Photo: Kilian David
Tonight the Entertainment Centre is sold out and a huge mass of people, old and young alike, are here to pay their respects to a musician whose work has had a profound effect on many.
Artists whose heyday was reached in the '60s and '70s have the unfortunate tendency to polarise audiences, depending on the ratio of old to new tracks that they perform. While it would be stifling to have to rehash the same set of tunes for your entire career, it is a lot of Young's work from his first 15- to 20-year period that has filled the venue tonight.
However, as one friend said, Neil does what Neil wants, which rings completely true of Young's punk attitude which has guided him from the very beginning. Constantly moving on from commercial sure-things such as Buffalo Springfield, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to pursue his own solo musical endeavours, Young has always been a lone wolf.
As it was, the set was enough to make me very happy; there were new tracks I was not as familiar with but there were also a hell of a lot that I was. His rendition of 'Cortez the Killer' was jammed out to perfection and many in the audience began applauding rapturously to the opening chords of 'Cinnamon Girl'.
But while the band was utterly impressively, it appears that Young was not so enamoured of the crowd's performance, getting agitated with a seated crowd (apart from a small contingent of people on their feet right up the front). He motioned to his heart as if we had hurt it and during his last song was rumoured to sing, "Keep on rockin' in the free world", then slipping in the line, "or sit on your arses". The result of the unmoved audience was said to have caused the obliteration of another three songs, but I didn't mind at all because the encore performance of The Beatles' 'A Day in the Life' was by far one of the greatest musical performances I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing.
With two pianists and the rest of the musicians completely in sync with one another, the band delivered the ridiculous time change with gusto and imbued the song with a level of sonic schizophrenia that made this interpretation as vital and interesting as the original. With all his guitar strings dismembered from the neck, Young fed them back into the pick-ups, creating psychotic sounds and adding to the drama of the song.
Neil Young is as punk as he ever was. He does what he wants and he does it very, very well and that is why we love him.
Julianne Gill
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