Superstar Singer/Songwriter Gets a New Lease on Life
(as does the material he released on his pre-operation CD)
The Heart of Gold movie, directed by Jonathan Demme and filmed at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, is a must-see. Don’t just put this on the TV while everyone’s rushing around the house. You need to sit down and watch the entire thing to get its real impact.
The major portion of this carefully staged production is comprised of nine songs from Neil Young’s recent Prairie Wind CD. Frankly, I wasn’t very interested in this film because I felt the performances on the original CD and its accompanying in-the-studio DVD lacked bite and the recording lacked any kind of special ambience; consequently, the songs didn’t seem so good either. This in-front-of-a-live-audience DVD version, however, corrects all that. Maybe it’s just a general sense of relief after his successful brain-aneurysm operation, maybe it’s everyone on stage being more familiar with the material, or maybe it’s more of a sense of shared purpose between the musicians upon being invited back for another go-round. Anyway, it’s excellent. Mr Young sounds damn near as good as ever. There have been a lot of releases from him in the last decade and, to me, few have had the right combination of elements. This “Prairie Wind take two” does.
Obviously, the songs on Prairie Wind were initiated by the loss of his father. A trip back to the Winnipeg area for the memorial service produced a palette of emotions demanding some sort of assessment. Take “The Painter” for example:
Green to green, red to red,
yellow to yellow in the light . . .
black to black when the evening comes,
blue to blue in the night,
it’s a long road behind me, it’s a long road ahead.
“Only a Dream,” the most moving song on the original CD, remains a standout here. The verses, obviously written quickly and not in entirely matching meter, add up the visions: a bad dream his wife or daughter wakes up with one morning; the Red River running through his boyhood hometown; a solitary boy fishing down by the bridge pylons; a description of a passenger train picking up passengers, picking up speed, and vanishing into the Canadian prairie, and a man in an overcoat stopping to chat with a policeman on an windy sidewalk of long ago. (Ben Keith’s steel guitar during the train verse—wisely captured by Mr. Demme—is musical excellence.
Between songs Mr. Young talks carefully about our age group’s time now—parents dying, questionable “progress,” juxtapositions of past and present landmarks (the old Ryman/the new Gaylord Entertainment Center).
An encore/finale of carefully selected older songs begins with “I Am a Child,” followed by “Harvest Moon,” “Heart of Gold,” and a story about Louis Avala, the ranch caretaker he wrote “Old Man” for so long ago: “Tell me, how does a young man like yourself have enough money to buy a place like this?”
With the performance of “One of These Days” from Harvest Moon, the movie begins to reveal its full message. In this song, he apologizes to old friends for bridges burned and acknowledges good things he forfeited with those broken ties. By this point, the camera is focusing more on Mr. Young’s wife, Pegi, catching some key looks between Neil and her.
The version of “Four Strong Winds” here is awesome. So is “Comes a Time.” I still smile at its trade-off between “proper” strings and a fiddle. And slipping in “Old King” from Harvest Moon is a good way for Neil Young to reiterate that he knows he’s still got a long and unknown way to go.
It’s hardly common practice to rerecord an album, especially immediately after its release (!), but in this case it’s a very worthwhile endeavor—brilliant, in fact.
Originally posted to SteveForbert.com in December 2006.
(as does the material he released on his pre-operation CD)
The Heart of Gold movie, directed by Jonathan Demme and filmed at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, is a must-see. Don’t just put this on the TV while everyone’s rushing around the house. You need to sit down and watch the entire thing to get its real impact.
The major portion of this carefully staged production is comprised of nine songs from Neil Young’s recent Prairie Wind CD. Frankly, I wasn’t very interested in this film because I felt the performances on the original CD and its accompanying in-the-studio DVD lacked bite and the recording lacked any kind of special ambience; consequently, the songs didn’t seem so good either. This in-front-of-a-live-audience DVD version, however, corrects all that. Maybe it’s just a general sense of relief after his successful brain-aneurysm operation, maybe it’s everyone on stage being more familiar with the material, or maybe it’s more of a sense of shared purpose between the musicians upon being invited back for another go-round. Anyway, it’s excellent. Mr Young sounds damn near as good as ever. There have been a lot of releases from him in the last decade and, to me, few have had the right combination of elements. This “Prairie Wind take two” does.
Obviously, the songs on Prairie Wind were initiated by the loss of his father. A trip back to the Winnipeg area for the memorial service produced a palette of emotions demanding some sort of assessment. Take “The Painter” for example:
Green to green, red to red,
yellow to yellow in the light . . .
black to black when the evening comes,
blue to blue in the night,
it’s a long road behind me, it’s a long road ahead.
“Only a Dream,” the most moving song on the original CD, remains a standout here. The verses, obviously written quickly and not in entirely matching meter, add up the visions: a bad dream his wife or daughter wakes up with one morning; the Red River running through his boyhood hometown; a solitary boy fishing down by the bridge pylons; a description of a passenger train picking up passengers, picking up speed, and vanishing into the Canadian prairie, and a man in an overcoat stopping to chat with a policeman on an windy sidewalk of long ago. (Ben Keith’s steel guitar during the train verse—wisely captured by Mr. Demme—is musical excellence.
Between songs Mr. Young talks carefully about our age group’s time now—parents dying, questionable “progress,” juxtapositions of past and present landmarks (the old Ryman/the new Gaylord Entertainment Center).
An encore/finale of carefully selected older songs begins with “I Am a Child,” followed by “Harvest Moon,” “Heart of Gold,” and a story about Louis Avala, the ranch caretaker he wrote “Old Man” for so long ago: “Tell me, how does a young man like yourself have enough money to buy a place like this?”
With the performance of “One of These Days” from Harvest Moon, the movie begins to reveal its full message. In this song, he apologizes to old friends for bridges burned and acknowledges good things he forfeited with those broken ties. By this point, the camera is focusing more on Mr. Young’s wife, Pegi, catching some key looks between Neil and her.
The version of “Four Strong Winds” here is awesome. So is “Comes a Time.” I still smile at its trade-off between “proper” strings and a fiddle. And slipping in “Old King” from Harvest Moon is a good way for Neil Young to reiterate that he knows he’s still got a long and unknown way to go.
It’s hardly common practice to rerecord an album, especially immediately after its release (!), but in this case it’s a very worthwhile endeavor—brilliant, in fact.
Originally posted to SteveForbert.com in December 2006.
1 comment:
Steve, my friend. I have loved your music since Live on arrival. Came to see you in Exeter, UK, music was as fresh as ever was. It was so good to read your comments on Neil Young's most recent - I too have valued his music for a very long time. Best regards, Julian f
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