He began both nights with “I’m the Ocean,” one of his fiercest songs, from the 1995 Pearl Jam collaboration Mirror Ball. “People my age, they don’t do the things I do” — that was a great line when he was on the edge of turning 50, but it’s a whole other experience hearing him snarl it now at 78. On Monday night he sang that verse twice, then ripped the wires out of his malfunctioning teleprompter with his bare hands, threw it to the side of the stage, without pausing the music. His rage just faded into the electric turbulence of the guitars.
At 78, Neil Young is at home on the road, and he’s not alone. You think about The Last Waltz — it’s that time of year — a Seventies movie full of grizzled rock & roll veterans trying to quit the highway before it kills them. But there’s Neil, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, still out there, none of them rolling out their greatest hits or doing it the easy way.
This week, he hit the road again, after his triumphant spring tour with Crazy Horse got canceled when someone in the band got sick. The shows were massively powerful — a self-consciously ritualistic return to the road, after an unexpected detour and an affirmation of how bizarrely vital he remains. He revisited songs from all over his history — including “Journey Through the Past” itself, on piano.
Both nights, one of the highlights was “Big Time,” a deep cut he’s never played without the Horse. It’s from Broken Arrow, a mostly forgotten album he banged out in 1996, full of songs about mourning his friends, after his longtime producer David Briggs died. As guitarist Poncho Sampedro once said, “We were playing David on his way.” As with Tonight’s the Night or Rust Never Sleeps, Young made timeless music out of grief, with his trustiest mates. But he played it both nights as a raggedly elegiac guitar jam. “I’m still living’ in the dream we had,” he sang. “For me it’s not over.”
He plays monstrous guitar in “Big Time” — his fingers and wrists haven’t lost anything, and they can tell any story he wants them to tell. It’s poignant to hear him bust out that song now, after trying this tour with his old friends in Crazy Horse. They couldn’t finish up because of age and health, but he moves on and takes the song forward, with them in it. The shows were full of moments like that.
The Chrome Hearts just debuted at Farm Aid last weekend, with guitarist Micah Nelson, who’s been a fan since seeing Neil play his dad’s Fourth of July picnic. (His dad’s name is “Willie.”) These impromptu Capitol Theatre gigs might have been a test to try out the new band, but if there were any doubts they were gone by the second song on Monday night. He posted a photo on Neil Young Archives saying, “A New Era Begins.”
You can read the full story by Rob Sheffield on Rolling Stone Here
