His vigorous guitar and vocals led Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in a triumphant performance before a mixed-age crowd.
Lightning, wind and the occasional burst of rain failed to repress the crowd at Monday night's sold-out Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The performance, the first of three at the iconic venue, bristled with a mixed-age energy that attested to the band's cross-generational appeal.
Out of all the performers, Neil Young has remained the most vigorous, experimental and consistently visible.
Clearly this was his show. The set vacillated between tracks from his anti-Bush album, "Living with War," and classic CSN&Y tracks that seemed barely tarnished by the brush of time.
The musical interplay was often centered on Young, his guitar and vocals noticeably louder in the mix than the rest of the band. By the third song he was soloing like crazy, matching licks with his compatriots and leaning forward in his uniquely precarious way.
The band's trademark vocal harmonies felt as crisp, smooth and strong as the $7 Fat Tires the mini-bars sold throughout the venue. CSN&Y often ended songs on a minor down-note, bringing into relief the oft-imitated but misdirected homages to them floating around in the classic-rock world.
A blown-up photo of the Constitution lined the stage, providing an interesting contrast to the omnipresent odor of marijuana in the venue.
Certainly, every show at Red Rocks (and pretty much everywhere else) is prone to that, but when the audience skews towards the older end of the baby boom, it's a testament to the staying power of the hippie counterculture. During "Long Time Coming" - only about three songs into the set - most of the audience chose to sit, content to enjoy the chiming guitars from their comfortable perches.
"Strange weather we're having," Young observed after noting how the band's tour buses ran on bio-diesel. He then launched into the political "After the Garden," from "Living with War," which sounded ultimately more relevant after his pedantic mini-speech.
The song also sounded better than ever, as the band's four-part harmonies transformed a fairly straightforward rock ditty into a meaningful indictment of American public
Neil
Young carries show at Red Rocks