Tuesday 11th March 2008 - Neil Young

It's taken me 5 days and 500 miles of travelling across England to gather together my thoughts about what was easily the best concert I've seen this year, which was of course the one and only Neil Young, coming back to my home city of Manchester, a place where Young has in the past courted musical controversy with his infamous appearance here in the 70's.

On that night, years before I was even born, Young famously played a then unknown little ditty known as 'Tonight's The Night.' Of course, Mancunians were as notoriously fickle then as they are now and didn't exactly cheer Young on as he introduced this new piece of music to them (they in fact heckled and booed). Upon hearing this, Young said that if they didn't like that song, he'd move on to play one they did know. He then spent 20 minutes more re-playing Tonight's The Night!

The beligerance hasn't left Young, that much is clear. But on Tuesday night, the crowd that greeted Young were as one with myself; there to see a hero, a long-lost friend, an ex-bandmate of local boy cum-good, Graham Nash, a battler, a fighter, an eternal survivor, a soul who refuses to grow old, the best Canadian musician of all time. I love the current Canadian music scene, as previous blogs attest, and I have to state that there cannot be a Canadian alive who isn't influenced by Young's unique vision for his music. He's stamped his standard upon every free-thinking Canadian (and frankly, every free-thinking indie musician in the world) to come for at least the next 100 years. And to see close-up, exactly why this is so, was as much an honour as a serene pleasure. The Neil Young we got was the angry, fired up, committed Young of days gone by and his selection of songs reflected that.

Young is a man with roughly 48 albums to his name. He could play for 7 days and still not cover everything he's put on record. So it was to great delight that he decided to throw songs into the mix that are amongst his most famed and acclaimed. They included Hey Hey, My My, The Needle And The Damage Done and amazingly beautifully, A Man Needs A Maid. His sets spanned over two and a half hours, starting at 8:20 (after Pegi Young's very pleasant supporting set) with an elequent and touching acoustic set, pausing at 9:50, re-emerging at 10:15 and playing full throttle until fully ten to midnight. To be in the room was to be alive for those few hours. And to be 27 years old, watching Young, 48 hours before my 28th, was to show me how old I am in spirits compared to this stalwart, bullwart, manic musician, who shows what being 60+ should really mean. I don't mean this to offend my generation of musicians, some of whom are stunningly talented, but next to Young, they're pretty shit as a rule. This guy sets the standard, not with technical perfection (which he's never had), but with soul, spirit and originality. Every song was a real exploration, both for audience and musician alike. His supporting musicians give their all as well, especially Ralph Molina, his drummer for some 40 years now, still tapping the skins with as much passion as he had in the 60's.

Back when Young first burst onto the scene, the names on people's lips included Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Today, the names have changed, to include Barack Obama, a fellow preacher of optimism, idealism and truth. It is in my opinion, no coincidence, that with America at a crossroads now as it was then, that their favourite musical foreign guest with opinions is once again coming to the boil. The Young renaissance is upon us, with the release of Chrome Dreams II and with songs like Spirit Road pointing the way, one cannot fail to be excited by his current catalogue of new music. He thrashed his guitar around during that 15-minute bottleneck odyssey with a wild abandon not seen since Cobain's heights, and to great effect, against a backdrop that was stunning to see. His stage was littered with relics of the past; an organ from the days when Young allowed E-Woks to run his stage, guitars, harmonicas and banjos from 40 years of country leanings, a psychedelic piano that had received the tye-die treatment in yellows, whites and oranges and most intruigingly, a painter who provided full canvas picture representations of each song that was played in the electric set.

Young is possibly the most impressive individual I've ever seen play live. He touched my heart with his music, and for me, attending a gig nearly every week, that's incredibly hard to do nowadays. He also did the same for everyone around, from my friend next to me who was moved to tears of joy at the sound of A Man Needs A Maid, to Manchester indie-rockers, Nine Black Alps, sat two rows in front of me, jumping up and down, taking pictures and acting (quite understandably!) like besotted groupies!

The only complaint I and many others had on this night was Manchester Apollo's inexplicable ban on allowing people to step outside and smoke a cigarette, alongside some typically fascist policing of the concert attendees, which included shining high intensity torches into people's eyes when they stood up to dance, sing along or applaud. These tactics of terror by some of the scumbags they employ to police these events are a disgrace by concert promotion company Live Nation who really need to get their house in order before legal action is taken against them for this regular abuse of their paying customers. Suffice to say, the only way I'm walking back into a Live Nation venue is if Neil is playing again. Live Nation, you have been warned.

I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to see him again. But I'm glad I did. He's amazing, a unique contributor to Western musical culture. Long May You Run Mr. Young, Long May You Run.

***IMPORTANT NEWS - UPDATED: 20th March 2008***

Yep; he's coming back to England. For one very special appearance only, on July 6th, Neil Young will be headlining The Hop Farm Festival. A new festival on the English calendar, it is being organised by a legend in the festival world, Vince Power (most famously associated with the Glastonbury, Benacassim and Leeds Festivals). Vince plans to make Hop Farm's 30,000 capacity one-day event a 'back-to-basics' affair with the welcome removal of advertising and corporate interests, a proposition that has obviously enticed that most principled musician Mr. Young.

Hop Farm Festival is already incredibly attractively priced, at just £49 (£56 with booking fees), especially considering a ticket to see Young by himself cost £65. So that's £49 for 8 acts, which works out at just £6.13p per act (about $12.25 for my American friends or $98 for a whole festival). With a promise of reasonably priced food and drink, and the opportunity to smoke a cigarette while watching this legend play, and drink a pint while I'm at it, this is looking like being THE place to be this summer for the festival classes). Many thanks to Vince Power and Hop Farm for doing this for genuine music fans - fine work guys.

For tickets to Hop Farm on 6th July, go to the delightfully simple and straightforward Seetickets website (this link takes to straight to where you need to be).

And finally (yes, this is the blog that gives!), a bootleg of the final, electric, set of the Manchester show is available right here... LINK! Thanks again to China Pig...