In early December 1989 I got my copy of the NME on the way into work, and skimmed it in our office on the tenth floor of Moorfoot. I was startled to read that Neil Young was playing a one-off gig at the Hammersmith Odeon just a couple of weeks later. A call to the box office revealed that all tickets were sold. I called Keith Prowse, or one of those ticket agencies, who offered me a ticket for 80-something quid (the face value can't have been more than 15 or 20). I gulped, and took it. It was in the sixth row, and I've never regretted it.
That show was on 12 December. This bootleg was recorded five days earlier in Frankfurt. (That's according to Pete Long's Ghosts on the Road — the CD cover doesn't specify date or location of recording, although its tracklisting and credits are far above the normal typo-ridden bootleg standard.)
It's good that this is an audience recording rather than one from the sound board, for what is lost in quality is more than made up for in atmosphere. You can really hear the excitement in the audience. As a reminder of what a roll Neil was on at the time, it's extraordinary how rapturously some of the new songs — Rockin' in the Free World, which had only been released two months previously, and This Note's for You — are greeted, as though Neil had just played the opening notes of Like a Hurricane. There I was, thinking, "If this were London, with its notoriously been-there-seen-that audiences, the recording might not have been so lively." But then I dug out my recording of the London gig (made with my £29 tape recorder, so you can mostly just hear the reverb of the venue), and actually we were quite lively, too. Damn, it was exciting to be there, with Neil mostly alone on the large stage prowling around with his cap and his radio mic. I still have the t-shirt, tie-dyed and decorated with the CND symbol.
As is often the case with Neil's shows, it's the 'new' songs that shine the most, even those, like Too Far Gone, that were actually over a decade old but had only just been released. No More, Someday and Hangin' on a Limb all sound as good as they ever have. But the standout is the title track of this bootleg, Crime in the City, which is an absolute tour de force in the energy that comes across from the performance. It helps that it's an amazing song, and the 1988 versions with the full band and horn section are probably just as good: let's hope one of them is released soon.
On some of the older songs, particularly Old Laughing Lady, Neil's guitar playing is, by comparison with the newer material, rudimentary and uninspired. But some of the old songs are arranged in the set list to demonstrate how the new material has its roots in the old, so the anti-drug No More comes after Needle and the Damage Done and the reprise of Rockin' in the Free World rubs up against Ohio.
And as a postscript to all of this, nine days ago I got fifth-row tickets for two of Neil Young's shows at the Hammersmith Odeon next March. This time the cheapest you could get these tickets for was £85 each, including fleecing fees from the disgusting Seetickets. The even more venal Double8tickets was selling them a day later at twice the price. Ticket touts are in the news today, and my guess is that the primary ticket agencies actually collude with the touts in return for kick-backs. I wish more bands would use the more reasonable agencies like WeGotTickets and TicketWeb; I am much more likely to go to their gigs if they do.
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