Neil Young returns to Winnipeg and plays to a sold-out crowd at the Centennial Concert Hall Monday, July 26, 2010.John Woods / The Globe and Mail
Neil Young
- At Centennial Concert Hall
- In Winnipeg on Monday
"Welcome home," screamed several loudmouths in the audience towards the seated figure in the white blazer and panama hat. Neil Young ignored them. In body, he was home. In spirit, he was off circling Jupiter, as usual.
Playing an intimate solo show for the first time in decades before the city that shaped his enigmatic musical identity, a morbid Young draped the audience in melancholy, nostalgia and straight-up awe for much of his 90-minute set. One day before, he'd lost his long-time steel guitar player, Ben Keith, the man responsible for the distinctive country twang on Neil Young albums from Harvest in 1972 on up to last year's Fork in the Road.
"This is for Ben Keith," he announced prior to his first encore number, Old Man, in what would be his longest utterance of the night. "His spirit will live on. The Earth has taken him."
It all seemed painfully thematic; the 64-year-old folk-rock legend debuted six songs and a completely new guitar style from a forthcoming Daniel Lanois-produced album full of laments for lost friends and dirges for a dying planet. The sentimental Young of albums past - the one who longed for the blonde waitress in Unknown Legend or for a Heart of Gold - has clearly seen too many friends die to bother with cloying lyrics any more.
That turn in his songwriting sensibility was on full display Monday, as Young flitted between 11 rhythmic past hits and harsh new material. Thundering through the 1970 hit After the Gold Rush on pump organ, he dreamily imagined humanity would avoid environmental apocalypse by "flying Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun."
By contrast, his new environmental anthem, Rumblin', is comparatively frank and unvarnished: "I can feel the weather changing, all around, all around/ Don't you feel that new wind blowing/ Don't you recognize that sound?" If he were an entertainer who gave a damn about popular approval, these clumsy new lines might be the cause for embarrassment. But true fans, or Rusties, at the Winnipeg show realized they were witnessing the latest iteration of their favourite alien artist, a guy oblivious to popular approval. "I'm not really here," he responded to one man who felt compelled to yell "NEIL!" a million times.
He eased them onto this latest stage of his twisted musical road with My My, Hey Hey, Tell Me Why and Helpless - all pitch-perfect renditions of 30-plus-year-old songs (his voice actually sounds better, less warbly, than it has in years) before hauling out a diabolical new guitar setup that can simulate a bass guitar and flamenco treble with a single strum. Mr. Lanois's inventive influence is clearly at work here, transforming the distinctive Neil sound just as he did on Time Out of Mind in 1997, the album that returned Bob Dylan to critical and commercial success.
You Never Call, the first new number of the night, is a lighthearted eulogy for L.A. Johnson, the long-time film collaborator of Young's alter ego, Bernard Shakey: "You're in heaven with nothing to do/ the ultimate vacation with no back pain."
He then moved to Peaceful Valley, a spaghetti-western-tinged epic that tracks the progress of the West from cowboys to peak oil.
The third unveiling, Love and War, seemed to apologize for recent off-the-cuff albums that were long on political timeliness but short on magic: "I sang for justice but I hit a bad chord/ I still try to sing about love and war."
And then came some restyled old treats. He ripped through Down by the River and Ohio on his trusty black Les Paul, songs usually backed by thumping rhythm sections. Just four months from pensioner's age, Young proved that he may be the most talented and energetic one-man band in the business, adorning each hit with his trademark raw guitar solos and stomping right leg.
That revved things up for numbers on two pianos and his beloved pump organ, as well as a complete seven-minute version of Cortez the Killer and a scrappy Cinnamon Girl to end the set.
His encore seemed too brief, with his tear-jerking rendition of Old Man and Walk with Me, another exemplar of the spooky new Lanois sound he's adopted, complete with vocal loops, digital delay, muffled reverb and God knows what else - stuff from other planets.