London

Neil Young - Hammersmith Odeon, December 12, 1989

by Gavin Martin

Outside it's thronged, tickets £ 60 a throw, there's a buzz in the air you seldom find at gigs these days. Inside there's two Crazy Horse campadres to add support, but mostly its just Neil, cast as the Last Living Frontiersman, alone bluesman in denims neatly and suspiciously torn at the knee.

Jarring, thrashing atonal guitar slung low, he starts off with two anthems 'Hey Hey My My' and 'Keep On Rockin' In The Free World'. They may be a decade apart but they're linked, the first screaming for artistic fire and blood, the second staying true to the pledge, the most malevolent and righteous soul rebel rocker of 1989.

'Freedom' makes up the bulk of the set of course, it's the album that's been burning inside him forever appropriate that it should come to fan the flames at the thaw of our Ice Age. But his political scope is profound because it's not based in any cohesive present. His songs converge on many places, many times, many atmospheres and they are all as eloquent and powerfully expressed as you could wish for.

Tonight's Young may be a man of few accoutrements but he's possessed of a boundless range. Knows it too. The show is structured to make a virtue out of his primitive back-to-basics approach. He prowls and howls around the stage as feisty at 40 as any young f-er you care to name.

When he plonks his mouthharp in a glass of water atop the ivories and sits down to unfurl 'Someday' the transformation is completely majestic. The roving rocker becomes a composer inspired and expansive enough to rank with Berlin, Sondheim or Morricone. The shadings and textures suggest this to be the centrepiece of a socio-political musical spanning 100 years of bittersweet American dreams. Clue- the aching angelic 'After The Goldrush' could be part of the same picture.

It was the veritable bouquet of riches, humour ('This Note . . .') withering, remorseless anger ('Crime In The City') and punky belligerence (he turned up his guitar and said "this is perfect, now let's see how I can f- it somehow"). But at just over an hour it was a cruelly short taster for the marathon you know he's going to perform at some other aircraft hangar in the new year. But tonight was special, tonight was a gem, he had me out of the seat, punching the air running on the spot, stunned stalled rigid when 'Powderfinger' brought it to a halt. Still, bettert to be touched by brilliance than drowned in mediocrity.

Somewhere in the middle of the show a heckler cried for a full electric band. "Oh no," he smirked, "I've been doing this for 25 years, I'm too old to rock." Ladeez and gennlemen a big hand for Nell Young - the greatest West Coast survivor of them all and the biggest liar in the world.