Neil Young played Finsbury Park, with Booker T and the MGs backing him, on my 28th birthday. Also on the bill were James and Pearl Jam. James were fantastic, a real return to form, playing several brilliant new songs from the (at that time) unreleased Laid album. David Farrow and I had been staying with Mags and Jeremy in Camberwell, and, though I can't remember much about the evening before, I think we may have had a reasonably heavy night. So when Pearl Jam came on, I lay down and did my best to sleep.
So I can't say I was massively excited when I heard that Neil's new album featured Pearl Jam backing him. I was at a meeting at Yorkshire Cable one day in spring/summer 1995 when David Kay asked if I had the album yet, and said he'd had it for a few days. I was shamed, and bought it from the Warp shop a few hours later: I vowed that David would never beat me in this way again.
The album itself is much of a muchness by Neil Young standards. With the benefit of hindsight, it sounds quite interesting just because Neil never made an album that sounded quite like this before or since. It feels to me like this is the album that stands most apart from the rest of his work (and I include Trans and Everybody's Rockin' in that), and that in itself makes it interesting. I think the lyrics on this album — about abortion among other subjects — may be some of Neil's best, but they get buried in the sludge of the sound.
You see, Pearl Jam are dull, dull, dull. I saw the tour for this album (in some horrific shed in Dublin, but at least it was inside) and Pearl Jam came on first, before Neil, looking distinctly grey-haired for the first time, joined them. He was so much bigger than them, both literally and in terms of presence.
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