Also Known as Noise
by Mat Balez
There's more to the picture
Than meets the eye. -- Neil Young
If you've never been to a rock concert it might be hard to fully appreciate how the expression 'sea of people' translates to physical manifestation. Obviously, there are people. A huge multidimensional array of people. People occupying every point along every visual dimension: height, width, depth, age, color, class. People seen from the shoulders up. Palms in various positions ranging from conservatively stuck to hips or more liberally swaying about (variously holding: water bottles, lighters, cameras, cellphones). People. As far as the eye can see. Stepping up on your tip toes, looking forward and back, port to starboard, nothing but shaved/capped/coiffed/un-coiffed heads in all directions. But this much is evident from photos or video footage of such events. What becomes evident only experientially however is that a large group of people, especially one composed of people that are emotionally and rhythmically charged, actually sways, as in like the sea. In a dense crowd of people, you become an individually impotent object, one subject only to the simple Newtonian Mechanical forces acting upon you. Pushed forward, you push forward. Knocked left, you knock on. There's not much you can do about it. Swells of unknown origin (how can you tell where these forces originate? a gradual building, a sudden push, a purposeful parting?) rise and crash not unlike the similarly mysterious (well, at least invisible) building and releasing of energy that undulates an otherwise still surface of a body of water. And like water, that soup of electrically charged H20 molecules, physical human bodies become reduced (or might it perchance be elevated?) to nothing more than medium, transmitting (communicating?) waves of energy somehow, but not entirely, self-generated. And it feels good. It is something else to be given over to the crowd, to basically put up your proverbial hands and surrender control of your body's movements to the unthinking group-think that is the mass, especially when the pressure (and I mean physical rib-cage-busting pressure) mounts. The situation can sometimes approach scary, when the jostling becomes painful and the throbbing crescendos beyond the incidental and verges on the out of control. But that slight if not humble element of danger only adds to the sensation. An impossible-to-ignore-very-literally-in-your-face reminder that your are part of something bigger than yourself: a community of human beings (duh). It is the raw physicality of the shared experience that makes the trite assertion We Are Not Alone manifestly, obviously, true in the pulsating crowd. In such a crowd, you're so literally connected to the people in your immediate environs that you feel their body temperature (probably similar to yours) and physical attributes (those feel like real breasts) but also have a pretty good handle on their general (especially recent) hygiene conscientiousness, which among rock concert goers, if I must point out the obvious, is not typically impeccable. In the jammy mess of the crowd, you're connected. Connected beyond just those you touch, but also (through the intermediary of those that you touch) to those that they touch. And so on and so forth, such that you could, in theory at least, bump a single person and ripple-bump everyone else at the show.
But the B-O allusion above also conjures the image of other similar cramped situations where extreme proximity brings us into direct physical contact with erstwhile strangers (I'm thinking a morning rush hour subway car or a packed elevator) and yet that contact does not result in any connection whatsoever; in fact, so often, the cramped situations of our daily (read: non-rock-concert-going) lives engender the exact opposite in us: looking away, ducking away, pulling away at all costs. In real life, we find the idea of touching strangers down right repellent. I'll posit that it has something to do with the relative heterogeneity of people in a subway car versus that of the crowd at a rock concert, the latter of which are at least tied by one clear common bond beyond the logistical facts. But that might be a bit of a stretch. I'll posit with more rhetorical oomph that the connectedness among people at a rock concert, and the lack of apprehension about rubbing up against other sweaty bodies, comes almost entirely from music itself; its making and its taking.
While it may seem obvious, what is unique about rock concerts vis-a-vis other large public mobs of people is the live music being produced, transmitted, lapped up and cheered by the sea of bodies. Let's consider political demonstrations for a moment. Such gatherings are almost always rooted in an ideology, bringing people together around a common cause; the crowd rallying together to achieve something, to send a message to the world, to express dissent, to move and agenda forward. The attendance is productive. But crowds at rock concerts come together for an altogether different reason: to breathe in an experience, in some ways, to be the experience, irrespective of mitigating ideologies. The attendance is purely consumptive. The only agenda to move forward: to witness, be part of something special -- and there is something electric in the anticipation that builds. Perhaps political rallies would share something of the sort (the anticipatory buzz I mean); but at rock concerts the collective aim, what the emotion builds toward, is not the expression something important but, much less intellectually, just to rock out hard. And to rock out hard requires music; live music all the more for the the realness and nowness that becomes infused into every note.
In broad strokes what you experience at most rocks shows is quite similar. When the band members first appear the crowd invariably surges forward in a riotous cheer, the previous people-density somehow doubling suddenly. And then a cheer again followed by respectful, reverential silence after the first bars are played. The crowd settles into a form of holy communion around and amidst the sound being created in situ and right before your eyes and then dutifully, as though automatically, plays its role as screaming, clapping, fist-pumping muse. Like the crowd itself, the music gets physical. Electronically amplified concussive bass -- thwacks of the kick drum, low strumming of the bass guitar -- whose shock wave hits you and everyone around you at the same time, shaking the world itself including the goopy stuff inside the hollow of your chest. It's kind of amazing to actually feel (not metaphorically or metaphysically at all) the music quiver somewhere around your aorta, an aural internal massage of the organs that you just know isn't going to do wonders for your tympanums over the long haul. As the band belts out the high wattage tunes over and over, with each song steering the elastic, swaying crowd to new heights and, sometimes, new lows, we feel very much taken away, losing track of ticking clocks, becoming awash in the orgy of sensation. And there is sensory stimulation out the ying-yang: so much to hear (music, cheering, singalongs, "#### yeah"s), see (flashes of light, bouncing heads, flailing arms), touch (see above) and, yes, smell (again see above, and of course the obligatory marijuana). But mostly to hear the songs you're there to hear. To absorb all that emanates from the strings, keys, pipes, mics and sticks on stage. That's kind of the whole point, isn't it? To feast on the sound, to savor it, and then to bring up a burp of appreciation so loud that you leave no question as to your thoughts on the show. For once the band has tossed the audience about enough, climaxed and encored and left its prey for dead, there is only satiation in the limp remains. Sometimes even super-satiation. The feeling that you've come for what you sought and then some. And those are the best shows. The ones that truly blow your mind (the expression is almost literally accurate) by taking your already lofty expectations and showing them to be tiny and ridiculous relative to what was actually created before you. It could have been the performance to end all performances. Or so it seems in those moments as you walk out of the venue sweaty and cold, suddenly without the insulating blanket of the mass, ears ringing like bells warning of an oncoming -- in this case, perhaps receding -- train at a crossing; everybody smiling dumbly together as you shakily make your way out.
***
We should get a few things straight: I don't have (or every have had) a mullet, I've owned very few rock band t-shirts in my life (like 4-5, but only one remains in rotation) and actually don't listen to all that much Rock and Roll. In fact, I don't think the music I like can uniformly be classified as rock and I'm genuinely a little bit uncomfortable using the word "rock music" because it sounds so patrician and square (but don't know how else to refer to it). This is to say that I'm by no means a rock veteran or pro or expert of any kind but pretty much a regular shmuck that has been to some shows and had his mind blown once or twice. What I'm hoping to get across is just how down right changing that experience can be, and how rock music -- to some degree at least -- has been part of growing up.
***
August 22, 1998
Pearl Jam
Molson Park, Barrie, Ontario, Canada
Summary: !
Summer before I was to start University. 18. A young 18. My first rock concert. Conveniently, Q92 (the local rock radio station in Sudbury, Ontario where I grew up) organized bus transportation to the show. My friend Conrad (C-rad) scored tickets for us soon after the concert dates for the Yield tour were announced, owing to his membership in Ten Club -- Pearl Jam's not-very-exclusive fan club. We arrived at the venue well before the gates opened, and already the queue along the chainlinks was long. We took our place in line. Like most outdoor rock concerts, admission was General, meaning you simply find a place to stand where ever you can. As soon as the gates were pulled open the line was instantly sucked up as people ran, literally bolted like hunted gazelle, across the field to secure a spot as near as possible to the front of the stage. I'm sure people were falling around me. We stampeded along. What else can one do in a stampede, really? We stopped up quite close to the banstand and chose a strategic location just in front of the metal gates boxing off the sound stage and waited for the sun to go down. Which took a while. It turns out that most of the time spent standing around waiting for a rock concert to begin is pretty much head-numbingly boring and excruciating, especially when you're being harassed by an oppressive sun (double especially when lacking defensive gear) and invariably build up an urge to go pee. Making your way through the dense jungle of light-roasted people is generally not fun, but you learn to find seams and to adopt an aggressive but thinly polite attitude as you jostle your way to where you need to go. This being my first concert, it was also my first exposure to the opening band thing. That is, almost uniformly speaking a lesser band comes out on stage an hour or so pre-Show and plays a usually truncated set to snap the crowd out of its dull state of repose. The whole process of which I have come to understand basically to be the setting a relatively low bar that the main act can summarily smash. Cheap Trick (the obvious irony of the name kind of escaping me at the time) came onstage to a not insignificant welcome from the crowd and put out a set of songs of which I surprisingly recognized a few despite my unfamiliarity with the band. At some point, Eddie Vedder was spotted swinging from the rafters beside the stage, prompting the crowd to chant "Eddie Eddie Eddie, etc" in adulatory disregard for the opening act. When The Trick finished, tepid/polite applause and then a lull after they left the stage and we waited for dusk set in. The buzz built steadily as we sensed the moment approaching, all but inevitable now. Several false explosions of applause as people repeatedly mistook sound check guys for Eddie V (surely the sound check guys have a lot of fun with this pre-show mistaken identity bit). When the band finally did come out, the roar was sudden and incredible. As was the crush of flesh with 35K people simultaneously surging toward the stage angling for yet closer-to-stage positioning at the decisive this-is-it-boys! moment and this is the first time 'sea of people' made physical sense to me.
Surprisingly the five band members that make up Pearl Jam looked like five fairly average twenty-something young dudes. Eddie was in jeans and a t-shirt. His hair was not big, or gelled, and probably unbrushed but not purposefully so like the present-day hipster aesthetic. Stone and the others too looked casual, relaxed. I definitely wasn't expecting Kiss-like costumes, but somehow their just-regular-Joe's look was disarming and contrasted with their obvious megafame to make them way cooler. The stage production was spartan. There was a Persian rug splayed out in the center of the stage (this turns out to be quite common for rock shows) and a mirror ball suspended above the drumkit which figured prominently in an atmospheric rendition of Wishlist later in the show. But the overall impression of the stage was utilitarian: lots of equipment, wires, amps with blinking LEDs, several standing guitars -- like looking through a window into a music studio. With the first notes of Corduroy what became immediately obvious was the quality of the sound and its seriously cranked volume. Cheap Trick was clearly playing on their own sub-standard equipment or Pearl Jam's was much better or the sound board equalizers just got dialed up big time for the real show.
And so, there I was. Listening to Pearl Jam make music. Playing the songs I knew, and some I didn't. My memory of the details of the songs from the show are a little foggy at this point. In broad strokes I recall PJ interleaving classics (Alive, Black) with new material (Given to Fly, Evolution), mixing up set lists that had the right balance between quiet acoustic numbers (Betterman) with full-on electric guitar attacks (Hail Hail, Evenflow) such that the poetry in each song is augmented by the meta-poetry of the larger oeuvre i.e. the arrangement of the pieces themselves. Pearl Jam introduced me in this show to the improvisational element that makes live music so special, definitionally unique -- where the live stuff diverges from what was laid down in studio. The extended drum or guitar solos, the new riffs inserted here and there, the descent into entirely different songs (like PJ breaking into a Cheap Trick refrain in the middle of the dark and brooding interlude in Daughter). Live music is all about watching musicians take their standards, recreate them and play with them in the moment -- manipulating, deconstructing, reconstructing, stretching and stretching some more -- as they see fit. This is what makes many fans want to come back time and time again to see the same artists playing the same thing over and over; repeated yes but always new and alive in every live variant. And Pearl Jam, as far as rock bands go (in my experience at least) are some of the best at the creative destruction of their own material (although to be fair I recently saw jazz pianist Brad Mehldau take deconstruction to a whole new level). A sensation I felt during this first show (and now experience in all particularly good concerts) is one of not wanting each song to end. Wanting to take that special thing that is happening in each, and hold it there just a little bit longer. Sort of like continuing to chew a delicious piece of steak longer than is digestively reasonable. This feeling heightens as the end of the show (necessarily) approaches. And that night, after PJ leaves the stage when their main set is complete, the crowd not yet satisfied demanding their return for One More Song, that yearning is about as earnest as earnest gets. You just so want more. And when PJ reappears, the band giving us what we pleaded for, we are almost-out-of-our-minds-happy that there are still a few more special moments ahead. That night they obliged us with what turns out to be 6 (!) more songs. When they leave the stage again everyone once again pleads with them to come out One More Time even though we all know we don't really deserve it but it's all just been so good and what a shame it would be for it to be over right now. And unbelievably, Pearl Jam does (come back out, that is) for a 2nd encore (a single song, Yellow Ledbetter) that just super-satiates everyone in such a way that there is no more, can be no more, pleading this time when they leave.
C-rad, who was admittedly a much more hardcore PJ fan that I, was completely psyched (the only word that can be used) throughout the show. He clearly knew all the lyrics (whereas I knew only some) and belted them out along with most everyone around us. Oddly the off-keyness of the crowd as people sang along to their favorite songs was never dissonant but instead underscored the music coming over the loudspeakers like a sound carpet that affirmed and supported it so that the end result is just this really warm celebration of the song that everybody is really digging. As an experienced non-virgin concert goer, C-rad during the show kind of taught me the ropes of how to enjoy a live show: un-inhibition is key. Pump your fist brother. Bang your head (yes, head banging, it turns out is not cliche) sister. Scream "####### A" when like what you hear. Jump up and down. Do whatever the hell grabs you because you're there for the one sole purpose of rocking out hard so you better not hold back.
As we left the show snaking our way through people and merchandise booths we couldn't resist the temptation to buy something to mark and remember the occasion. C-rad picked up a black fisherman's cap with a yield sign on the front (which always struck me as the oddest bit of paraphenalia I'd every come across but he wore that ridiculous thing for years afterwards). I bought an orange PJ t-shirt (which I only recently got rid of). On the late night bus ride back up North, we talked about the songs we'd heard, the various special little moments we picked up on in each, re-living what we'd just been through not wanting to let it go just yet and knowing that we'd come out a little bit different; having taken from Pearl Jam and the crowd and the music and the energy and the wholeness of the experience a tiny bit of experiential knowledge that no one that had not been there that night will ever (can never) actually know. Something along the lines of momentarily glimpsing the unglimpsable sun that is humanity's very celebratory essence. But that seems a little esoteric and not completely accurate. Maybe it's as simple as just having had a ####load of fun.
***
Personal but relevant sidebar (about how I got into rock in the first place):
I would say the more familiarity with a band's music you bring to a live concert, the more you'll get out of it. I'm not sure if that's particularly disputable, but I can understand some possible objections such as having the element of first-time discovery amidst that experiential/sensory mush become very special indeed. I've had some of that myself. But by far my most special moments have been when I've known very intimately apriori the outlines of what to expect so as to truly understand how and why the content is different and thus special in this moment. Case in point my first Pearl Jam concert on their Yield World Tour (described in some detail above). Pearl Jam's Yield album was the first I bought for myself (rather late in adolescent life) and basically the first rock album I paid any attention to. I remember dropping C-rad off at home one afternoon after school and Given to Fly came on the car radio. C-rad turned it up. I'd heard it before and liked what I was hearing. We sang along. It was fun. What's interesting is that C-rad and I weren't particularly close friends. He was a bit of a bad-###. I was the straight-laced, front-row type of kid that got good grades, worked hard and for all intensive purposes had no business consorting with C-rad types or liking band like Pearl Jam for that matter. Fortunately, I played ice hockey as youth (thanks for that Mom & Dad) which put me in touch with all sorts of lower-brow #### that is Very Good for the overall normalcy of an otherwise weeny. Let me cut to the chase. Having this shared Pearl Jam-in-the-car experience with C-rad forced upon me the realization that it was totally OK to enjoy rock music (C-rad saying it was OK and all) despite my squareness and I went out and bought the album, which I quickly learned to love (still do by the way) and this spawned a whole journey through PJ's back catalog of albums. (Incidentally, working your way backward through a band's career is a really interesting way to learn the music; you have the benefit and future and history all at once and get to see how a band, its member, its sound and its themes mature and develop over time). This, even though this wasn't technically my first rock album. My uncle Jack (who is definitely one of the coolest cats I know and who I probably should have let influence me more in my formative years) had given me Led Zeppelin 3 for Christmas the year before, but I wasn't much interested (at the time). Appreciation just can't be catered for I guess.
***
The rock concert has a decades-long tradition (at least) so naturally customs have developed and they are observed because they are good. Like the obligatory drum/guitar/keyboard solos to let each musician strut their stuff. Like chatting with the crowd between songs, humanizing the evening. Like teasing the crowd with the possibility of a 2nd encore after the inevitable first. Like the primary-color spinning, flashing light show that I suppose heightens the intensity in the darkness. Like the only somewhat satisfying opening act that clears the way for the headliners. So maybe the contours of the rock concert become familiar but every single show quickly takes on its own quality, a singular temporal/spatial/visual/aural stamp of this-is-happening-in-front-of-me-right-now and it is fleeting, worth holding onto, and thinking about. The shows I've attended over the years have provided ample moments that marked me and bubble up in my thoughts often and so have shown themselves to be worthy of continued contemplation (at least for me).
Like:
Seeing Gord Downie (with and of the Tragically Hip) gyrate on stage. I mean, you hear that the guy gyrates and stuff, but it's not until you see the Hip live that you actually understand what that means (imagine a man being inside and all around a mike stand that won't stand still). And there are his epic rambles which are only somewhat coherent, voice solos you like to think are poetic but are actually panic stricken (drug-induced to be sure) tirades at imaginary ghosts. The sunset that evening in Kingston over the bandstand with the backdrop of Lake Ontario, went on forever. One of those sunsets that turns the sky orange, then purple-orange, then black-purple and just kind of stays like that with the sun faintly whispering "I'm still here" pretty much all night.
Seeing the Arcade Fire at Theatre Corona (a tiny little wooden theatre in Old Montreal) just before they were to become 2005's biggest rock sensation, that rising fame seeming completely irrelevant (but its reason becoming obvious throughout the show) as the seven musicians stood up there and screamed down at us in unison and rocked out with your standard rock instruments but also with accordions, violins, xylophones and at least one them slapped drumsticks against his (helmeted) head. They had everyone in the building screaming back at them and bouncing such that the old shaky floor boards literally became springboards and I certainly didn't have a lot of faith in the structural soundness of the building but I didn't care. The whole effect was loud and hot and a little messy in the way that sex can sometimes be messy.
Seeing Pearl Jam again this time in an arena show at the Bell Centre in Montreal which yielded a completely different vibe owing to the confinement of the people, of the sound, of how I witnessed it. Though not handicapped in any way I (somehow?) was able to watch the show from the handicapped viewing area off to one side of the main stage such that I was sort of looking back at the capacity-filled arena and could almost imagine what E. Vedder was seeing and feeling as he rocked out there not very far away at all. In this case, not feeling the crowd so much as observing it with a clinical awe not unlike perhaps a child's first trip to the zoo; it is the closest I'll ever come to actually being on stage (or being a rock star myself) and regularly still think back to that night as the night I (well maybe EV and I) rocked Montreal.
Or:
Seeing Feist wield a guitar, and the audience, like no other chick rocker I've ever seen. Seeing Wilco mix poetry and heavy alt-country-rock like distorted modern urban cowboy rockers makes you want to cry it's so noisy-good. Seeing David Usher (unfortunately) take his shirt off. Seeing the Trews in the smallest, sweatiest place you can imagine. Seeing Radiohead in a small city in Spain. Seeing Clap Your Hands Say Yeah basically play their CD. Seeing the Rolling Stones in Moncton and feeling like the whole thing was like visiting a prostitute. See the Islands sing about whale bones and digging it. Seeing Keane prove that piano rock is alive and well. Seeing The Clips prove that indie rock is alive and well. Seeing Pearl Jam (yet again) at the CNE in Toronto end having their final encore end at exactly the instant the Ex' fireworks display kicked off. Seeing Neil Young teaching a lesson in what rock is about (see below). Seeing every time some new gradation along the cool|crazy-fun|slightly-unbelievable|man-I-have-to-tell-XYZ-about-this-next-time-I-see-them|this-is-marking-me-forever scale.
***
Another personal but relevant sidebar (in the form of two recent conversations with my Dad, who is 9 years younger than Neil Young for the record):
[i'm typing at my laptop keyboard.]
"What are you working on?"
"Some writing."
"About?"
"Rock music."
"Rock music?" (raised eyebrow, highly skeptical)
"Yeah."
"Also known as noise?!" (face wincing in disgust)
"..."
Later:
[i have Beirut's Gulag Orkestar playing over my laptop' speakers]
"That's nice music" (nice here dripping with either sarcasm or curiosity)
"Yeah?" (hopeful)
"No."
"What don't you like about it?"
"Everything between the beginning and the end." (zero irony here)
"..."
***
Can human relationships be mediated through rock music? I think an answer to this question could take at least three forms. On the one hand, you could look at this in terms of exploring if and how relationships are created and maybe even fostered at the live event itself; after all the jumping screaming mass during the show, and the moments pre- and proceeding it, constitute a ripe ground for human connection (as described ad nauseum above). On another hand you could think about how an interest in rock music might serve as unifying element to a friendship in which new bands and songs are discovered, exchanged, discussed at length and over coffee/beer/other-social-aphrodesiacal-beverage. On yet a third hand (my awkward construction here requiring you to have three hands with which to consider things) and what I'd like to unpack a little bit here is growing with people via the shared experience of knowing what live shows are all about. With some of my friends this is basically all we talk about. What shows we've seen recently, what kind of cool/special stuff went down, what upcoming shows we know about, what cool/special stuff we remember from the oldest shows in the grainy bootleg of our memory, what mythically awesome shows might be and we dream of seeing. My uncle Jack is one such person with whom rock concerts form a cornerstone of the relationship. When I visit, he'll often fire up a smoke while we walk and he fills me in about what he's seen around the Ottawa Valley of late. And he has no shortage of mind bending stories about shows he's seen come through town over the years, introducing me to new rockers to learn about and making connections between them for me in a way only someone with the benefit of time and keen interest can. I haven't seen much of C-rad since high school but when I bump into him online we invariably chat about late-breaking PJ concert news. I have a bunch of other friends with whom I've been on concert road trips (the rock concert road trip here being a particularly special sub genus of the live rock concert experience I don't even have time to get into) with and we always have something to catch up on. For, "Seen anything good lately?" is a question that for anyone that has been to a rock show will tell you is an invitation to recount a hell of a lot more than the five W's of any particular show.
***
July 23, 2009
Neil Young
Hyde Park, London, UK
Summary: ! x 10
Fiona (fiancee) and I headed down to the Hard Rock Calling music festival in London's Hyde Park in the late afternoon, sufficiently early to check out some of the other acts playing on the multiple stages that day. Your standard rock festival venue: cattle-herding acreage, purposeful fencing, speaker towers set up throughout, utilitarian porta-potties and a handful of smaller stages ringing the main stage which makes itself known as such with a gynormous scaffolding superstructure wall-papered in Hard Rock Calling banners and flanked by the biggest LED screens you've ever seen on either side. Ben Harper took the stage shortly after we arrived. Though I've always suspected it it was not until I saw him live that I was able to confirm that Ben Harper is basically a fake. The overwrought sincerity on his face in every single song, the groomed emotion, the never-worn-looking checkered Oxford shirt, the CIA-like earpiece, the obviously-very-planned scissor kick finale: I imagine there having been an X marked out on the stage with masking tape where he was supposed to land. It was all a little bit hollow and hard to take and made me sad for the people that apparently loved it. BH gave way to the Fleet Foxes who peddled a much more honest American folk rock heavy on the harmonics and light on the scissor kicks. These bearded, scruffy-looking guys are from Seattle but their music makes me believe they should actually be from the Midwest or the Middle Ages; some where, some when with earth, wheat fields, ale and maidens. Lots of acoustic guitar work, lots of acapella, lots of story telling. Layered, complex songs producing a sound that is simply easy on the ear; the overall experience at minimum neutralizing the aspartame taste Ben Harper left in my mouth. While we waited for Neil it rained. Like really rained. Large, cold, angry drops that came down from the sky surely accelerated by more than gravity. But then it let up, and we had time time to dry off somewhat before dusk fell and Neil Young et al walked out, calmly picked up their instruments and started to make music.
Neil Young is, and looks, old. He's 64 and been rocking since the late 60s. He had a triple bypass a few years ago. The flesh of his face is at once sagging, leathery, sand-papery, hard; his eyes charitable, laughing, knowing; his hair long, grey, unkempt in a dry/puffy way and about 70% still there. One look at the guy and you just know he's seen (and done) a lot of stuff. Which gives him a hell of a lot of credibility to sing about stuff. He came out it in jeans and a t-shirt shrouded in an untucked long-sleave flannel black shirt. You imagine he might have just hopped out of his pickup truck and if you were to look close enough there'd be ancient cigarette burns on the cuffs. NY grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The sound was at least twice as loud as the FFs and a lot heavier, a lot more electric. Neil Young's electric guitar playing is, to say the least about it, distinctive. As far as I can tell, he invented that sound and no one dares really copy it lest in homage. It's hard to describe; something like a heavily amplified twangy whine with an edge to it that's sort of like the sound of sawing through a sheet of tin (or so I imagine). And he plays so damn hard, by which I mean with so much physical force on the strings, you suspect the guitars are paying the price over the years (except you just know those guitars have been in rotation for decades so they must be tough mothers of guitars (maybe much like the man himself)). He opens the concert with Hey Hey My My (Into the Black) which is about as classic a rock song as it gets. It navigates the frontier between rock ballad and hard rocker and has Vietnam references and other contemporaneous references that take you back to a time when rock somehow seemed more meaningful, more tied to the world than it does today. Like it was being created for and about the world and the world was listening, at least one piece of which seems to be missing these days. This song is an echo of that time, and it still kicks ### in spite of its age (more so because of it). It's amazing to be hearing it created first hand. And as the end of this first song nears you see can tell that Neil is stretching it out big time. He doesn't want it to end! Up there, Neil Young is both rock performer and rock fan; he knows our psychology (the audience's) down cold because it he feels like one of us, you just have the sense he's seen a couple lifetime's worth of rock concerts himself. So he's going to deliver exactly what we want, and he knows we don't want the guitar melting he's delivering in each song to end. Every one of his songs in this show is going to end in an extended jam session in which he and friends keep improvising and dragging the fun out and faking the ending several times just to get an extra rise out of us (these fake ending which he co-ordinates with his drummer by walking back there there several times throughout the extended jam session and take the form of false guitar+drum crescendos signaled with dramatic rising of the guitar head on the off-beat and and crashing down of the guitar's head in a very finale way on the beat such that Neil looks like he's on a big teeter-totter that's about to become stuck to the ground but then the song doesn't end they just go on and do several more times). By the fourth song, Neil's rocked out so hard his black flannel shirt comes off -- but only half way off (how, I'm not sure) so that he has one arm in his shirt and one arm out. His long grey hair even more unkempt than before. He now looks like an old crazy hobo and doesn't (apparently) seem to even notice or care and keeps playing like this till the end of the show. Classic rock song after classic rock song is belted out, each mutated every so lightly from what you expect and uniformly extended on the back end. From his inter-song chatter with the crowd but mostly from the emotion you see in his eyes in every song (especially the tender songs like drug addict story The Needle and the Damage Done) I'm left with the impression that Neil Young's this kind, gentle, humble dude. Several times throughout the show he takes long swigs from a bottle of beer he has up there on stage. He plays Old Man on an acoustic guitar on stage by himself. The song is sincere and nostalgic and makes evident Neil Young is a master of his craft (guitar playing, song writing, performing). He apparently wrote this song for the old care-taker that ran the Californian ranch he bought in the 60s. Knowing this makes me want to know the backstory of each of his songs. Down by the River, and old Crosby Stills Nash and Young tune, is played like it's the first and last time it will ever be performed. It goes on for what seems like 23 minutes and ends with the crowd whipped up, fiercely. The people behind us (a few posh wankers about our age) talk amongst themselves throughout the show, not talking about the show at all. The people in front of us (a couple of gray beards who brought a cooler of beer) don't say much of anything other than singing along. You can tell they're in their element. Fiona rocks out throughout with a non-stop smile that says something between "Can you believe this?" and "I want to have his baby".
While Neil Young may be old, what becomes exceedingly clear is that he's at the exact opposite other end of the spectrum from frail (unlike his former CSNY cronies today) and is down right bounding (ok, more like lumbering with considerable rhythmic bounce his step) around the stage all night in a sweaty almost drunken haze of youthful badness. I think ahead to myself at 64 years old and have no doubt that I will not be as cool or energetic. Neil ends the concert with Rocking in the Free World, that overt socio-political gut rattling classic. It too goes on for what feels like 20+ minutes, Neil taking the crowd through the refrain over and over again "keep on rocking in the free whiiiiiirlllllllllllllllled" everyone screaming at the top of the register. I'm pumping my fist. Every single person is pumping their fist. You just couldn't help it: you wanted to rock and you wanted the world to be free to let you rock in it, what could be more simple? The concert ends and everyone clapping with their hands above their heads making no bones about the fact that there was love for that man on stage and what he had just done to us.
For his encore Neil Young walks out on stage (properly shirted again by the way) with a guitar, starts playing some bars that sound awfully familiar and then sings the line "I read the news today, oh boy..." to which the London crowd just about has an aneurysm of delight as we all realize he's covering A Day in the Life (by the ummm Beatles?) in his very distinctive Neil Young way. So people are going mental (including Fiona and I) but hurry to settle down in order to just soak in this intense historic cutting-through-time-and-rock-styles-making-things-real-in-the-present kind of moment, but continue to shout/sing all the words because the temptation to do so is overwhelming. The enjoyment in the air is kind of nervous the moment is just so good, like you don't even know what it is you're hearing and you're afraid it might like an errant soap bubble hit a branch and pop. As I watch Neil play through the song, strumming effortlessly, mouthing the words not absently but easily, there is no doubt that he hasn't ever had to memorize this song; but rather it is a tune he knows so well (undoubtedly baked into him from countless listens as a youth) it has become a very part of his mettle and he's just exhaling it like the smoke of a long-inhaled cigarette. THEN, about half way through the song, after it devolves into its first noisy jam and comes back to life, someone runs out from the sidestage and it turns out to be... Paul McCartney (yes that Paul) to join Neil at the mike. Paul Mc-#######-Cartney! As soon as people start to recognize him (which takes about a couple microseconds) the cheer that is unleashed is seriously obscene. I look over at Fiona (who has processed things and now acting purely on instinct like a caged animal) and she is screaming Oh My God Oh My God (she's not religious) at the highest pitch surely possible (but she is a Soprano and get up there). Over and over she's just shrieking madly and kind of gasping for breath. She looks exactly like those young girls you see on black and white footage of old Beatles shows where they girls are completely smitten out of their mind and screaming uncontrollably and fainting and stuff. Except she's in full colour and not usually prone to hysteria. I get ready to catch her but she pulls herself together and starts breathing normally right before all-out collapse. Anyway, between these two guys on stage there's about 13 volumes of the Encyclopedia of Rock History and suddenly they're dueting through a song Paul and John wrote for Sgt Pepper's back in 1967 -- about the time Neil was getting his start. The moment is both theoretically meta-referential and physically almost unbelievable in the sense that you don't really believe that Paul McCartney and Neil Young can be existing at the same time let alone signing into the microphone at this very moment. And they're not just singing together, but hugging and high-fiving their way through the song in such a way that they make it very obvious of all the people in Hyde Park at this instant they're the ones having the most fun (and let me tell you we're all having a LOT of fun just then) using this song to celebrate rock music, their lengthy careers, being adored in this moment, the moment itself, life itself. I'll go right ahead and state that A Day in the Life has never been played so hard, ever. It stretches for almost ten minutes and devolves into a cacophonous beautiful mess of a jam session in which Neil hunches over and really laces into his guitar (I imagine him thinking "OK let's see what this puppy can do") and holds it out for Paul to have at 'er for a while. They even play the Xylophone together (poorly, but what does it matter) for a short stretch. There are at least two fake endings. By the the time the real end comes around, Neil Young has literally shredded the strings on his guitar, as in like every single string is broken so there is nothing left, and the final crescendo involves him comically slapping the broken strings against the neck of the guitar to get every last bit of sound out of this song, out of this moment, and Paul McCartney looks on dramatically in total disbelief. Neil must be just completely spent, but I'm sure he's secretly looking for another guitar. I cannot even begin to imagine what Paul is thinking if he is even thinking anything. All that is in my head is: !!!!!!!!!!!! and I'm out of breath altogether.
***
© Mat Balez
August 2009
Love Not For You
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This album is incredible. Yeah it might be my "diehards love everything PJ puts out, biased first listen" syndrome talking but I am floored.Completely rocks!!!!!!! Eddie sounds better than he has in YEARS. It feels like the energy and purpose is back in the music again.
