There’s a certain swagger Neil Young carries with him when he walks on stage and starts playing his guitar. To the untrained eye it may seem something like a drunken stupor, but there’s a definite rhythm to his motion. This swagger was on clear display when he hit the stage in Mobile, Alabama, back in September to promote his latest album, Le Noise.
The concert, like the album itself, was all Neil - no backing band, just the man himself. When he opened the show with “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue),” he captivated the audience with his swagger from the very first note. Young fans know when they go see the troubadour perform it’s not just for the entertainment value – it is to be challenged. Not many artists can get away with charging $200 for premium seats without any guarantee of hearing the hits, but Young is one of a chosen few. To quote the opening song, “There’s more to the picture than meets the eye.”
Of the 18 songs Young performed at the Saenger Theatre in Mobile, 6 were from Le Noise and two were still unreleased. For those keeping count, almost half of the songs he performed were relatively unfamiliar to the audience – not that it mattered. What Young was communicating in his new material was far more important that any exercise in nostalgia could deliver.
Heavy subjects dominated set list. Though Young has focused on mortality issues almost since day one, turning 65 this year seems to have upped the ante for the artist. Indeed, the first new song he performed was the elegiac “You Never Call” in which he refers to death as “the ultimate vacation with no back pain.”
Western expansion and imperialism have intrigued Young since the beginning as well, and two songs about the matter – one new and one old – were on display at the Saenger that night. The classic “Cortez the Killer” featured some amazing guitar spasms, but the calmer “Peaceful Valley Boulevard” tugged at heart strings with lines like “Before the West was won there was a cost / a rain of fire came down upon the wagons / a mother screamed and every soul was lost.”
Never one to sugar-coat issues, Young continues to write songs about the literal ups and downs of the hippie drug culture he’s maneuvered through since the ‘60s. Unlike “Tonight’s the Night” and “The Needle and the Damage Done,” however, the new “Hitchhiker” takes a less preachy tone. Instead it has an air of “how did we survive it all?” to it. Though some of the drug references drew cheap applause from audience members, Young clearly wasn’t celebrating the junkie lifestyle. The lines “Then came paranoia and it ran away with me / I would not sign my autograph or appear on TV / or see or be seen” and “A little cocaine went a long, long way to easy that different load / and my head did explode” seem to have been selectively ignored by some in the crowd. He concluded by singing, “Now many years have come and gone like friends and enemies / I tried to leave my past behind but it’s catching up with me / I don’t know how I’m standing here living my life / I’m thankful for my children and my faithful wife.” It is very heartwarming to hear Young continue to sing about the grounding he’s found his wife of 30 years, Pegi.
Although technically part of his “Twisted Road” tour, the Mobile stop was also part of a series of gigs along the gulf coast planned after the disastrous BP Oil Spill. Not surprisingly, many of the songs performed from his back catalogue dealt with the issue head-on. Reaching back to After the Gold Rush, the opening verse of “Tell Me Why” seemed tailor-made for the occasion:
“Sailing heart-ships through broken harbors / Out on the waves in the night / Still the searcher must ride the dark horse / Racing alone in his fright”
Words probably never rang truer for out-of-work fishermen along the Gulf Coast. Two more songs were performed from the classic album including “I Believe in You” and the even-more-appropriate title track with the modified refrain “Look at mother nature on the run in the 21st century.”
Though he seems to have turned to more personal issues on Le Noise, Young doesn’t completely ignore the highly publicized political stances he took in the past decade – particularly his strong opposition to military operations in Iraq on Living With War. Unlike most of the songs on Living With War, however, his convictions seem a bit more muddled this go-round. The lines “When I sing about love and war I don’t really know what I’m saying” in “Love and War” may have baffled some of his fans, but Young’s honesty in his uncertainty is a far braver statement than anything on Living With War The over-all message is still the same – the consequences of war are horrendous. What he seems to be questioning is how best to avoid it – and whether or not it can be avoided at all. The song is somewhat reminiscent of John Lennon singing “But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out – IN” on “Revolution.” Lennon, like Young, explained that he prefers non-violence but he is human after all and can never be 100 percent certain.
Later came the CSNY classic “Ohio” about four slain anti-war protesters at Kent State in 1970. Young introduced it as a “40-year-old folk song.”
Other crowd favorites included a different twist on the intro to “Helpless” and an amazing electric guitar work-out on “Cinnamon Girl.” The biggest hit performed that night, “Old Man,” had Young incredibly hitting all of the high notes in the song’s original key.
Young concluded the show with “Walk With Me,” essentially a love song to his audience. Featuring more reverb than any song he’s performed since his early ‘90s albums with Crazy Horse, the sincerity in his voice was compelling when he sang, “I feel your love / I feel your strong love / I feel the patience of unconditional love / I feel a strength / I feel your faith in me / I’ll never let you down no matter what you do / If you just walk with me and let me walk with you / I’m on this journey and I don’t wanna walk alone.”
Which brings me back to the swagger Young opened with –it may seem sloppy at times, but when it’s in rhythm it can be an unstoppable force of nature. The crowd may not always be in sync with it, but when it is the reward is unlike any other between artist and audience. That September night in Mobile the two were clearly in rhythm – and Neil Young certainly wasn’t walking alone.
