Neil Young, Solo

A much younger Neil: "Harvest Moon" video

I’ve been a Neil Young fan since the 1970s, when he released After the Gold Rush and Harvest, widely considered two of the greatest rock albums of all time. Tim and I have seen him perform many, many times with and without bandmates from Crosby, Stills and Nash and Buffalo Springfield. On Saturday, we saw him play at the Dolby theatre, home to last month’s Academy Awards ceremony. The stage was much smaller in person than it was on TV. We had “house seats”—5^th-row center—the best seats we’ve ever had for a large venue concert.

Neil was performing solo, a repeat of the already legendary concert he did at Carnegie Hall in January, though he is notorious for never playing the exact same set twice. When we arrived, the stage was dark, but we could clearly see a chair surrounded by about 10 acoustic guitars. To the right was a white baby grand and to the left a standup player piano. Neil’s pump organ was in the back on a slightly raised platform. A small spotlight shined on Woody, an old-time cigar-store Indian, who I believe has been part of every Neil Young concert we’ve ever seen.

Neil was amazing. Wearing an old black hat and rumpled clothes, he quietly walked on stage, picked up a guitar and started to sing. Known primarily for his poundingly loud electric guitar riffs, this performance was so restrained and intimate that I felt like we were inside a tiny coffeehouse with 3300 other fans. Between songs, Neil rambled around the stage, as if deciding which song to play next. He sang many of his hits—including my favorite love song, “Harvest Moon”—but seemed to focus mostly on obscure material, like fellow Canadian Gordon Lightfoot’s “If I Could Read Your Mind,” a wonderful and sweet surprise.

Occasionally, Neil would slyly respond to the cacophony of yells from the audience. For the most part, though, he told brief stories either about songwriters he admires or his guitars—one that had belonged to Hank Williams and two that were gifts from Stephen Stills. At one point, he mentioned that “music used to mean something” and then immediately launched into “Ohio,” his heartbreaking anthem about the 1970 Kent State massacre—one of several songs that made me cry.

"Ohio"

The concert ended almost as abruptly as it began. After a long and boisterous standing ovation, Neil returned to the stage for a much-too-short encore that concluded with everyone quietly singing along to “Long May You Run,” my other favorite Neil Young song about loss and moving on (more tears!). 

We love you, Neil, and always will . . .

Carnegie Hall encore

For more info about the concert, please read the excellent L.A. Times review here. 

Bridge School Concert

I’ve been a fan of rock legend Neil Young for more than three decades. I, of course, have always loved Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, arguably the most popular of all the bands he’s played with. But it wasn’t until I heard his solo album Harvest in the late 1970s—many years after it had been released, by the way—that I became a huge fan. I have followed him ever since. We don’t always like all of his music, but Tim and I have seen him perform on stage countless times. Each concert is as youthful and as memorable as the one before, even though Young is now well into his 60s.

An outspoken liberal, Neil lives in northern California on a ranch close to where counter-culture author Ken Kesey once lived. For the past 24 years Neil and his wife Pegi have organized a benefit concert for the Bridge School, which Pegi helped found in the mid-1980s. The concert traditionally attracts megawatt artists, like Bruce Springstein, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Sheryl Crowe, Jackson Browne, and The Who. The announcement of each year’s lineup is always highly anticipated. Although I’ve wanted to go forever, the thought of schlepping all the way up to Mountain View for a concert was never appealing. That is, until I opened the newspaper one morning last month and read that Buffalo Springfield, Young’s first band, was reuniting for this year’s Bridge School benefit. We had been wanting to visit Tim’s brother, who lives in Sebastopol, north of San Francisco, anyway, so we bought tickets to the concert and made plans to fly up on Saturday, even though all weather reports were predicting a wet weekend.

We landed in Oakland at 9:15AM. The sky was cloudy but dry. We congratulated ourselves for having such good fortune. By the time we got to Sebastopol, however, the skies had opened up, pouring down rain through the night and into the next day. The concert started at 2PM on Sunday.

We spent the night with friends in Bodega Bay and then left at 10AM to head south to Mountain View, where the outdoor Shoreline Amphitheater is located. The drive was harrowing. I am not the most adventurous driver even in the best of weather, so my brain was on major “red alert.” My biggest fear was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge at the height of the storm; but surprisingly the bridge ended up being the least scary stretch of all, even though (as you can tell from the photo) we could hardly to see the other side!

It took us nearly three hours to drive 100 miles, but when we arrived in Mountain View the sky was only partly cloudy. Could Neil Young possibly control the weather, too? We were ecstatic, though I took my rain parka along just in case. I also convinced Tim to buy a cheesy $5 parka when we were paying for our souvenir t-shirts. And, lucky, too, because about 30 minutes into the concert it started to rain and pretty much didn’t stop till we were back in the car several hours later.

The audience was fairly mixed: some young people, but mostly folks our age or even older. Tim was thrilled when a woman came up to him and said he looked like Mike Love of the Beach Boys, though I didn’t think that was much of a compliment!

The musical lineup was incredible: Kris Kristofferson, actor Jeff Bridges, country legend Ralph Stanley, Elvis Costello, Leon Russell, Elton John, Pearl Jam, and, of course, Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield. Bridges sang a couple of songs from his Oscar-winning movie Crazy Heart, while Stanley treated us to some old-time country standards, which drew a standing ovation. Tim was most moved by Kristofferson who, even though sounded kinda creaky, can still break your heart singing “Me and Bobby McGee.”

With all the rain and marijuana smoke in the air, we pretended we were at Woodstock, though we doubted garlic fries and pulled pork sandwiches were part of that particular outdoor festival!

The Bridge School concert is typically an acoustical event. Still, Elton John and Leon Russell, who just released a joint CD together, managed to rock the theater with their pianos and unplugged band. It was wonderful seeing the white-maned Leon pounding the keyboards after walking on stage using a cane. Elton, too, looked fabulous and sounded as good as the last time I’d seen him playing at his now historic Dodger Stadium concert in 1975. They brought the house down.

Russell and John were followed by Neil Young’s protégés Pearl Jam, whose music we don’t know, though they did open for Neil when he was touring in 1993. We went to that concert, but stood outside the arena until Pearl Jam was done because their music was just too damn loud. Playing acoustical, though, was much easier on the ears—so much so, I might even buy a couple of their songs on iTunes.

After a break, the stage was then set for Buffalo Springfield. We had by now been sitting in the on-again-off-again rain for six hours, but it was well worth the wait. Although the first couple of songs were a bit shaky, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Neil Young then launched into their biggest hit, “For What It’s Worth,” and we were suddenly transported back in time. The young woman in front of Tim turned around and asked him if Buffalo Springfield had originated that song. “YES!” he answered incredulously as I joyously sang along with the lyrics.

The set ended with “Bluebird,” another big Buffalo Springfield hit, before Neil, who had briefly played with many of the acts throughout the concert, invited all the performers back on-stage to join him in singing his anthem, “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World!” The audience sang gloriously in unison. It was the perfect ending to an unforgettably phenomenal day. I can’t wait to see who Neil Young plays with next year.

Rock 'n Roll Heaven

Just when I think we’re getting too old to go to any more rock concerts, a week like this one comes along and my faith in the restorative powers of music is renewed.

As part of being named “Employee of the Month,” Tim was given two free tickets to any sports or cultural event of his choice. I was secretly hoping he’d pick the Neil Young concert, but he went with Bruce Springsteen instead, mostly because we had never seen him in concert and Tim thought we probably should at least once in our lifetime. The deal was sweetened when Springsteen’s bandmate Little Steven Van Zandt, who played Silvio on “The Sopranos,” came to the radio station and gave out passes to a meet-and-greet he was hosting before the show.

The concert was held at the L.A. Sports Arena, perhaps best known as the site of the 1960 Democratic national convention. When Tim reminded me that the Arena would probably soon be demolished, I groused, “But this is where JFK was nominated, for cryin’ out loud! IT’S HISTORIC!!”

But, yeah, the building has certainly seen better days. It was grungy and, by today’s standards, relatively small. The seats were nothing more than folding chairs bolted into cement. We had general admission tickets “on the floor,” which meant we got to stand for the entire concert.

Traffic was worse than usual due to an accident that had closed the 405 freeway all day, so we practically had to run from the parking lot in order to make the meet-and-greet on time. Little Steve was there, wearing his signature bandana while glad-handing the fans. This was definitely a “jeans and t-shirt” kind of crowd—“working class” concertgoers that Springsteen is famous for. The line to meet Steven was too long, so we just looked at him from afar and then went to claim our spots on the Arena floor.

The concert was phenomenal. Springsteen plays with such energy that I thought every song was the final song of the evening. At one point, I turned to Tim and said, “I can’t believe you and Bruce are the same age!” We slunk out at 11PM, exhausted as people stomped and hooted for the band to come out and play yet another encore.

Meanwhile, a couple of miles up the road on the very same night, our perennial favorite Neil Young was entertaining folks at the Nokia theater, downtown L.A.’s newest concert venue located across the street from the Staples Center. Obviously we couldn’t be in two places at once, so I was very interested to read the L.A. Times review of the show on Thursday. The reviewer loved it, of course.

Luckily for me, Young was returning to the Nokia on Friday, so I called Tim immediately. “We HAVE to see Neil Young in concert!” I implored. “Can you PLEASE get tickets through your connections?!”

The show was sold-out and Tim’s contact had the day off, so he went to a broker, StubHub, instead and found us good seats in the orchestra. We couldn’t get them until two hours before the show.

Because there was also a basketball game that night, we decided to leave obscenely early. I picked-up Tim at work at 4:30PM and then headed east on surface streets. Not only did we arrive downtown in plenty of time, but we were also able to find a free parking spot on the street! I may be willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a concert ticket, but I refuse to pay $20 for parking—the ultimate highway robbery.

With time to kill, we decided to eat at the Liberty Grill, two blocks from the theater and the Staples Center, where the game was being played. We had fun trying to guess where the other guests were going after dinner. A group of three men in their 30s, eating ribs and burgers: basketball game. An old hippie couple wearing their best tie-died t-shirts: Neil Young concert!

We then walked ten long blocks to StubHub (I wasn’t about to give up my primo parking spot!) to pick-up our tickets. There we met three very young college kids who were hoping to nab last minute basketball seats. They had no idea who Neil Young is! We got back to the Nokia a half-hour before show time.

We’ve seen Neil Young many times before, including last year’s fabulous Hollywood Bowl concert with Crosby, Stills and Nash, but we’ve never seen him quite like this. For the first half of the show, he ambled onstage alone and sang several songs, accompanied by an harmonica and either one of eight guitars, which were set-up around his chair, or one of two pianos. Some of the songs were well-known, but many sounded like he had just written them the night before. He didn’t engage much with the audience—but, then again, he didn’t need to because his music said it all. I was very moved and amazed.

After a brief intermission, Neil, who had (quite frankly) looked fairly doddering during the acoustic set, returned to the stage with members of his old band Crazy Horse and suddenly transformed himself into the rock legend we all know and adore. Playing electric guitar, he pounded his way through classic songs and new as he lumbered around the stage like a big kid. He almost ruined the night by indulging in a 20-minute solo that everyone but us loved—good grief, we ARE getting old!—but redeemed himself during the encore by playing “Cinnamon Girl” and “Tonight’s the Night.” I was so ecstatic that I don’t even remember walking the five blocks to our car.

11/4