Down By the River

I saw Neil Young & Crazy Horse in 1997, the summer after I had graduated from high school. At the time I would say I was a fan of Neil's, but looking back, I only knew about 5% of his catalog. I picked up Mirror Ball because of his association with Pearl Jam when it came out, and had checked out a couple of his other current albums as they came out. I also picked up Decade from Trader Vics sometime in the fall of my senior year, but I had yet to fully appreciate it going into this concert.

The show remains in my top five concert experiences of all time. I was completely blown away. It is funny looking back, because in the biography Shakey author Jimmy McDonough writes off the shows of this time period. Maybe I saw a good night of the tour, but seeing the band rip into "Down By the River" left me in an absolute trance.

I have always thought that the song was a little skeletal, a minimalist song highlighted with Young and Danny Whitten's incredible guitar playing. The back and forth between the two on this song (and really, the whole album from which this song come, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere) is guitar interplay at it's finest. A fantastic acoustic version on Live at Massey Hall 1971 shows a great song to begin with. So in fact, it is a great song taken to exceptional heights by Young and Whitten's guitar treatment.

In the decade since seeing that wonderful performance, I have become somewhat of a Neil Young fanatic. Old Ways is the only album that I haven't purchased, and it too will someday will sit on my CD shelf with After the Goldrush and Landing On Water. It is only a matter of time. I imagine this will not be the last of his songs discussed in this project, but it remains my favorite.