the
complex sessions:
neil young and crazy horse |
director
Jonathan Demme
producer
Gary Goetzman
cinematographer
Tak Fujimoto
music
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
editor
Andy Weir
cast
Neil Young
Ralph Molina
Frank 'Pancho' Sampedro
Billy Talbot
mpaa rating: none
running
time: 27m
u.s.
video release: 1994
video
availability: VHS
other jonathan
demme films
reviewed on this website:
- the
manchurian candidate (2004)
- philadelphia
- the
silence of the lambs
- stop
making sense
- storefront
hitchcock
- swimming
to cambodia
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Neil Young has many fans, but
I'm not among them. I neither like nor dislike him (though I
admired his fuzzbox soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch's Dead
Man) -- he neither annoys nor pleases me, musically.
He just exists. So I looked forward to seeing Jonathan Demme's
footage of him and Crazy Horse as they perform in a studio setting.
Would Demme turn lead into gold? Or was my love of Stop
Making Sense and Storefront
Hitchcock based significantly on my love of the music?
Well, Neil Young fans will
probably love the tape. All others, particularly those who actively
dislike Young but might be lured on the strength of Demme's participation,
should probably pass: this is no Stop Making Sense. Young
and Crazy Horse play four songs from their Sleeps with Angels
album -- "My Heart" (Young on piano), "Prime of
Life," "Change Your Mind," and the aptly titled
"Piece of Crap," at the end of which Young wrecks his
guitar strings.
Throughout, Young comes across
as a self-absorbed furball. Roger Ebert, panning the 1996 Young-and-Crazy-Horse
rockumentary Year of the Horse (directed by Jarmusch),
ridiculed Young's habit of whomping around onstage like an autistic
Cro-Magnon, and Young does the same thing here, making the time-honored
Guitar Face all rock guitarists are legally required to display
when churning out a masturbatory solo. The songs are ... well
... Neil Young. If I heard them on the radio I'd keep working
on whatever I was working on and let the songs go in one ear
and out the other. Seeing them performed by the humorless Godfather
of Grunge is the annoying part. On the plus side, the video is
only 27 minutes long. I watched it once and donated it to my
local library.
Demme does what he can. This
time he's got Tak Fujimoto (who shot Demme's Silence
of the Lambs, and also The
Sixth Sense more recently), as well as smooth editing
by Andy Keir, but for the most part their combined efforts just
made me wish those efforts had been expended on a musician who
deserves them. Ani Difranco, say, or PJ Harvey -- maybe it's
time for Demme to turn his camera to a female artist. Lacking
that, there's always Robyn
Hitchcock...
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