From The Heart Neil Young Pumps Out Raw Emotion As Crazy Horse Adeptly Keeps The Music Afloat
Neil Young and Crazy Horse Saturday, Sept. 14, The Gorge
One has to wonder why Neil Young doesn’t pair with Crazy Horse more often than every couple of years. Perhaps fans wouldn’t appreciate the marriage as much.
Saturday at The Gorge, it was obvious from the crowd’s undying enthusiasm - even with the rain - that people have been anticipating this matchup for a long time.
Known for making more than a little bit of noise, Neil Young and Crazy Horse made a lot of raucous, crunchy and distorted noise for most of the two-hour-plus show.
Young and Crazy Horse cranked up the amps, huddled together on stage and showered the applauding crowd with squealing feedback.
They kicked off the rainy evening with “Hey Hey, My My.” It was an appropriate song to start with for Young, who has made the song an anthem for all of rock ‘n’ roll.
The band raucously meshed new songs with old. “Big Time” from its latest album “Broken Arrow” sounded as good as “Pocahontas,” a song recorded 21 years ago.
Occasionally, to break up the din, Young unplugged. He played his folk-inflected songs - “The Needle and the Damage Done,” “Long May You Run” and “Heart of Gold.” With the heroin-addled Seattle scene looming just over the Cascades, “The Needle and the Damage Done” was poignantly relevant.
During “Heart of Gold,” which he wrote when he was 26, Young sang “and I’m getting old.”
Older but not old.
With Crazy Horse, Young was unrestrained, free to do whatever felt good to him. Like no other band, Crazy Horse can stick with Young, who is an uncommonly instinctual player.
Confident his comrades could keep the songs intact, Young went off on tangents on almost every song, extending them well beyond their recorded lengths. It was exciting to listen to him pilot his spontaneous solos back to the song, the chorus or verse.
The guitarist has always been a virtuoso at not being a virtuoso. He sacrifices polish for feeling. He conveys so much naked emotion from his six-string, be it electric or acoustic.
Even though some of his solos are quite abstract, he makes them count.
Saturday was no different.
Patti Smith’s middle-slot performance left many of us wondering: Just what did Sponge add to the concert?
Perhaps if it only just Smith and Young on the bill, she might have gotten to perform a set longer than just 45 minutes.
Her show was - in a word - intense.
Smith played only songs from her new album “Gone Again.”
Like a calm before a storm, she prepared the audience with the droning acoustic song “Beneath the Southern Cross,” a song about stepping out of this world into another. The song swelled as the noise from the electric guitars shrilled.
Smith’s set dealt with death and loss. Three people close to the singer, including her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, died recently.
Her bout with tragedy has resulted in Smith’s most inspired work in years.
Dancing barefoot on stage, she was overpowering, singing and speaking with dramatic inflections. Smith filled a haunting presence on stage.
On the atmospheric and turbulent “About a Boy,” a song about Kurt Cobain, Smith sang like a mother examining her son’s death. It was among the many high points (or low points) in her set.
Two of the five musicians accompanying Smith on stage were longtime musical partner and guitarist Lenny Kaye and guitarist Tom Verlaine.
Verlaine sat out of the spotlight, almost completely out of sight. But what he lacked in presence he made up for in with his playing.
He lent airy fills, melodious slide work and fragmented solos to the half-a-dozen songs.
For the final song, Smith and crew were joined by R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, who lives just over the mountains in Seattle.
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