Neil Young toured smaller arenas this summer on the West Coast, playing solo, mostly acoustic, often on a piano or organ. I saw him in Napa with friends, I’m fortunate to be able to say, and honestly, you could hear the reverence in the crowd. There was a hush when he picked up the guitar and began to play.
He told the crowd he was going to play songs they might not have heard, or not for a while.. “A lot of those other songs, they just kind of wore themselves out,” he said.
So he played mostly deep cuts, from his collaborations with Pearl Jam, such as his overwhelming first song I’m the Ocean, which worked remarkably well on just an acoustic guitar, a driving folk epic about living out of control in the modern world.
And from his great 1996 record Sleeps with Angels, the much-overlooked Prime of Life, which to me stands as probably rock’s greatest expression of the joys of settling down in family life in middle age with children. As “the king and queen,” as Young sings proudly and ruefully. Somehow in Napa he played that song on piano with solos on electric guitar and harmonica, standing in for the $2.99 pennywhistle he bought at Kmart and played on the record.
This he told us: although always solicitous to his crowds, in my experience, he’s pretty quiet — that Sunday night he was not just chatty, he was funny. The second song he played, Homefires, dates back to 1974. Neil’s often performed it but it wasn’t recorded until 2020, and it sounded a little rough that night. “If I keep working at it, one of these days I’ll get it right,” he said.
As it went along, he even got some laughs. At times he seemed unsure of what to play next (though he did not take requests). “Play whatever you want!” one fan yelled. Young took us on an extensive tour through his “Springfield” catalogue, with old favorites such as Burned (on the organ!) and Mr Soul (on piano and Old Black).
At point, apropos of nothing in particular, he declared, “You know, I could be standing out in a field somewhere,”
But for me the highlight of that catalogue was his On the Way Home, which one fan caught mostly on a phone video — the quality’s okay at best, but the song’s heartbreakingly good. Young mentioned that at the time he wasn’t allowed to sing the song — his song, btw — “but I was around.” (It’s worth a look: you can see him connecting with the crowd as the song develops, and the crowd responding.)
For an encore he played some singalong songs, Heart of Gold, of course, and Comes a Time, and finally his new Love Earth, which he described as a “hootenany” song, and asked us to sing along. It’s a lovely, lilting song, simple but deeply felt; a plea for a return to Eden, if we want. I hear a lot of echoes in this song; the melodic uplift of “Harvest Moon,” the “War is Over (if you want it)” messaging style of Yoko and John, the deep love and gratitude for this world on which we somehow continue to live.
Check it out: I think Young secretly hoped it might catch on. (He sort of said so, at one concert on this tour.) You never know…
Kit Stolz 