Who Has Seen The Wind?

This is almost kind of spooky. I mentioned the Neil Young bio I was readingó"Shakey" by Jimmy McDonough. And earlier I blogged about how I first started getting into Neil's music, and one specific occasion when I saw him and Crazy Horse performing "Like A Hurricane" on late night TV. I quote:

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

Well, it looks like McDonough had a similar experience in his nascent Neil-fandom. From "Shakey", page 494:

"'Like A Hurricane' is one of those songs that defines an era. 'Rock is about a micro-moment,' said writer Richard Meltzer. 'It's not even about a yearóit's about, like, a day. These songs are almost time-coded with a date on them. Rock does not feel separate from its time, which I don't feel about jazz, classical, any other shit. It was disposable stuff, and whatever these people did to make themselves important in the eyes of eternity, the stuff only works if it got under your skin in the moment. I hear it and smell the day I heard it.'
I know what Meltzer's talking about. Hearing 'Hurricane,' I can smell the pastóin particular, a woozy night at a friend's house. This gal I was obsessed with had just shown up. She had torn down from South Bend to Indianapolis in a green í76 Grand Prix hijacked from her oblivious mother. We met in my friend's living room, Midnight Special blasting out of the TV. Wolfman Jack announced, 'NEIL YOUNG!' in that garbage-can voice of his, and on popped a live clip of Young and the Horse flailing away at 'Hurricane.'
Standing in the blast of a wind machine, Young looked more simian than human, the band barely visible. The whole thing was so dark and murky it was like peering into a dirty aquarium. It didn't look like the rest of the The Midnight Special. I'll tell yaóit looked real. You could almost feel the storm. We stood in the darkened room, eyes riveted to the glowing TV. Once it ended, we two young lovers waltzed out into the cool, dark summer air, hopped into the Grand Prix and blasted down the highway, headed for a cheap hotel. I had a dame I was crazy about and she was crazy about meówe felt as invincible as gods. Of course, it all went to hell in a handbag, but for a moment there it seemed like anything was possible, and 'Like A Hurricane' was the soundtrack fueling our dimestore dreams."

I left the Meltzer stuff in because I thought it was interesting context. But that's a pretty interesting parallel experience, huh? Well, except for the "dame" and all that. I guess it wasn't Friday Night Videos, but The Midnight Special that I tuned in. Makes more sense. Nice to know I wasn't hallucinating.