He Keeps On Rockin at the Garden: Neil Young gave the first of two tour-ending concerts at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, on a bill that also included the bands Wilco and Everest.
Near the midpoint of his sprawling, deeply satisfying show at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, Neil Young asked a simple question: Where did all the money go? He sang this line and repeated it, for emphasis or symmetry. And a few moments later he issued variations on the wording Where did all the cash flow?/Where did all the revenue stream? that confirmed that it wasnt such a simple question after all.
Mr. Young and his Electric Band were kicking around a tune that made its debut recently, on another stop of the tour. Fans have taken to calling it Cough Up the Bucks, after its spoken refrain, though the title could double as a comment on ticket prices. It was one of more than half a dozen new songs in the show, and not remotely a good one. But it fell in line with a Neil Young tradition: the rushed-to-assembly, current-event song, created more for blunt efficiency than for subtlety or even style.
At 63 Mr. Young is a figure of blunt efficiency himself, and a man comfortable with his own contradictions. Here in the first of two tour-ending New York shows, he presented himself not only as a stubbornly craggy survivor but also as an avid early adapter, a holdout hippie idealist, an evenhanded pragmatist and a sharp-eyed cynic.
And that was just in the new stuff, which came with a disclaimer. Were auditioning for our old record company, Mr. Young said after playing four unreleased pieces in a row, including Light a Candle, a hymn for the hopeful; Fuel Line, a paean to his electric-biodiesel car; and Hit the Road and Go to Town, exactly what it sounds like.
So when you hear those new songs, he prodded, you make a lot of noise whether you like em or not, O.K.? (He used saltier language, if only slightly.)
There were some obliging cheers. But biodiesel innovation wasnt exactly at the top of the crowds agenda. The good news, then, was old news: songs from across Mr. Youngs career, with an occasional emphasis on the 1970s. Heart of Gold preceded Old Man, and both found Mr. Young singing beautifully, against a familiar, rustic backdrop distinguished by Ben Keiths steel guitar playing.
There were other acoustic moments, most of them starker. For Mother Earth (Natural Anthem), Mr. Young backed himself on harmonica and pipe organ, underscoring both the solemnity and the simplicity of his message. He played his heartbreaking lament The Needle and the Damage Done alone with a guitar, the same format as on his new archival release, Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 (Reprise).
The shows core, though, had more to do with heaving momentum, bruising riffs and brazen but unhurried guitar solos. Mr. Young made this output count, directing large reserves of energy through his guitars, including the 1953 Gibson Les Paul he calls Old Black. He stretched out at every appropriate juncture: with rampaging ease on Cowgirl in the Sand and then with anxious fire on the closer, Rockin in the Free World. His ramble through Cortez the Killer was a potent manifesto of slow-burn suspense.
Near the midpoint of his sprawling, deeply satisfying show at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, Neil Young asked a simple question: Where did all the money go? He sang this line and repeated it, for emphasis or symmetry. And a few moments later he issued variations on the wording Where did all the cash flow?/Where did all the revenue stream? that confirmed that it wasnt such a simple question after all.
Mr. Young and his Electric Band were kicking around a tune that made its debut recently, on another stop of the tour. Fans have taken to calling it Cough Up the Bucks, after its spoken refrain, though the title could double as a comment on ticket prices. It was one of more than half a dozen new songs in the show, and not remotely a good one. But it fell in line with a Neil Young tradition: the rushed-to-assembly, current-event song, created more for blunt efficiency than for subtlety or even style.
At 63 Mr. Young is a figure of blunt efficiency himself, and a man comfortable with his own contradictions. Here in the first of two tour-ending New York shows, he presented himself not only as a stubbornly craggy survivor but also as an avid early adapter, a holdout hippie idealist, an evenhanded pragmatist and a sharp-eyed cynic.
And that was just in the new stuff, which came with a disclaimer. Were auditioning for our old record company, Mr. Young said after playing four unreleased pieces in a row, including Light a Candle, a hymn for the hopeful; Fuel Line, a paean to his electric-biodiesel car; and Hit the Road and Go to Town, exactly what it sounds like.
So when you hear those new songs, he prodded, you make a lot of noise whether you like em or not, O.K.? (He used saltier language, if only slightly.)
There were some obliging cheers. But biodiesel innovation wasnt exactly at the top of the crowds agenda. The good news, then, was old news: songs from across Mr. Youngs career, with an occasional emphasis on the 1970s. Heart of Gold preceded Old Man, and both found Mr. Young singing beautifully, against a familiar, rustic backdrop distinguished by Ben Keiths steel guitar playing.
There were other acoustic moments, most of them starker. For Mother Earth (Natural Anthem), Mr. Young backed himself on harmonica and pipe organ, underscoring both the solemnity and the simplicity of his message. He played his heartbreaking lament The Needle and the Damage Done alone with a guitar, the same format as on his new archival release, Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 (Reprise).
The shows core, though, had more to do with heaving momentum, bruising riffs and brazen but unhurried guitar solos. Mr. Young made this output count, directing large reserves of energy through his guitars, including the 1953 Gibson Les Paul he calls Old Black. He stretched out at every appropriate juncture: with rampaging ease on Cowgirl in the Sand and then with anxious fire on the closer, Rockin in the Free World. His ramble through Cortez the Killer was a potent manifesto of slow-burn suspense.
