Young Seen Through Low-Budget Haze

by Bruce Westerbrook

Chances are, the most besotted fan in the back rows on Neil Young's last tour saw him perform with more clarity than you'll see in Year of the Horse, whose opening credits warn it was "proudly filmed in Super 8." Pride, as they say, goes before a fall.

Directing this chronicle of concerts and touring was independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, who approaches the project more as a fan than a documentarian.

Jarmusch adores Young's music (Young scored his artsy western Dead Man), so this enterprise was a fan's dream. Jarmusch even films himself schmoozing with Young on a tour bus.

That 1996 tour offered Young with his longtime band, Crazy Horse. Full-length performances of songs are intercut with interviews and looks at life on the road: backstage, on tour buses and in hotels.

Some of the footage is archival, dating back to 1986 or 1976, and it shows that Young hasn't changed.

Musically, he's a legendary rocker who's inspiring for his songwriting and guitar-playing, if not for his vocals.

But personally, he comes across as an overage Beavis: setting hotel-room flowers on fire, throwing tantrums backstage and wearing his godfather-of-grunge style like a clueless fashion victim.

Jarmusch is such a fawning fan that he seems to accept blindly - if not endorse - all of this. He even wallows in the bald contempt that guitarist Frank Sampedro shows - repeatedly - for the filmmaking process.

Of course, Sampedro is right. This film barely scratches the top of the iceberg, as he puts it with mixed metaphors.

Young's personal life is virtually ignored, and although Crazy Horse's formation is laboriously recounted, there's no mention of Young's work with Buffalo Springfield or Crosby, Stills & Nash (or Pearl Jam, for that matter).

Musically, though, the film is gloriously hard-rocking, especially during sustained instrumental jams that give songs furious finishing kicks.

Besides Super 8, Jarmusch filmed with 16mm cameras, seemingly determined to make this as grainy, jumpy and out of focus as possible.

The result is visual rawness to match the music. But why draw the line there? If murky, jerky visuals are preferable, then perhaps the crisp theater sound should have been overloaded with feedback, distortion, hisses, pops and crowd noises.

Material includes Like a Hurricane, Stupid Girl (not the Garbage or Rolling Stones song), Tonight's the Night (not the Rod Stewart tune) and Big Time (not the Peter Gabriel song), as well as the recent The Dream Is Not Over.

The band is in fine form, as tight as a tandem gets.

Indeed, when Young, Sampedro and bassist Billy Talbot perform in a tight cluster in front of drummer Ralph Molina, it not only enhances their musical interaction but also symbolizes the closeness of a long association.

Jarmusch respects that association while also showing how unglamorous rock touring can be - as if such a thing were needed. He stages interviews in a bare room and shows how the musicians can become bored and disassociated.

After seeing his ugly film, you might feel the same way.  

We're not saying Year of the Horse should have been dressed up with U2-style eye candy, but Young's integrity can be celebrated without filtering it through a low-budget haze. There's a happy medium between rose-colored glasses and those with smears and smudges.