds like a fairly unremarkable song with lyrics
that, bluntly, Taylor Swift could have written.
Then mid-way through the tune comes something approaching chorography. A lonesome blonde slip of a woman slinks
across the stage, guitar case in hand, before lingering and disappearing stage left. From a distance she could be mistaken for,
ahem, Taylor Swift. Is this a piss
take? I’d like to think so.
Such musing on my part disappears with the start of Pill’s
mighty Ramada Inn. It is a magnificent
version and arguably the night’s highlight.
Then comes the night’s selection of classics; Cinnamon Girl, an awesome
version of Cortez The Killer, F%!kin’ Up, Prisoners Of Rock ‘N’Roll from the
grossly under rated Life album, and then a trio of tracks from Rust – Welfare Mothers,
Sedan Delivery and the inevitable Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black). By this part of the show, the band is
absolutely flying with Neil sporting the biggest grin I’ve ever seen him give
whilst attacking his famed guitar Old Blackie with the same fevered intensity
as Homer Simpson strangling Bart.
For the sole encore Neil produces a Crazy Horse version of
Mr Soul (adding to the Buffalo Springfield original and Trans electronic
versions – another version of alchemy perhaps?) and wraps things up with Roll
Another Number. Two and a half hours
have elapsed and I’m content. Surely no
other show on this tour could have possibly come close to matching this and I realise the gauntlet
has been laid done to two of the world’s greatest live acts that I’ll be seeing
later in month. But until then, there is
the memory of this gig to savor.
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