ALBUMS: Hawks and Doves (1980); Zuma (1975); Decade (1976); After the Gold Rush (1970); Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983); Old Ways (1983): American Stars and Bars. (1977)
MVC Rating: Hawks 3.5; Zuma 4.5; After the Gold Rush 5.0; Everybody’s 3.0; Old Ways 3.5; Decade 5.0; American 4.0.
I thank Neil Young for one of the best concerts I have ever seen. It was the 2004 fund-raising concert for the Bridge School for student with disabilities in California Young has two sons with cerebral palsy.
The annual concert, which started in 1986 by Neil and his wife Pegi, and ended in 2016 when Young announced in 2016 he would not host any more concerts. He cited ‘personal reasons,’ the Huffington Post reported.’
Young split with his wife Pegi in 2014 after 36 years of marriage. She was a driving force in the creation of the fund-raising event at Shorline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, located south of San Francisco not far from Neil and Pegi’s ranch.
Anyway, my daughter Emily and I drove through the city of San Francisco and arrived to a place I can only say is California-pretty, rolling green hills and mountains on the horizon.
Sitting in the ‘cheap’ seats — the ground — behind the built-in seating, we enjoyed wonderful acoustics in the lightly drizzling weather. What a line-up with Young, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ben Harper, Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Tegan and Sara, Tony Bennett, Los Lonely Boys, and the headliner Paul McCartney. Paul ended the evening with a remarkably powerful ‘Hey Jude.’
I tell you all this because it was the first thing I thought of when I realized I was in the Y’s and my Neil Young collection would be enough to nearly take me home.
I started listening to Neil Young early in my youth, starting with the3- record set, Decade. It was about everything you’d want from Young’s 1970s work. I consumed Decade and it led me to other Young works like ‘After the Gold Rush,’ Harvest and Harvest Moon (which I apparently don’t have any more).’ Zuma was an underrated classic for me.
When I was still in California, Young put out an anti-war album ‘Living with War’ on which he blistered politicians, while giving voice to the families of soldiers.
If you are just starting out on Neil Young, Decade is the way to go. You might go to Rust Never Sleeps for a later incarnation.
Of course, Neil Young will forever be remembered by Alabamians as the one who wrote ‘Southern Man,’ (on After the Gold Rush) in which he skewers ‘southern man’ for slavery and racial abuses. Lynyrd Skynyrd famously replied in Sweet Home Alabama: I hope Neil Young will remember, Southern man don’t need you around, any how.
Neil, when asked by a reporter about the popular Skynyrd song, replied. ‘Sounds like they mean It.’
Young is a chameleon. I have one album called ‘Everybody’s Rockin’ which features Neil in a pink suit on the cover. The songs were retro schtick do-wop ballads with an echo on vocals to enhance Young’s thin, but emotive voice. Folk, country, rock, soul, psychedelia, doo-wop were all in Mr. Young’s bag of tricks.
I’m not sure if the concert shown in video below is the same one I took my daughter to where Paul McCartney was the headliner — but it very well could be that 2004 concert.
