Neil Young

I am a massive Neil Young fan.  Not obsessive, I don't have all of his albums on all media!  But I do have most on either LP, CD or both and I do have about 40 bootlegs.

My last Neil experience was to boycott along with my friend Mal, his last tour.  Ticket prices were just too high, £75-80 per head depending on where you could get them.  We just said no!

This latest tour was a bit more reasonably priced, £50 per head.  Choices were Nottingham or Aberdeen.  We chose Nottingham.  Tuesday lunchtime, Ian, Mal and I drove down the 150 miles on the hottest day of the year so far, with my air con broken.  We arrived in plenty of time to drive round Nottingham's one way system, totally lost.  Then spent an hour talking my sister in, as she was lost as well.

We missed the support act.  Got a good spot for Neil.

What a show!  Probably the best NY show ever.  Opened with Hey Hey My My, Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, Mansion on the Hill, Cinnamon Girl.  Then On the Way Home, a very early song, followed by Burned.  There was a fantastic Down by the River and the final song Rockin in the Free World.  He started to wind now, seeming to get in sync with the drummer to finish, then jumped back centre stage for another chorus, then back to the drummer, then another chorus, and so on for about 6 times.  The crowd went mad.  Brilliant.

The band came back on to do a cover of the Beatles A Day in the Life.  It was fantastic, raucous, wild, probably the best ever Beatles cover.  The song finished with Neil ripping the strings from his guitar, propping it against his amp, feeding back wildly, then whipping the pickups with the ends of the broken strings! 

Absolutely awesome.

Tim