Eddie Vedder Covers "Sugar Mountain"

Eddie Vedder covers "Sugar Mountain" by Neil Young in Toronto August 21, 2009 on YouTube.

Apparently, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists were slated to open the show but Leo ended up stuck at the border, resulting in just The Pharmacists. So Eddie did a few songs before the show started. This was followed by TNATDD.

A heads up that this video is rather -- how shall we say -- shakey.

The lead singer of the opening act couldn't get across the border so Eddie did a few songs before the show started.


"The Needle and The Damage Done"

Thanks Roel!

From Tens all around for Pearl Jam - The Sault Star - Ontario, CA:

"And while neither has gone through Young's massive Archives Vol. 1 box set from start to finish, Gossard says he's still amazed by the man Vedder calls 'Uncle Neil.'

'I just saw the American Masters thing and it's so shockingly good,' he says.

'He's one of a kind. He's really challenged everybody in terms of what's possible and how to stick to your guns and be totally relevant still. He's a total dreamer. He's very attached with manifesting his imagination. It's crazy.'"

On the 8/24 PJ concert at the Chicago's United Center from Turn It Up - A guided tour through the worlds of pop, rock and rap | Chicago Tribune | Blog:

"“The lead singer was only three or four years older than me,” he said, and then delivered a haunting, finger-picked version of Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done” in tribute to the late Michael Jackson."

From Pearl Jam pulls double duty in Toronto - The Globe and Mail:

"Singer Eddie Vedder casually walked on stage first with a smallish acoustic guitar, said “surprise, surprise,” spoke of his experience of once riding the Ferris wheel with iconic Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young at the nearby Canadian National Exhibition, and then gently strummed Young's Sugar Mountain , a song about carnival barkers, coloured balloons and leaving one's youth behind.

Saying he hoped he wouldn't misplay the next selection, Vedder then offered The Needle and the Damage Done , a sorrowful ode containing the line, “I sing the song because I love the man.” The impromptu performance came on a day in which Vedder had spoken to the Globe and Mail. Mostly he talked about Pearl Jam's forthcoming album Backspacer , but the subject of the mentoring Young was broached. “We learned a lot from Uncle Neil,” Vedder said. “Him adopting us as his nephews has taught [Pearl Jam] immeasurably, on numerous levels. Things about music and about humanity, either by watching him, or hearing what he comes up with, or by conversations we've had.”"

More on Pearl Jam and Neil Young.

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Cowboy Junkies cover Neil Young's "Powderfinger"

The Cowboy Junkies performing the Neil Young cover "Powderfinger" on April 11, 2009 in Dingle, Ireland on YouTube.

Which begs the question, what the hell is "Powderfinger" all about?

Of course, nobody seems to have a clue whatsoever. It's hard to say the meaning of this song.

But really. Isn't it totally obvious what the song "Powderfinger" is about?

Also, see Neil Young's influence on Cowboy Junkies' music.

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Free Neil Young Concert in Toronto

UPDATE 8/25: Per comment below from well informed sources, this will not happen.

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According to today's Toronto Star, Neil Young will be giving a free outdoor concert as part of the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.

As we mentioned last week, The Neil Young Trunk Show directed by Jonathan Demme will premiere Sept. 14 at the festival.

The free concert will be held at Yonge-Dundas Square, downtown Toronto, Canada. Joan Baez will also perform.

We report. You decide.

More on filming Trunk Show in Philadelphia in 2007.

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The Concert I'll Never Forget: HORDE '97

August 20, 2008

We always love to hear a great Neil Young concert story.

So here's a story that we recall from years ago that folks who were there say it was a most incredible memory. Last year, Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot wrote about "The concert I won't forget: The night Neil Young rocked like a hurricane":

Fans who attend rock concerts expect the performers to give their all. But they usually don’t expect them to defy death. So when the editors of the Tribune's Sunday magazine asked me to weigh in on my most surprising moment as a concertgoer, there really was only one choice.

On a muggy midsummer day in 1997, Neil Young and Crazy Horse took the stage at what was then known as the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park. They were part of the H.O.R.D.E. festival on what had so far been a pleasant if hardly transcendent day of music. But as the scruffy quartet took the stage, things got ugly.

A storm was blowing in, a nasty one. A roof covered the stage and part of the audience, but it offered little protection. Lightning creased the sky, thunder crashed, wind howled, and rain whipped sideways through the amphitheater, soaking everyone --- including the band. The Jolly Roger flag on Ralph Molina’s drum kit ripped in the wind, conjuring visions of a sinking galleon. Young and the band plowed ahead anyway, but then the lights, public address system and amplifiers gave out. The concrete aisles sloping toward the stage resembled white-water rapids as rainwater gushed through the pavilion. Panic was in the air. You could feel it, and hundreds of people started to sprint toward the parking lot. I was tempted to join them. I’d never really felt fear at a rock concert before --- until that moment.

It was foregone conclusion that the concert was over. It had to be. Any musician with a lick of sense would’ve been in his dressing room by now drinking a beer and toweling off --- a far better option than death by electrocution.

But Young and the band never stopped.

More of Greg Kot's memories of Neil Young in 1997.

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Woodstock: The Day After

Here's something we've never seen before.

This YouTube video is a compilation of various footage of Crosby, Stills and Nash from 1969.

It includes a segment from The Dick Cavett TV program that was filmed the day after Woodstock with Joni Mitchell and The Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner and Grace Slick.

And out walk David Crosby and Stephen Stills basically straight from Woodstock. Stills shows everyone the mud that is still caked to his jeans which everyone seems to find pretty groovy. Stephen then plays "4+20".

There are other clips from the summer and fall of 1969 including scenes from their home studio in Laurel Canyon, California. Song clips include Crosby's "Song With No Words", Stills' "Black Queen", "Find The Cost of Freedom", and Crosby's "Laughing".

Certainly there's a lot of folklore that's been built up about going down to Yasgur's Farm and joining in a rock and roll band. Like that story about Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young riding a stolen truck to Woodstock.

So it turns out that Neil Young was actually at Woodstock afterall even though he does not appear in the film.

There are a lot of stories about why Neil isn't in the film. Most commonly, it's because he didn't want to be filmed and the lights were cut during CSNY's performance.

Neil's had a lot of contradictory reflections to Woodstock over the years. He used the Woodstock stage announcements extensively during the 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. (Hey, if we think really hard, be the rain.)

Conversely, look closely at the desert scene in the film Journey Through the Past where there is a shot revealing The Graduate wearing a Woodstock shirt just before shooting up.

So it would seem that some of the ethos of the period didn't sit too well with Neil judging by the lyrics of 1986's "Hippie Dream" from Landing On Water

'Cause the tie-dye sails
Are the screamin' sheets
And the dusty trail
Leads to blood in the streets
And the wooden ships
Are a hippie dream
Capsized in excess

And it would seem that's Neil's feelings towards that day only seemed to harden over the years. A quote from biographer Jimmy McDonough's Shakey has been bouncing around the blogs driven by a look at the flip-side of Woodstock in The Globe and Mail:

“Woodstock was a bullshit gig. A piece of shit. We played fuckin’ awful. No one was into the music. I think Stephen [Stills] was way overboard into the huge crowd. Everybody was on this Hollywood trip with the fuckin’ cameras. They weren’t playin’ to the audience as much as to the cameras…I could see everybody changing their performances for the fucking camera and I thought that was bullshit. All these assholes filming, everybody’s carried away with how cool they are…I wasn’t moved.”

Nevertheless, a duet with Stills on "Mr. Soul" from Woodstock was used on The Archives. So maybe the hippie dream wasn't so bad afterall?

But -- for many -- Neil seemed to really drive a stake into the '60's hippie vibe of "peace, love and music" culture with his "music can't change the world" comments last year. And based on the overwhelming reaction, not everyone agreed that the spirit of the 1960's was dead.

But we still think Neil loves hippies.



On the Greendale tour in 2003, we heard Neil say just before "Carmichael" that:

"It used to be that hippies were good and the cops are bad. Nowadays, it's the cops who are good and the hippies that are bad."

Recall how last fall Neil sported that hippie button?

Nostalgia dies hard.



peace. love. music.

We still think that's what it's all about. While just singing a song won't change the world, it's a start.

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