The Horse Rides Again

There are some things in life that you just can't pass up. Free beer? Sure! Invitation to the Playboy Mansion? Thanks! Complimentary peanuts? Well, I'm allergic and they could kill me... but, okay!*

So it was that I went to see Neil Young & Crazy Horse last night at the ACC, with Lucinda Williams as the opening act. Bought two tickets when they went on sale. At that time, I didn't even know that Lucinda was opening. Just can't pass up a chance to see Neil, especially with the Horse. There are lots of artists that I love and worship, but somehow Neil Young's music has always had a special pull on me, ever since I was 14 and I first slipped under my Koss headphones in "my corner" of my parent's rec room and dropped the needle on the copy of the Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere LP I had borrowed from my pal Mumbley.

*pop* *hiss* *crackle* ... jahd-daa daa daa daa, daa daa daa dow da... I wanna live with a cinnamon girl/ I can be happy the rest of my life with a cinnamon girl/ A dreamer of pictures, I run in the night/ You see us together chasing the moonlight, my cinnamon girl...

Raw, simple, direct, poetic, vivid, enthralling ... drawn straight in, unfiltered. Aaaahhhh, this is the shit. YESSS!

I had also borrowed After The Gold Rush and Harvest from Mumbley and from my friend Tony, Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust.

Deeeee-vohhhh-teeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

My fate was sealed when I came home late one Friday night after being out partying with my friends, went to the kitchen to prepare my usual triple-decker peanut butter and jam sandwich with a glass of milk. Mom and Dad were in bedóperhaps asleep, but maybe listeningóand the kitchen was lit only by the dim light above the stove. But that was okay because my pupils were as big as saucers. I could've made that sandwich in the dark, by the glow of the translucent strawberry jam, and caught any errant dollop of PB before it hit the floor. In fact, I wasn't even the least bit hungry, but under such circumstances, where Mom and Dad may have been monitoring the nature of my movements for the telltale signs, usual habits must be re-enacted. The message: Everything is normal.

I went downstairs to the rec room. I forced myself to eat the sandwich. The purple butterflies in my stomach loved it. I switched on the small black-and-white TV to see if anything interesting was on Friday Night Videos. And there was. Neil and Crazy Horse. Live footage of them performing "Like A Hurricane". I've never seen this footage since. Sometimes I wonder if I was hallucinating. Neil had really long, straight hair, and as he wailed away on Old Black, his black Les Paul, his hair was blown back from his face by a powerful fan.

And I was blown away. I sat transfixed on the floor in front of the TV, drinking it all in.

I am just a dreamer,
but you are just a dream...

That perfect feeling
when time just slips
Away between us
on our foggy trip...

If I was already a fan, this experience branded me for good. It sewed a Crazy Horse patch on my soul.

So I've never passed up a chance to see Neil. First time was at the Moncton Coliseum in í84 or í85. Just my luck, Neil was deep into his í80s tranformations. The which-neil-will-show-up-on-the-next-album game had begun. Computer music? Rockabilly? He was now in his "gone country" thing, with the Old Ways album, touring with a band called The International Harvesters. I wasn't that big on country music at the time, although I dug his Harvest stuff, of course. But I wanted to see Crazy Horse! I wanted "Like A Hurricane", "Powderfinger", "My My Hey Hey". Well, I didn't get the Crazy Horse experience, but it was my first Neil show, and it was great to see him. The country tunes were all right. "Get Back To The Country", "California Sunset". I appreciate them more now. But he did play some of his classics, like "The Needle And The Damage Done", and he even dusted off a Buffalo Springfield favourite of mine, "Flying On The Ground Is Wrong", played it on his old, beautiful Gretsch.

I finally caught the Crazy Horse experience in í89 or í90, in Detroit on the Ragged Glory tour. It was worth the wait. The full Crazy Horse experience, with the giant amps and microphone stand from the Rust Never Sleeps/Live Rust stage set, and even "Farmer John" wandering around the stage as the band played.

Saw him a few years later at the Fox Theater in Detroit, an amazing solo acoustic concert showcasing his Harvest Moon songs, prior to the album's release. Then a few years later touring with Booker T & The MG's as his backup band, and then again with Crazy Horse in í97, an outdoor show in Barrie, north of Toronto. Great shows all.

So when tickets went on sale for the current tour stop at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, it was a no-brainer, although I did have some reservations about this show. I had learned that the main set of the concert would be songs from Neil's Greendale album, to be released this fall. I had heard some of the songs being streamed from his web site from a solo show in Dublin, and I was a little underwhelmed. But maybe once they were given the Crazy Horse treatment, it might be a different story. Plus there was a dramatic element to this show, as the stage was also to be shared with a set of the fictional town, populated by actors who dramatized scenes reflecting the songs. Apparently Greendale is Neil's story of three generations living in the town of Greendale, an Anytown in Anywhere, America. A kind of a concept piece. More on this later.

First, though, I had to unload the extra ticket I had bought. I often buy two tickets for a show I want to see, on the assumption that I'll find someone to go with meóand I usually do. But I had left it to the last minute this time, and it was a pretty steep price at $70, so I wasn't very surprised when I had no takers, although there was one person who might have come along, but for a prior commitment.

So I hung outside the ACC before the show and tried to sell my extra ticket, but no luck. It was a sold-out show, but there were many people with extra tickets for sale, and that's not including the professional scalpers. I didn't want to sell it to a scalper, and so I approached many people, but no takers. It's hard to sell just one ticket. Most people were there with one or two other people. And there were a few solo people who might have been potential buyers, but they looked like the type of people that I didn't think I'd want to have next to me at a concert. Just before I gave up, I asked one scalper, and he offered me $20 for it. Fuck that. They don't care about the music, they're just there to make a buck, so I decided if I couldn't sell it to a fan, I'd just swallow the cost. But I should have just bought one ticket. Oh well.

The drag is that the time I spent outside trying to offload the ticket meant that I missed Lucinda Williams, but she'll be back on her own to play a smaller venue.

I got to my seat(s) just as Neil began. The Greendale set was... interesting. Hour and 45 min. Not riveting, but okay. Lots of dramatic elements on stage. A jail cell to stage left. A cabin with a porch on stage right. And behind the band, a large raised stage with an elevator floor and a big screen behind it. For certain songs, people driving prop cut-out cars would pop up, the screen behind them showing filmed footage of highway scenery flying past. For other songs it was a young girl's bedroom, others still a bar with people dancing, etc. The characters mimed the songs that Neil was singing. The Devil made an appearance.

There was a political element to it. Several of Neil's introductions took aim at the Bush administration, and the Patriot Act. At one point the screen displayed a drawing of a Clear Channel billboard that said "Support Our War". An interesting message, since the US portion of the tour is apparently sponsored by Clear Channel.

Neil's microphone stand was the coolest piece of hi-tech mic-standery that I've ever seen. It looked like the Terminator mic stand. An arc of stainless steel with a kind of a gyroscope-type space in the middle that looked like it was possibly housing a camera. It curved up toward him, and he had at least two mics on the end (one for a megaphone effect that he used for one song) and his harmonica, instead of being in the traditional neck holder, was actually fixed to the mic stand! I was thinking that must take some practice, so you don't bust your mouth on it.

The songs themselves were a mixed bag. Most were sort of mid-tempo, blues-y rock numbers, kind of in the "This Notes For You" vein, but sparser. A few sounded quite good, with some nice lead guitar parts from Neil. Frank "Pancho" Sampedro, the rhythm guitarist played a barely audible electric piano throughout the set. There was one solo acoustic number called "Bandit" that was quite good. But mostly, the music was a little uninspiring.

Ben Raynor's review in the Toronto Star pretty much got it right, especially the sense of the storyline (except he missed one encore. Slip out early did you Ben?):

"Later on, we'll dust off a few antiques," [Young] promised at the outset, before the first of numerous actors appeared at stage left, rocking on a front-porch set and pantomining to "Falling From Above" lyrics: "A little love and affection will make the world a better place." And on Greendale went, from that sweet and hippie-ish beginning, somehow threading a cop killing, a jailhouse visit from Satan, a media-triggered heart attack and one comely dancing girl into an overarching message ó delivered with a full-cast onstage dance party ó about the need to preserve nature for future generations. Or something.

After the main set, Neil and the band returned for three encores, all Crazy Horse nuggets, with Sampedro back on guitar. "My My Hey Hey", "Like A Hurricane", "Love To Burn", "Powderfinger" (wooo!) and "Roll Another Number". Seeing them do these songs was almost worth the price. I love "Powderfinger" and, of course, "Like A Hurricane".

Ahhh, but it's great to "smell the horse." Who knows when/if they'll tour again? They're getting up there. Pancho is looking fairly... panchy these days.

So it was a bit of a steep price to pay, but it felt really good to see one of my favourite bands playing some of my favourite songs. That feeling is priceless.


* I'm not really allergic to peanuts.