I have to admit to a certain amount of anxiety tonight. It’s not just the weather, which is, of course, rotten, the wind howling like it’s fit to tear chunks from rooftops from miles around.
Neil Young
Hammersmith Apollo
Thursday, March 6 2008
The last time I saw Neil Young at the Apollo was in 2003, when he was touring to promote his ecological country rock opera, Greendale, still unreleased at the time, which meant no one had heard any of the songs. The unfamiliarity of what he then played provoked among the audience a certain restlessness that quickly gave way to collective dismay when it dawned on them that he wasn’t going to play merely a selection of songs from the record, but the album in what turned out to be its indigestible entirety.
So, the start of Neil Young’s six-night stand in London, and a lot of the schtick will be familiar to anyone who’s read Damien’s review of the Edinburgh show. Neil bumbles around the stage in what we might optimistically call a Proustian reverie, warms his hands on a stage light, plays “Ambulance Blues” and stops time dead in its tracks.
As you might imagine, a fair amount of excitement round these parts at the prospect of a six-hour Neil Young gig tonight. I'll report back first thing tomorrow; it's going to be interesting to see how much the show resembles the one Damien saw in Edinburgh. Please keep filing your reviews of the shows, too - I'm fascinated to know how - or if - the spectacle will evolve as the month progresses. Maybe "No Hidden Path" will just get longer and longer?
To paraphrase Dolly Parton, it must take a lot of care to look as chaotic as this. I’m referring not to Neil Young himself, not exactly, but to the astonishingly cluttered stage around him, dressed to look like – well, backstage, really, behind the scenes at some lost old-time opry.
I’ve just got off the phone with BBC Radio Kent who, in the preamble to this Sunday’s Academy Awards, were asking me, among other things, for my thoughts on who might win in the Best Song category.
