usic Review | Neil Young
Old Black and Other Old Friends
*
By BEN RATLIFF
Published: December 14, 2007
Correction Appended
Neil Young’s current tour plants him in smaller and older theaters than he is used to. Last week’s stop in Boston was at the Orpheum Theater, a 2,800-seater; this week’s sold-out six-show run in New York, which started on Wednesday, is at the United Palace Theater, with a capacity of 3,300. (At Madison Square Garden, where he played in 2003, he filled about four times that many seats.) He plays an acoustic set and an electric set each night, letting fewer people listen more closely, weighing the physical power of sound over his own convenience and, perhaps, business sense.
“Do something to me, don’t make me wait,” he sang on Wednesday in “Sad Movies,” an unreleased song from the mid-1970s. “Jab something through me, don’t cut out the good things I appreciate.” It’s about the body thrill of watching movies in dark theaters — even “bad movies that make you wonder why you ever came.”
It was appropriate for a gig at the United Palace Theater, the rococo extravaganza in Washington Heights that was a Loew’s movie house before the evangelist Reverend Ike bought it for his Christ Community United Church in 1969. But it could have been about the rhythm of the show on that particular night: what happened at the beginning and at the end.
The doors were set to open at 7, and the opening act, Mr. Young’s wife, Pegi, was scheduled at 8. But a minor fire-code violation kept the doors closed until 9, on a cold night. So, no Pegi Young. Before her husband appeared, a voice pleaded over the speaker system: “Neil has preselected the set list. Please help him to concentrate by trying to pay attention to the songs.” But nobody was in the mood to be asked for favors, and the audience eventually ignored the request, beerily yelling out song titles.
Acoustic came first, and it was a strong set, heavy on the mid-’70s, some songs seldom played: “Ambulance Blues,” “A Man Needs a Maid,” “No One Seems to Know,” “Harvest,” “Mellow My Mind,” “Love Art Blues.” Surrounded by a circle of guitars as well as a tack piano and a regular piano positioned on either side of the stage, and wearing paint-splattered clothes, he had the body language of casual deliberation, even though the tour’s set list has been fairly similar from night to night.
It was a good set, more judicious than similar ones I’ve seen, with beautiful sound. But he was puttering, and when he sang that nostalgic, philosophical line about sitting in the audience and waiting for a jab, he spoke for some of us at that moment.
The jab was delivered by Mr. Young’s black 1953 Gibson Les Paul with an aluminum pick guard and a Bigsby vibrato bar — the instrument he calls Old Black — and his small Fender Deluxe amplifier. He changed guitars for almost every song throughout the evening, but for the last four songs Old Black stayed constant.
There were a few eccentric stage details. A painter set up a different oil-on-canvas on a large easel to announce each song, completing some paintings at the back of the stage while the music played. Mr. Young picked up a red telephone at one point between songs, pretending to take a call. With a small band — not Crazy Horse, but Crazy Horse-like, with the drummer Ralph Molina, the bassist Rick Rosas and Ben Keith on steel and rhythm guitar, as well as Pegi Young and Anthony Crawford singing harmony vocals — Mr. Young first lingered a little longer in the ’70s (“Oh Lonesome Me,” “Bad Fog of Loneliness,” “The Loner,” “Winterlong”), then played a few songs from his new record, “Chrome Dreams II” (Reprise). But it was all pretty mild, even the snarling, proud-to-be-a-loser “Dirty Old Man,” compared with the finishing stretch.
Here came the body thrills. What did Old Black sound like? The same as always: something loud and indistinct and far away, like a foghorn on an enormous boat as heard from the shore. Hearing this sound in a giant arena or an outdoor festival makes sense: one comes to think that it needs that much space. It doesn’t. Up close, with all the sonic detail, it was fascinating, more physical. Mr. Young’s alterations to the sound — manipulating the vibrato bar, shaking the guitar or moving it like an oar — made it clear that the sound was all part of him, and more personal at close range.
Correction: December 18, 2007
A music review in Weekend on Friday about Neil Young, at the United Palace Theater, misstated the title of a song he performed. It is “Sad Movies,” not “Old Movies.”
