070318 Neil Young, Detroit, MI

On July 3rd, 2018 m’lady and I got out of the house nice and early and enjoyed a very exciting eight or nine hour drive to Windsor, Ontario (long known in song-lore as “south-Detroit”).  It’s not that the drive itself was exciting (thankfully, I suppose); rather, it was the two of us that provided all of the excitement.  

And why all this excitement from a pair of concert/road trip veterans like ourselves?  Three words:

Neil Young solo.

One of our big, big favourites, the great Neil Young had decided to sandwich a half-dozen solo concerts into the middle of his summer schedule, one that had him touring with his new(ish) band Promise Of The Real.  A full Neil solo show is such a scarce event that we blew off his upcoming Quebec City show with POTR and scored tickets for his one-nighter solo concert in Detroit instead.  Neil had cherry-picked four specific theatres to house these rare treats, reflecting venues that held meaning for him from his early career: the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, the Chicago Auditorium Theater, the Wang Theater in Boston, and our show at the Fox Theatre in the Motor City, just north of our hotel room in Windsor.   

With little time to spare we booked into our room, checked emails and sketched out sketchy directions to some Asian-fusion restaurant in Detroit where a few of our friends were supposedly meeting, drove deep through the tunnel that bridged this country and that country and crossed the US border after a surprising, substantial wait, got frustratingly lost in a vague attempt to follow the aforementioned sketchy directions, miraculously found the restaurant – closed for renovations – and with no cellphone were unable to locate the also aforementioned friends who were in fact gleefully clinking beers just a few blocks away at that very moment, parked our car in our pre-booked spot behind the venue, found a table at a nearby pub, and raced through some burgers and beers, getting to the show just in time.

Whew!

This was my first time at the Fox Theatre and wow.  Immediately upon entering one is inevitably struck with the overt grandeur of the place.  Everywhere the eye falls is a feast of ornate splendour, with curves and animals and gild and chandeliers and…everything.  It’s like a Las Vegas casino carpet come to life, like the vomit of a monumental golden sphinx, a dog’s breakfast of visual pomp and circumstance, and all of it in the service of presenting quality music in an inspiring atmosphere.

This was gonna be good!

We had great seats near the front of the balcony, and we were escorted to them just as surprise opening act John Hammond took the stage.  Yes, we were treated to a bonus John Hammond concert…that Neil Young is a classy guy.  Hammond shone throughout his forty minutes of random-bar blues and trebly slide guitar.  He told a few stories to the quiet, respectful crowd, including a tale or two about touring with Neil Young way back in the early ’70’s.

Not long after Hammond’s great warm-up set the lights went down and Neil took the stage to a standing ovation and many screams of “We love you Neil!”  He sat down, selected one of the eight guitars that stood circling around him, and played On The Way Home from his Buffalo Springfield days.  It was glorious.

Neil reaching back to his early days to open his solo show in this beautiful old theatre that he hand-selected to reflect “…Where I first recorded with the Mynah Birds on Motown in 1965, where I appeared in a Hootenanny at the Chessmater Club on Livernois and wrote songs in the White Castle across the street; where I played Masonic Hall with CSNY’s first tour, and where I have so many great friends…”; clearly this was going to be a very special show.

I forget if it happened right away or if it took a few songs, but very early on in the performance some meatheads in the audience started yelling out things like “Play Cinnamon Girl!”, “We loooove you Neeee-yuuuullll!!!” and “Play Heart of Goooooold!”  Don’t get me wrong, nobody was doing this while Neil was playing; when he was in the middle of a song you could hear a pin drop in the place, but as soon as he would start talking the yelps and requests would start up, every time.  It was horrible, and the meatheads never, ever let up.

And it was seriously pissing off one Mr. Neil Young.

Neil had obviously planned out stories to tell before and about every song on the setlist, and his ever-growing frustration was apparent when he said things like, “Well, I was going to tell a story about this one but I guess nobody will hear it,” or, after getting out just a few words about the death of his good friend Danny Whitten he said with exasperation, “Well, I guess that’s the end of that story,” before playing a cursory version of Tonight’s The Night.

Then there was just more and more “We loooove you Neeeee-yuuuullll!!!!”

It was so, so frustrating.

This was supposed to be a very unique evening with Neil Young, a story-filled set of songs and the meanings behind them, a self-guided tour through the career of one of the most simple, yet enigmatic songwriters of our time, a show akin to Springsteen’s Broadway run, or the History Of The Eagles tour from a decade before.  Instead, the behaviour of a few dozen meatheads prompted Mr. Young to issue a (very classy) statement on his website following the concert, explaining how Detroit fans that were more connected to specific songs than actually listening to the concert threw him off and prevented him from fully immersing himself in the performance.  Just like when he was on the stage that night, it was easy to tell from the press release that Neil was angry but in both instances the old hippie didn’t get preachy or squawky, choosing instead for some grandfatherly-like chastising, which at the concert went as unheeded as most grandfatherly advice.

And while the music was good…great even (The Needle and the Damage Done, Love and War, After The Gold Rush, Are You Ready For The Country?, Broken Arrow, and on and on…gosh he has a lot of great songs), I never felt like Neil hit the nirvanic state that he is always trying to hit.  He might have, but if so my mounting anger caused me to overlook it.  I’ve simply never in my life been so upset by a crowd of people at a show.

M’lady was angry too.  Like me, she just couldn’t enjoy the evening, knowing what we were losing out on at the hands of a few morons.  Instead of walking out in starry-eyed bliss, we descended the stairs of the old building frowning and sadly disappointed.  

After the show I fought my way through the merch line and bought a t-shirt (it was just too cool to pass up) before running into friends outside.  Gassing up before crossing back into Windsor I found that instead of giving me $10 change, the merch guy had inadvertently handed my $50 bill right back to me, so at least I got a free t-shirt.

But I’m still angry.