WEMBLEY - SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14: The Wembley Music Concert,
starring Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joni Mitchell and the Band went off ... well,
okay is probably the best word. Not climacteric, or transcendental, or phantasmagoric, or
even plain outasite - just ... okay. I mean 72,000 people showed up from all over Europe
(according to the promoter, Mel Bush), and the peak of excitement recorded two cats in
front of the stage doing an Indian shuffle dance to a one-note jam on "Carry
On"?
All right, so there was one miracle, in a month when it seemed that
Britain had cornered the market in meteorological depressions, the sun shone in a pristine
autumn sky and the pak-a-macks were strictly for making life-easier on the backside. But
I'd take a raincheck, all the same, on it being the "event of the year," as it
shaped up to beforehand.
Even Joni Mitchell, the most intimate performer to grace Wembley since
Matthews and Mortensen lit a fire in spectator's hearts - even she had a hard time lifting
the crowds from their watchful contemplation to a higher emotional plateau. "Let's
try and get this chorus going," she laughed a little nervously, "Laughing it all
awaaay ... " Sing it like you're really happy and you remember what it's like to be
sad." Trying to raise the drifting heads, to catch a spark, she did the line several
times.
"Come on!"
Okay, so she'd cut her losses and ride with the oh so relaxed emotions
of the day. So be it; if it was to be an At-Home for apostolic laid-back musicians of the
West Coast, so be it. As for the bill-toppers, CSN and Y, they raised both the energy and
decibel level - not necessarily the same thing - and just about maintained interest all
the way through, which is something really for a four-hour set.
They played as if they enjoyed themselves, too, and this factor offset
a good deal of what was merely competent in their performance.
But all the onstage self-congratulation! The backslaps and the
handshakes, the kisses and cuddles - it was more hysteric than historic; certainly
disproportionate to what was going down.
Those sins of omission committed in the name of good vibes ... How
churlish! you say. Perhaps you're right. The sun was shining, and when it wasn't the night
was clear and fresh, a couple of rockets exploding in the skies over Harlesden.
Once, George Harrison peered round the amps and snapped shots of the
crowd. Marianne Faithfull, in wide-brimmed hat, sat peaky faced in front of the stage - on
the rough gravel, like the rest of us. And north London pubs did brutal business as the
great mob sprawled in and out and around.
But the music seemed, somehow, less a focal point than a backdrop for a
general mood of reserve, broken only fleetingly by moments of commitment to the
performances.
It's enfeebled spirit of our life and times, in which the elements of
mystery and surprise have been lost.
The audience was content to take its pleasure quietly and without
excessive enthusiasm; the artists - none of whom played badly - were only mortals on the
day.
Great rock music isn't created within a vacuum. And open-air festivals
should be events, not merely visual supplements of records.
And yet right at the very end there was Graham Nash hack on his own
turf, after all, with head raised to the multitudes.
"You make me very proud," he said, a lump in the throat. And
ultimately no-one could argue that it had, at least, been good-natured.
"I wish we could find somebody as good as ourselves to open our
own shows," Jesse Colin Young had remarked the day before the Wembley marathon
lurched off to an uncertain start in a flurry of politics, cynicism, managerial moodies
and general heaviness (writes STEVE LAKE).
Leaving musical considerations aside for a moment, understand that
whatever else he might be, Jesse Colin Young is surely a trouper-and-a-half.
Get this. The day before Wembley, Elliott Roberts, manager of Joni
Mitchell and Neil Young, decides that just in case the show should over-run, the whole
shebang will start at 11.30 and this despite the fact that the printed tickets,
programmes, adverts, everything, all stipulate a noon kick-off. What's worse is that no
attempt is made to inform the kids who dutifully shelled out their £3.50s.
Anyhow, cursing through clenched teeth, one presumes, Jesse Colin Young
gets out there and does his stuff, and just through sheer musicality manages to seduce the
first twenty or thirty thousand folks to turn up catching them gently by the ears as they
walk into the auditorium.
Lazily
Young's band is a fine one although it's difficult to tell as the sound
mixer lazily twiddles dials, exercising his fingers for the long day ahead.
Insurmountable difficulties notwith- standing, by his second or third
number Jesse's got the scattered crowd pretty well captivated.
Dressed simply in white shirt and blue jeans, Young adopts a
Springsteen-Dylan-John Stewart-type stride stance, cocks his head to one side and the band
tumble into "Barbados," full of the spirit of calypso with the horns of Pat
O'Hara and Bob Ferreira carnival-dancing across the lame P.A.
And it's the horns again uppermost on "Euphoria," a flashback
to the earliest days of the Youngbloods, and now a trad jazz stomp. More typically,
"Ridgetop" and "Miss Hesitation" unearth the subtler side of J.C.,
with much interplay between Young's gorgeously high and breathy voice and the reeds, while
Scott Lawrence comps all over the keyboards, and his big sister Suzi, who just happens to
be Jesse's old lady of twelve years' standing nestles up close to hubby and adds some
spot-on harmonies.
After a quick trip through Cajun country with Clifton Chenier's
"Lafayette Waltz " and Hank William's' "Jambalaya," Jesse gets
seriously funky with T-Bone Walker's "T-Bone Shuffle," Lawrence jiving upfront
and exhorting. the audience to clap along. They do so actually managing an off-beat, and
the Young band goes off to loud cheers and are brought back for the first encore of the
day, which unsurprisingly is "Light Shine", drummer Jeffrey Myer going apeshit
on the double-time conclusion.
And that's it: the only surprise victory of the day accomplished before
fifty per cent of the audience have even arrived. What's required now is for some
enterprising promoter to put Jesse on a cross-country tour with Taj Mahal and these Isles
would be wiped out.
Now Young's no chicken, being just the wrong side of thirty, but by
contrast with the Band, shambling on all beards, sloops and beer-guts, he looks positively
teenage. Levon Helm and Co could easily have passed for Ducks Deluxe, visually, at least.
Nonetheless, the music played was agreeable enough, if not especially
distinguished, or come to that, especially interesting, and suggested that the group have
done nothing to further the statements made with "Big Pink" back in the days of
Woodstock.
Ah, yes, Woodstock. You'll recall that the Band, despite having played
at that memorable catastrophe, were not deemed interesting enough to be included in the
celluloid edited highlights.
Maybe they just don't function at their peak in a festival setting,
leastways not without Dylan at the helm.
The most riveting few minutes in the set came as ever, from Garth
Hudson at the Lowrey organ with a sheets-of-sound solo preceding "Chest Fever"
that would have given the Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge food for thought, albeit
fleetingly.
Otherwise, the numbers that drew the most applause were, as expected,
the best known - "The Weight," "Up On Cripple Creek," and "The
Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." In their favour, they did also perform a rather
mangled version of "Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever"; full marks for the
sentiment anyhow.
Friends
A lone confederate flag flapping up front in the arena, the band at any
rate had enough friends in the stadium to command an encore, or maybe people just cheered
out of a sense of duty.
TOM SCOTT and the L.A. Express (writes MICHAEL WATTS) who came on in
mid-afternoon, are to the Seventies what Sounds Incorporated were to the Sixties - an
omnifunctional band who can back practically anyone and still hold down their own spot,
the significant difference being the depth of their musicianship.
As an indication of their disparate talents, they will be stepping out
with George Harrison and Ravi Shankar on the up-coming autumnal tour, while they've become
the regular backing group for Joni Mitchell, and appeared with her at her concerts at the
New Victoria earlier this year.
Scott, who plays a multiplicity of horns, is the fulcrum and an
excellent soloist of the funky jazz school with a definite leaning towards John Coltrane.
But the most exciting player is the guitarist Robben Ford, a Jimmy
Witherspoon sideman last year, who's coming from the lengthening tradition of British
blues/rock, and who's developed a particular liking for wah-wah soloing.
Between the two of them they carve up the action, supported by Max
Bennett on bass, John Guerin on drums and a black keyboards player in Larry Nash, who's
replaced the solidly jazz-grounded pianist Roger Kellaway since the L.A. Express's
previous visit.
In terms of competence few rock acts could hold a candle to them. They
skirt the boundaries of Mahavishnu and Frank Zappa.
But in a sense they're limited by their versatility, as is usually the
problem with this kind of band, and their inability to define their own style eventually
works against them from the audience's viewpoint.
Despite all the display of technique, one couldn't quite shake off the
conviction that it was essentially interval music, a build-up for the next big act.
AND SO, after some 30 minutes, to Joni Mitchell, her face strikingly
rouged, her hair pulled neatly back, and resembling, in a crisp cream shirt and grey
slacks, a rather attractive riding instructress. How soon the denim fades, and in its
place a chic that has more to do with Mayfair than Topanga Canyon - which is surely an
observation, not a criticism.
As is evident from her more recent songs, this greater sophistication
extends also to her artistic processes.
Complex
Her last album, "Court And Spark" is a good deal more complex
in its expression of emotions than in the era of "Woodstock" and "Big
Yellow Taxi."
Her newest songs, as yet unreleased, continue to vein the deep lode of
her emotional autobiography, and although a vast outdoor occasion is hardly the place to
examine fresh chapters, at least one number was lyrically arresting - a song that strongly
suggested her awareness of her worshipful attraction for men: "you come to me like a
little boy/ And I give you scorn and I give you praise."
And not even the abrupt confiscation from someone in the crowd of a
tape recorder (with its microphone mounted on a length of bamboo) by a heavy dude from
Artistes Services - gentlemen universally distinguished by the rotundity of their bellies
- could spoil the intimacy of the moment.
Would that it had all been as delicate, but it was hard to surrender
oneself totally to her on the premier playing field of Britain, with nuances, one
imagined, being whisked up and away to nearby Neasden.
Something banal in the air. Too much space for the emotions to
reverberate and echo back.
Most of her material, though was familiar.
A poignant "Blue," done at the piano, an equally affecting
"For Free", with Scott on clarinet, "Help Me," "Free Man In
Paris," "This Flight Tonight," "People's Parties " - even back to
"Big Yellow Taxi."
Furnace
And revving up to the end with "Raised On Robbery" - the
furnace door opened - and an encore on "Twisted," which was accompanied by a
little hip-swinging at the mike and a slightly embarrassing patter, designed to cheerfully
diagnose the Freudian complications in all of us. Leave that out.
Then a wind-up, with a very floral-looking Annie Ross brought out and
introduced as co-writer of the song. Debt acknowledged off she went.
She was to return later in a harmonising role with Crosby, Stills, Nash
and Young, of whom David Crosby was also distinguished at first sight by the perceptible
curve of his paunch.
He's become a trifle porky with age, and that ridiculous walrus
moustache and the hair tufting wildly off his brow gives him the appearance of an
eccentric, jolly uncle.
But then each of the four principals seems to have grown into a highly
individual role and aspect.
Stills in his Army surplus shirt, twirling his guitar at the end of
songs like a guardsman about to present arms, is very much the organiser and controlling
influence, shaping each song with a solo or a lick, an air of authority and concentration
shading his face.
Young is bonie moronie in an outsize, old striped jacket and familiar
patched jeans, rarely smiling, his jaw hanging a little slack, the whole quality of
splendid exaggeration enforced by a pair of heavy, impenetrable shades, so that he could
well pass as a white version of the Tonton Macoutes.
He's still playing the part of the Loner, the one on the periphery of
all this intense camaraderie; during the jams he moves away from the front of the stage to
face the drummer, Russ Kunkel, and the conga-player Joe Lala, while he and his bassist,
Tim Drummond, lay down that peculiarly Young-like rhythm, plodding and inexorable.
And up there, spokesman for the day and English exile is Graham Nash,
impossibly thin and wiry, a nut cutlet version of the former Hollie. Touchingly vulnerable
and ingenuous, he's instrumental in spreading around the good vibes.
He adjusts the mike for Stills, he slaps the tambourine, he moves to
the congas, then to the piano and back to the guitar; he and Crosby, dark eyes
a-twinkling, establish that rangy vocal base which is at the heart of Crosby, Stills, Nash
and Young.
Each of them - though Crosby less so - takes a turn for the spotlight.
Young sings with Joni "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," then brings out his tiny
infant and holds it up to the crowd.
His songs have that characteristic air of lugubrious romance - songs of
defeat, of the angst of stardom (Don't Be Denied"); he performs them with gloomy
relish.
All the same, he's the strongest artist of the four, even if it's only
that he's the most unsettling.
Stills is the chief soloist, his splintered, fragmented phrasing
contrasting strongly with the whining treble of Young's guitar work. He's also an exciting
player to watch, swinging the axe around, pushing it out into the audience, leaping up and
down to shut off a number.
Acoustic
He switches back and forth from electric to acoustic, and does a fast
blues pick, Joe Williams-style, on a song that sounds uncannily like "It's All Right,
Ma."
Then he tries some fuzz guitar, the number uncomprehendingly Latin -
the only reminder in his performance of the days with Manassas (and, it should be
remarked, not very successful).
Young and Stills - these are the polarities of the band, but during the
instrumental passages they all huddle in the middle of the stage, facing each other, so
that they create a kind of power centre there.
The end of every song seems to be a signal for a required reaffirmation
of the band's newly-forged bond of friendship.
There's much touching and grinning and rueful shaking of heads.
"Whew! Boy, that was really something, huh, that solo of yours. You're not so bad
yourself, y'know. I can dig it."
And as the evening grows steadily darker, the four are empurpled in the
spotlights, moments preserved in amber for the photographers.
Still, although it's said to be the last time they will perform
together, the moments are only occasionally momentous, and they occur when the band is
performing songs, rather than on the attempts at instrumental improvisation.
A fine version of McCartney's " Blackbird," with Stills'
horse vocal taking the lead, Crosby and Nash smoothing out the harmonies; Neil wailing
away on "Helpless" and "Don't Be Denied "; or Nash finding a little
intimate corner with "Our House."
Our house, is a very, very, very fine house. What could be more
Mancunian?
Succeed
But perhaps it's all too much of a democracy to truly succeed as a
great set. One individual follows another.
They never build up a real head of steam for more than a couple of
numbers.
Instinctively I found myself guessing who'd be next to step up to the
mike. And the sense of them as big-name artists was frequently at odds with their actual
performance.
The long jam on "Carry On," which closed the set, was
mindless and boring; Crosby's "Almost Cut My Hair" seemed more daft than ever -
a sentiment now totally displaced in time. Their earnestness couldn't always pull them
through.
It was both right and totally inappropriate that they should finish as
an encore with "Ohio". "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming."
Well, Nixon's gone now, in almost every sense. But that song was
emphatically about a particular era - about McGovern, and student politicking, and fierce
idealism - and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are firmly of that era, the placard reading
"Good Vibes" hung about their necks.
And that was why Saturday's gig at Wembley was somewhat washed-out.
Because, after all, you can't help but make comparisons. Nostalgia is rampant in the
blood. Where will it all end?
CSN&Y- journey through the past