How can it be that Neil Young hasn’t made a joke out of himself by now? It seems like every other 70’s rock mainstay, from Aerosmith to the Rolling Stones, has become a parody of themselves, a bunch of geriatrics flopping around on stage, playing their hits to people who never cared about the band when they were still relevant. Even Bob Dylan, one of Young’s singer-songwriter peers, has become even more detached from his audience than he was when he was young, showing up in commercials for Victoria’s Secret and Cadillac, playing unrecognizable versions of his songs in concert, unconcerned with what his fanbase thinks. But Neil Young has stayed eternal, as evidenced in his sold-out show at the Chicago Theatre in downtown
Young opened up by his lonesome surrounded by several acoustic guitars and two pianos, dressed simply in a beige jacket and a white buttoned shirt (or maybe not, my memory is hazy). When he started singing, it became obvious that his voice hasn’t deteriorated in forty years of playing – it’s still the same thin, almost-falsetto yowl that he draws out with pained facial expressions. He replaced Jack Nietzsche’s string arrangements on “A Man Needs A Maid” with an electric organ, filling the spacious Chicago Theatre with the stark piano arrangements that accompany “Maid,” one of his most depressing songs. “Harvest,” the underrated gem off the album of the same name, was a pleasant, understated beauty, as was “Journey Through the Past,” most recently featured on his recent archive album, Live At Massey Hall.
It’s often said that the mark of a good song is whether or not it can be stripped down to just a singer and an acoustic guitar. This line of thinking is pretty ludicrous, but Young took “Cowgirl in the Sand,” an eleven-minute guitar jam off his second solo album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and reduced it to a simple acoustic ballad, which worked fine without the layers of guitar fuzz and solos.
After a brief respite, Young came back on stage to play an electric set, somewhat dominated by songs off his most recent album, Chrome Dreams II. Even at his age, Young still jumped around on stage and went wild on guitar – his closing song, “No Hidden Path,” was an insane fifteen-minute epic guitar fest that seemed like improvisation. Young would float out of the song’s rhythm and stab back into the melody with a barrage of guitar daggers, slapping his strings to create a ton of feedback as his band rocked along. It’s a daring song that builds off the feedback-based guitar bands he directly influenced, like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, that sounded great if not a little excessive (but fifteen-minute songs usually are).
He encored with “Cinnamon Girl,” which still kicks like a bitch almost forty years later, and finished with “Tonight’s the Night,” the chilling requiem for dead roadie Bruce Berry. Young briefly came out at the end to play a few minutes of instrumental music with his band, teasing the audience but ultimately leaving on a high, disappearing to a standing ovation. It should be obvious that I’m a giant Neil Young fan, owning most of his discography and having lost my shit upon finding out he was coming to Chicago, but I’m trying not to turn this into a piece on the hundreds of ways he is great, so just keep this in mind: Neil Young is awesome. He is awesome in concert. If you see him, you will have an awesome time. Awesome.
Set List:
Acoustic
1. From Hank to Hendrix
2. Ambulance Blues
3. Sad Movies
4. Man Needs a Maid
5. No One Seems to Know
6. Harvest
7. Journey Through The Past
8. Mellow My Mind
9. Love Art Blues
10. Love Is A Rose
11. Cowgirl in the Sand
12. Heart of Gold
Electric
13. The Loner
14. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
15. Dirty Old Man
16. Spirit Road
17. Bad Fog of Loneliness
18. Winterlong
19. Oh, Lonesome Me
20. The Believer
21. No Hidden Path
Encore
22. Cinnamon Girl
23. Tonight's the Night II
2nd Encore
24. Sultan
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