Album Review - Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall: January 19, 1971
By Douglas Heselgrave
I must confess: I don't think it's conceivable for an old Canadian
hippie such as me to review Neil Young's latest concert set Live at
Massey Hall with any sense of objectivity. Should I talk about the
songs? They're all classics that are presented in their newest and
freshest glory. The years have left them imprinted so deeply into my DNA
that they've been woven into the core of my being. In the same way that
it's impossible for me to *****s clearly the beauty and intelligence of
my own children, it's a Herculean task for me to extricate this music
from the mythology I've built up around it over the past 30 years. I
just can't experience it in the same fa****on as the lucky audience at
Toronto's Massey Hall did on a winter's day in 1971.
Having left Canada in 1965 to pursue a career south of the border,
Young's first solo Canadian tour in 1971 was a triumphant homecoming
that may make a more jaded American or European listener scratch his or
her head and wonder what all the fuss was about. "Sure, Neil Young is a
great performer, but there are so many of them, aren't there?" a skeptic
might say. Canada, however, is a funny place. Huge in terms of
geography, but small in population, we Canadians always have been humble
to a fault, and we routinely have second-guessed our greatest cultural
treasures. The 1960s exodus to the States and Europe of our most gifted
talents -- The Band, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, and Leonard Cohen
amongst them -- attests to this national inferiority complex. It often
has been said that Canadians wait until the rest of the world has voiced
its approval before we embrace our own artists, and by the time Young
came to Toronto in 1971, our love affair with all things Neil was
officially sanctioned.
Worlds apart from his incendiary 1969 and 1970 performances with Crosby,
Stills, and Nash as well as with Crazy Horse, the shows that Young gave
during his 1971 tour of Canada played a large part in forming the
classic image that today resides so fondly in the public's imagination.
Confident and brimming with creative fire, one moment, fragile,
delicate, and unassuming, the next, the songs sound as if they are being
delivered around a campfire or in one's own living room.
This is an excerpt. To read the complete review, please visit:
http://www.musicbox-online.com/reviews-2007/neil-young-massey-hall.html
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