Jonathan Demme Double Feature Weekend: Neil Young's Complex Sessions + Trunk Show

Neil Young & Jonathan Demme
"Heart of Gold" Premieres at Sundance Film Festival - 2006

A Jonathan Demme Double Feature Weekend with Neil Young's Complex Sessions (1994) + Trunk Show (2009) on Screen #2 | Hearse Theater | NYA.

Film Director Jonathan Demme (22/2/47 - 26/4/2017) is credited with THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991), PHILADELPHIA (1993), SOMETHING WILD (1986), HEART OF GOLD (2006) and RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (2008).

Jonathan Demme and Neil Young have had a long and highly productive relationship over the years.


Both Bruce Springsteen and Young were nominated for Academy Award nomination in 1994 for Best Song in a film for Jonathan Demme's "Philadelphia". Bruce's nominated song was the film opening "Streets of Philadelphia" and Neil's was the closing title track "Philadelphia".

The Complex Sessions
A Neil Young & Crazy Horse Film
Directed by Jonathan Demme

Neil Young and Crazy Horse's "Change Your Mind" from the Complex Sessions masterfully captures the group in all their power and beauty.

Recorded at the Complex Studios in Los Angeles, where Neil Young and Crazy Horse had recorded Sleeps With Angels, director Jonathan Demme filmed them performing four songs from the album. Shot over two nights on Oct. 3-4, 1994, the 30-minute video contains "My Heart," "Prime Of Life," "Change Your Mind," and "Piece Of Crap."

In the 15-minute "Change Your Mind," with its lengthy instrumental passages, Demme varies the lighting from near darkness to excessive brightness. (See "Change Your Mind" lyrics analysis.)

"Change Your Mind"
Neil Young and Crazy Horse

From NEIL YOUNG'S - and Rock n' Roll's - Finest Moment (Fi - The Magazine of Music & Sound, June, 1996) by Paul Williams:

At my local record store, I recently came across a videocassette which apparently had been available for a year, but which I'd never heard about, called Neil Young and Crazy Horse: The Complex Sessions. Bought it, brought it home, watched and listened and was absolutely astonished.

Don't fall into the trap of believing that the great moments in rock and roll history are all in the past. This twenty-seven minute performance by one of rock's greatest and most enduring artists and bands is headline news. What rock and roll has always tried to achieve has never come any closer than this, or Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," or Janis and Big Brother live in 1967, or Springsteen and E Street in 1975.

You shoulda been there.

And in this case, thanks to the miracle of recording technology, you can be. This videotape will wear out no faster than your all-time favorite 45, it is just as deserving of repeated plays, just as possibly able to continue to deepen its resonance through the rest of your lifetime. The best argument I've ever heard for owning a "home theater" setup with superior audio capabilities.

The mix on this tape is so brilliant it even sounds good on a damn TV set, but I keep wanting to turn it up louder than the TV will go.

The Complex Sessions seems to me to represent a pivotal moment in rock history (as, say, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" did), not only because it's so good but also because it is a breakthrough in the creative use of a medium (the long-form rock video as a work of art) that has defeated most supplicants, including Neil as often as not. On the other hand, it isn't selling many copies, and in our increasingly corrupt pop culture, that and inches of press coverage are the only measurements of "significance." Oh well. Great music is still great music.

If a tree falls in the forest but nobody writes a review, did it make a sound?

Complete article on Complex Sessions NEIL YOUNG'S - and Rock n' Roll's - Finest Moment (Fi - The Magazine of Music & Sound, June, 1996) by Paul Williams.

More Jonathan Demme and Neil Young, Sleeps With Angels reviews, and "Change Your Mind" lyrics analysis.


Neil Young Trunk Show was filmed over two nights at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia, PA in December 2007 which we had the privilege of attending.

Photo by thrasher
More on the Trunk Show concerts in Philadelphia.


Neil Young
Tower Theater, Philadelphia, PA - December 2007
Photo by thrasher
Below, a Jonathan Demme interview on Neil Young Trunk Show film at Toronto Film Festival in September, 2009.



From Variety - Demme digs Neil Young concert pics :

"We don’t have an illusion that this is something that can move into a movie theater and play for weeks," Demme says, acknowledging the tough times facing docus. "I’m hoping we’ll have some great moment in theaters, but I know full well this is a cable and DVD play." Demme is already prepping the DVD, which will include eight songs not seen in the 82-minute theatrical version.

Additionally, Demme is thinking about another film with Young to complete the trilogy: "I just feel that the physics lead to a third movie." he says.

Trunk Show's Mission: "To blow your eardrums out"After Greg Kot's rave review of 'Neil Young Trunk Show: Scenes from a Concert', we thought we'd be hard pressed to find a critic who could top describing the indescribable.

From Reverse Shot by Andrew Chan:

Trunk Show allows us an intense focus on an aging man throwing his entire body into the music, at times seemingly surprised by the passion and sheer sadness of the sound he’s making.

There are, indeed, few sounds in popular music more heartbreaking than a Neil Young vocal.

Sometimes a sharp and atonal bleat, sometimes hanging nervously in the back of his mouth, Young’s voice is so instantly memorable it needs no words and no narrative to flesh it out. Demme trusts in this and is clearly, appropriately, in awe of it, but he also isn’t interested in presenting us the same permanently plaintive Young. In an interview, he has even advised: “If you’re not a Neil Young fan, don’t waste your time . . . if you don’t love electric guitar, don’t go.”

Accentuating the murkiness and loudness of the rocker’s new material is a stage lit by dim, sickly yellow and purple spotlights, substituting for the comfort of Heart of Gold’s ochre and umber. Gone are the backdrops depicting hearth and home; here, a few grotesque props remind us of the set design for the grungy Young-directed concert film Rust Never Sleeps. As if standing in defiance of those who accused Heart of Gold of pimping Young as some Starbucks-friendly folkster (or those who remain suspicious of an artist who briefly cultivated a soft-rock following in the Seventies), Trunk Show eventually announces its mission to blow your eardrums out.

The meat of the film is not the bravely shy singer but the merciless guitarist, and “No Hidden Path,” a monstrous 20-minute jam that brings the first half to its climax, serves as a kind of litmus test. Taken from his latest studio album, Chrome Dreams II, the song starts out with images of moon and mist that would have fit in the lyrics of “Harvest Moon,” before launching into the type of vague spiritual pronouncements that have recently muddied Young’s once-vivid songwriting.

Once the guitar takes over, though, there’s no turning back. A cacophony of escalating moans, yelps, and screeches, the performance is likely to try the patience of all but the truest devotees. But by the end, the uninitiated may feel they’ve undergone something like a religious conversion—especially when Young lets our bleeding ears rest once again on some of those impossibly delicate ballads. Even the most brutal of art-house provocateurs would have a hard time cinematically sustaining such an outburst of anguish and foreboding, while steering us so swiftly back to safety and solace.

What emerges is the most coherent and generous portrait of this artist yet captured on film, and probably the most remarkable melding of his soft and hard sides since the 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. When he’s stalking across the stage in a rocked-out stupor, wisps of hair dangling in his face, it’s the force of his commitment that moves you. Where Heart of Gold showed us a man ready to make peace with the dying of the light, Trunk Show gives us all the rage Young has left in him.

Awesome Andrew. Thanks!

More reviews of 'Neil Young Trunk Show: Scenes from a Concert'.

From an interview with Director Jonathan Demme on Spinner by Liisa Ladouceur:

"The film was shot over two nights in 2007 at the Tower Theater in Pennsylvania during Young's 'Chrome Dreams II' tour. It eschews the chronology of the concerts' set lists, instead jumping around between electric and acoustic numbers both familiar ('Cowgirl in the Sand,' 'Cinnamon Girl') and rare ('Ambulance Blues, 'Mexico') and what passes for costume changes at a Young show (jacket goes on, jacket comes off). The focus is on the interactions between Young and his band, and Demme admits there was 'minimal' pre-planning before the shoot. 'I just tried to respond spontaneously to the music,' he says.

One impromptu moment captured in the film is when Young appears to forget the words to his hit 'Like a Hurricane.' Demme responded by putting the lyrics up onscreen, karaoke style. 'The whole point of that song is that the person telling the story gets lost in a hurricane,' Demme explains, laughing. 'So when Neil is wandering around the stage, forgetting to sing into the microphone, it was like he got lost, too. I thought it was perfect. And Neil liked it; he asked me to keep it in.'

Demme admits he's a 'Neil Young groupie' and says he's already planning a third film with the singer, although no details are forthcoming. And while he says 'nothing can ever compete with live music,' he still finds concert filmmaking exciting.

'We can present a more intimate view of what's going on on the stage.' he says. 'We can pull the audience out of their seat and put them inside the music. Because it's the music that's the message. It's what takes us on the journey.'"

A terrific interview with Demme on MSN by Seán Francis Condon:

"Seán Francis Condon: Is 'Trunk Show' the most elaborate sound mix you've done?

Demme: No. In fact, when we did 'Heart of Gold' - when I've done any of these performance films, whoever's doing them - you cut to the board mix. But then you go on to a movie mixing stage, and you break all the tracks down and you make a brand new mix that in theory is going to be the best sound tapestry and make sure you get everything right. We did 'Heart of Gold' that way, and Neil was at the controls. But here, the more we cut to the board mix, the more I thought it would be insane and kind of against the whole vibe of this show and the film to break that up. This sounds live to me! So, we really stuck with the board mix. Ninety-five percent of what we hear now is what the people in the room heard those nights. There are a couple of places where just one of the levers wasn't up enough and we couldn't hear something. Here and there. This is essentially like a bootleg soundtrack."

From Guardian.co.uk:

DEMME: "When I see him galumphing across the stage in the middle of No Hidden Path, so deep in a trance-state, making sounds that I've never heard and I find so thrilling … it's like if Tchaikovsky had been a guitar player. I just think in terms of the word master coming into my head. Look at this grizzled master just burning this stuff down."

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Also, see Trailer for Neil Young Trunk Show Movie.

More on the Trunk Show concerts in Philadelphia.


Jonathan Demme and Neil Young
More on Jonathan Demme and Neil Young:

- Young and Demme Discuss Trunk Show Movie

- Trunk Show's Mission: "To blow your eardrums out"

- Unscripted Interview: Demme & Young

- Director Jonathan Demme on "Prairie Wind"/Heart of Gold film

- "Heart of Gold" Premieres at Sundance Film Festival

- The Complex Sessions: Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Directed by Jonathan Demme


Photo by Larry Cragg
Also, In Memory of Jonathan Demme: 1944 - 2017 .

Film Director Jonathan Demme has passed away at age 73
Musician Neil Young and Director Jonathan Demme - 2012
Photo by Victoria Will/AP
(Click photo to enlarge)

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