I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: May 12, 2024] Neil Young & Crazy Horse

My wife and I are both big fans of Neil Young.  Although we tend to prefer different eras, we enjoy most of his catalog pretty equally.

We had seen him play solo ten years ago.  We saw him play Promise of the Real nine years ago.  If we ever got to see hi again, I never would have guessed it would be with Crazy Horse.  I would have loved to get close up seats for this show, but JFC, the pit and front row seats were like $600 a piece.  I actually assumed we were priced out, but I knew how much we both wanted to see him (I mean, Neil is 78 how many more tours is he going to do?).  So I bought two not-outrageously priced seats in the 200 second (front row).

The band wasn’t exactly Crazy Horse.  Nils Lofgren is playing with Bruce Springsteen (booo).  But he was replaced by Micah Nelson (who I have seen as Particle Kid).  Truth be told, I couldn’t tell a difference.  They were far enough away and the spotlights blurred everything anyway.  But he sounded great, as did everyone else.

In classic Crazy Horse style, the three guys up front stood about a foot away from each other.  So despite the size of the stage (and the massive Marshall stack backdrops), they were all within whispering distance of each other.  Which I assume was Neil’s way of letting everyone know what was happening next. 

It’s hard to say what my favorite Neil Young song is, as he has hundreds of great songs, but I was really hoping to hear Cortez the Killer.  So I was surprised and delighted that they opened with it!  And then followed it with Cinnamon Girl.

And then followed it with “Fuckin’ Up.”  I had kind of assumed that it would be all songs from the 70s (I don’t know why especially since the latest album is called Fuckin’ Up), but it was great to hear this song live–which I hadn’t heard from him (I have heard Pearl Jam do it a number of times).

The one thing I noticed was that none of these songs was especially long.  Which was fine, I just assumed he’d be jamming out some guitar solos.  The songs weren’t short or anything, but they were comfortably 5 minutes instead of 7 or 8.

There had been an angel type thing up in the sky and it was slowly lowered down to be revealed as an organ which Micah Nelson played for the intro to Like a Hurricane.  During the song, the organ swung around (it was untethered to the ground) as the band rocked the song.  It was fascinating to not how different the band sounded without Micah’s second guitar while Neil played a long solo.

He played a few songs that I didn’t know very well and then he jumped back in to a bunch of songs that I was super excited to hear.

I’m also blown away by how many songs he played that night that we hadn’t seen him play before (thirteen and I was super excited by 8 of of those).

My wife had hoped for a couple of songs and while she didn’t get all of them, she did get “Powderfinger,” another favorite of mine.  It sounded fantastic.  Indeed, Neil’s voice, while a little shaky at times still sounded great.  Powerful and in tune.  And his guitar playing was scorching.  As the reviewer from The Washington Post wrote: “Has anyone in rock history been this good at making music this loud at this age?”  Indeed not, his solos were noisy and sloppy and perfect.

For reasons I’m unclear about I had the songs “Love to Burn” and “Love is Only Love” in my head for a couple of weeks before the show.  Neither song is a particular favorite, but they were lodged in there.  So when he played them–segueing one into the other, it was like they scratched a giant itch (and they sounded great too).

Then Crazy Horse left and Neil came back out with an acoustic guitar and harmonica.  I didn’t know he’s be doing a brief acoustic set, but here it was.  Of the dozens of songs he could have played here, he chose three. Amazingly two we hadn’t seen him play before.  My wife lives the Comes a Time album, so she was super psyched by his choices.  The third song was “Heart of Gold,” which is a wonderful song and is the only song he’s played at all three shows.  (But if you haven’t seen them for nine years, it’s not like it’s overplayed).  Plus, it sounded great on a chilly night in an open-air venue.

The band came back and started playing an absolutely house-rattling version of “Hey Hey, My My.”  I didn’t realize that he hadn’t been playing it all that often since Kurt Cobain quoted it in his suicide letter.  But he has been playing it on this tour and damn if it didn’t sound amazing.

They ended the set with one of the weirder popular songs he’s got, “Sedan Delivery.”  The song itself is weird with different styles mixed in, but it does rock and was fun to hear.

With Neil you don’t ever know what you’re going to get.  Encore?  Maybe.  he hadn’t played many on the early dates, but he has been adding some.  So it was very cool when he came back out and the band played “Roll Another Number.”  It was kind of a random selection, but it worked.  It also felt like the couldn’t end on that, so when they started the riff for “Down By the River,” the whole place erupted.  It was a fantastic ending to a great night.

We have pretty much written off the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion because it’s such a massive pain in the ass to get to.  When we saw Pearl Jam last time, we waited in traffic for over an hour (to drive less than a mile) and then had to walk that mile to the stadium.  We missed the entire opening act and arrived just in time for Pearl Jam.  Since I’ve hurt my leg, I didn’t want to do the same thing, so we decided to take the Riverlink Ferry.  The parking for it wasn’t as great as I hoped (there’s no such thing as handicapped parking in Philly, I’m guessing), but it was a much more pleasant experience.

The ferry ride was delightful, but on the way back, we were second on line when they closed the gate and told us we had to wait 30 minutes for the next one.  So I guess we didn’t get out any faster, but again, the stress was nonexistent compared to driving in the crush of concert goers.

I would say that literally Neil Young with Crazy Horse was the only show that could have made us go there again.  I don’t imagine there’s anyone else who will get us to go there again–although the person waiting with us for the ferry said that the Riverline train is much cheaper and drops you off right a the entrance to the Pavilion.  So we’ll see.

 

2024 with Crazy Horse	2015 with Promise of the Real	2014 An Evening with
Cortez the Killer (with lost verse) ℵ	After the Gold Rush (solo) ⇔	SET ONE
Cinnamon Girl ⊗	Heart of Gold (solo) ∠	From Hank to Hendrix Ø
Fuckin’ Up ¥	Long May You Run (solo) (Stills-Young Band song) ∝	On the Way Home (Buffalo Springfield song)
Scattered (Let’s Think About Livin’) ∼ (dedicated to David Briggs)	Old Man (solo) ∠	Only Love Can Break Your Heart ⇔
Like a Hurricane ≡	Mother Earth (Natural Anthem) (solo) ¥	I’m Glad I Found You ∋
Don’t Cry No Tears ℵ	Hold Back the Tears ≡	Mellow My Mind ♦
I’m the Ocean ©	Out on the Weekend ∠	Reason to Believe (Tim Hardin cover)
The Losing End (When You’re On) ⊗	Unknown Legend Ø	Someday ∇
Everybody Knows This is Nowhere ⊗	Peace of Mind ‰	If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot cover)
Powderfinger §	From Hank to Hendrix Ø	Harvest ∠
Love to Burn ¥	Harvest Moon Ø	Old Man ∠
Love and Only Love ¥	Wolf Moon µ	SET TWO
Comes a Time (solo) ‰	Words (Between the Lines of Age) ∠	Pocohontas §
Heart of Gold (solo) ∠	Flying on the Ground is Wrong (Buffalo Springfield song)	Heart of Gold ∠
Human Highway (solo) ‰	Walk On ≅	Plastic Flowers ∋
Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) §	Bad Fog of Lonliness Ω	A Man Needs a Maid ∠
Sedan Delivery §	A Rock Star Bucks a Coffee Shop µ	Ohio (CSN&Y song)
encore	People Want to Hear About Love µ	Southern Man ⇔
Roll Another Number (For the Road) ♦	A New Day for Love µ	Who’s Gonna Stand Up? ∋
Down By the River ⊗	Down By the River ⊗	Mother Earth (Natural Anthem) ¥
	Workin’ Man µ	When I Watch You Sleeping ∋
	Big Box µ	Harvest Moon Ø
	Everybody Knows This is Nowhere ⊗	After the Gold Rush ⇔
	Monsanto Years µ	encore
	If I Don’t Know µ	Thrasher §
	Love and Only Love ¥
	encore
	Cortez the Killer ℵ
	Cinnamon Girl ⊗

⊗ Everybody Knows This is Nowhere (1969) [w/ CRAZY HORSE] (4/7) [2 times: Cinnamon Girl, Everybody Knows, Down By the River]
⇔ After the Gold Rush (1970) (3/4) [2 times: After the Gold Rush]
∠ Harvest (1972) (6/9) [3 times: Heart of Gold; 2 times: Old Man]
≅ On the Beach (1974) (1)
♦ Tonight’s the Night (1975) (2)
ℵ Zuma (1975) [w/ CRAZY HORSE] (2/3) [2 times: Cortez]
∝ Long May You Run (1976) [STILLS-YOUNG BAND] (1)
≡ American Stars n Bars (1977) [w/ CRAZY HORSE] (2)
‰ Comes a Time (1978) (3)
§ Rust Never Sleeps (1979) [w/ CRAZY HORSE] (5)
∇ Freedom (1989) (1)
¥ Ragged Glory (1990) [w/ CRAZY HORSE] (4/6) [2 times: Love and Only Love, Mother Earth]
Ø Harvest Moon (1992) (3/5) [2 times From Hank to Hendrix, Harvest Moon]
© Mirror Ball (1995) [w/ PEARL JAM] (1)
∼ Broken Arrow (1996) [w/ CRAZY HORSE] (1)
Ω Live at Massey Hall 1971 (2007) (1)
∋ Storytone (2014) (4)
µ The Monsanto Years (2015) [w/ PROMISE OF THE REAL] (8)

Numbers indicate the number of songs played from each album.  The second number is songs played multiple times.