December 10, 2012: Rust Never Sleeps
Seeing Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse (Barclays Center, December 3) was like watching the last few embers of the once-mighty fire of rock n’ roll glow, crackle, and even occasionally flare up into something a bit dangerous.
I wondered if the sound of a four-piece rock and roll combo could fill a hall as cavernous as the Barclays. But fill it they did. In fact, the twin guitars of Neil and Frank “Poncho” Sampedro seemed made for the place, able to awash the giant bowl with a single emotive chord or a wave of feedback.
Crazy Horse are Neil’s psychedelic band. The collective doesn’t have the tight harmonies and crisp song structures of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In fact, David Crosby once gave Neil grief about playing with a unit as loose as Crazy Horse. For the aptly named Crazy Horse, a song is a vehicle for improvisation. It will take you on a journey to an unknown destination, with each part playing against the others in a tight conversation along the way, moving together through heretofore-unexplored peaks and valleys…
And that night, Neil played the shit out of his guitar. It was a bit harrowing, actually. Poncho looked like a portly grandfather, but not Neil. Neil’s face was gnarled and lumpy, his hair gray as shale, his flannel shirt thread-worn. He was no one’s idea of dignified. But he played with a fierce and absolute determination.
The show was nostalgic, sure, though not nostalgic for some classic rock hit parade, but for memories of better times past slowly slipping away. It felt like Neil was raging against the dying of the light.
“I used to walk like a giant on the land, but now I feel like a leaf floating in a stream,” coming from the 67-year old Young, sounded grim. That he also made these sounds warm and entrancing spoke well of his skills as an entertainer.
That song, “Walk Like a Giant” went on for awhile, as the Horse’s songs are wont to do. A second after I thought the band hit the final note, they hit the note again. And again. And again. For 5 minutes they went on like this, like a lone miner chipping away down the end of some long dark tunnel.
As each drum beat hit, an image flashed — almost too quickly to glimpse– on the stage’s backdrop. Literal flashbacks, these sepia-toned photos seemed to be of younger, crazier days. But they appeared so momentarily, and were so quickly re-enshrouded by darkness, that sometimes I wondered if I actually saw them at all.
Forty years on, Crazy Horse is still some heavy shit, as the hippies used to say…
