Uncut Magazine Editorial on Neil Young's Audience: Walk Like A Giant

Uncut Magazine
August 2013
The latest issue of Uncut Magazine has an editorial reflecting on Neil Young and Crazy Horse's recent Europe tour gigs.

"Neil Young: Walk Like A Giant" by editor Allan Jones, directly addresses much of the audience disconnect that we've been documenting for years now here on Thrasher's Wheat -- most recently on The "Geffen-Like" Reactions to Dublin Concert of Neil Young & Crazy Horse. In fact, the Uncut editorial by Jones could've been written by us in reaction to the comments we often see here.

Last week started on an absolute high when Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Alchemy tour rocked up to London’s 02 Arena, turbulence in its wake, some of the crowds they had recently played to evidently unhappy with aspects of the band’s current set, notably the long jams around the songs they are playing from last year’s Psychedelic Pill, especially “Walk Like A Giant” and the extended feedback cacophony of its final 10 minutes, which was spectacularly brutal. Audiences in Birmingham and Newcastle had been from all accounts clearly agitated. In Dublin, a couple of days before the London show, there had been boos, which perhaps hasn’t happened to Neil since he took Trans on the road in 1982.

Uncut reader Paul Horton went to the Birmingham gig and was sorely disappointed. Like similarly disgruntled commentators in Newcastle and Dublin, he bemoaned the fact that Neil and Crazy Horse hadn’t played any of the songs he had expected to hear. He cited examples of Neil’s ‘great music’ like “Southern Man”, “Alabama”, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “Old Man”, which Paul seemed to suggest should have been played out of some kind of servile obligation to fans, as if Neil has ever felt ‘obliged’ to do anything apart from what to him at any given moment is important. That the songs he wanted to hear weren’t played Paul described as “shameful”.

And so it goes.

Remaining editorial here with a few tour videos. Or save yourself some time. Watch the videos and judge for yourself.

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