Neil Young & the chrome hearts, Pine Knob, August 13, 2025
live music is better | bumperstickers should be issued
I wrote about this show in depth over at Salon, so consider this a companion piece.
I did not plan on seeing this tour. I saw the fantastic set from Neil and the Horse at Jazz Fest in 2024 so I felt like sitting this one out – especially at the ticket prices – would probably be a decision I wouldn’t regret too much. The initial Euro setlists were interesting but not motivational, and then “Ambulance Blues” showed up and stayed and the rest of the set began to gel in a very interesting fashion in terms of not so much a narrative arc but at least what I felt was a recognizable theme and one day I woke up and decided I needed to go and started watching tickets.
You don’t know how you’re going to react to hearing songs, you know? There was part of me that wanted to get very, very stoned and lie down on the lawn while “Ambulance Blues” played in the background but that also felt like an indulgent luxury, this is a song that required my attention. I am not kidding when I tell you that the feeling in my very bones when he played those opening bars was absolutely surreal. Your senses go into overdrive and you have to balance delight and euphoria and the weight or the meaning of the song on both your particular continuum of fandom and where it lands within the artist’s work.
When it was over, I took a breath and then settled into “Cowgirl in the Sand.” I hit the timer on my phone. I sat on the edge of my seat, because no one was standing up where I was, but honestly, I just wished for a way to levitate above the stage. When these songs are encoded into your body at a deep and essential level it means something else when you get to stand in the same place with them being performed live in front of you. Your cells vibrate, and I believe they remember the entirety of your experience with a song or a note or a riff.
I was a big fan of Greendale and had a very memorable experience seeing it performed live at the then-brand-new White Lake Amphitheater just outside of Seattle. It’s essentially a rock opera and it was performed as a stage play with actors and choreography and film and the live band and while there were definitely parts of it that were cringe, as the kids say, that was part of what I loved about it. There was no irony on that stage. Neil meant it, the people involved in the production gave it their all, and it made me appreciate the songs even more.
I once played “Be the Rain” when I was driving cross-country back to Seattle from New Jersey in 2003. The sun was setting ahead of me, and I crossed the Mississippi River and drove through the prairie and I just let the song loop something like 20 times in a row. The song is meant to be inspiring, it’s meant to encourage action but that day, that listening in the car with the windows down (I didn’t even have air conditioning in that vehicle; you didn’t need it in Seattle back then) was cleansing, liberating. I stopped at a scenic overlook that was just rolling hills and grasslands and birds and knew I was going to be okay. When I saw that it was on the setlist I just prayed quietly that it stayed there so I could say hello to it again. It is still just as solid and capable as it was 20 years ago.
“Cinnamon Girl” is always a bop -- your baby does, indeed, love to dance, and I did the best I could in my seat. I was grateful when the gentleman next to me got up after this one and moved down a row. (I really wanted an aisle seat but the premium Ticketmaster assigns to them these days makes it more and more prohibitive of an option, not to mention the single showgoer penalty of not being able to select any seat in a pair without buying the second one too.) “The Loner” was one of those moments where you know every word in the song by heart but it takes you a minute to remember what it’s called and to place it correctly in the discography.
I did not expect the audience’s reaction to “Southern Man.” Unlike the Outlaw Festival, there were no jackasses in red baseball caps walking around and no offensive t-shirts. Neil kind of sets expectations by having Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, those NYC protest march veterans, open up and comment on the heat, quoting Leonard Peltier saying that the planet is communicating with us.
“Southern Man” in 2025 hits different. In the original, there’s a knife edge, it’s darker, there’s a definite sense of danger. That might have all still been in there but the wave of not just recognition but affirmation made it into a communal moment instead of just one man’s viewpoint -- not that the viewpoint is wrong, or incorrect, but this story came from the real world and it is still very much part of the real world. And “Ohio” next absolutely floored me. I stood up out of respect and I assumed that anyone behind me would understand it. I still get goosebumps thinking about having seen it at Jazz Fest in 2024 on the 54th anniversary of the shootings. I woke up that morning and said to my friend, “You know, it’s May 4th.” And Neil did not forget. As if any of us could.
The moment of “Harvest Moon” causing a great wave of delight from the crowd, and couples getting up to snuggle or try to dance in front of their seats was a great respite. I also was so glad to hear “New Mama” because of the absolutely divine harmonies. I always want to put “Love and Only Love” on Mirror Ball and this is one of my quirks but listen and tell me that it’s not completely off-base. I know, it could only be the Horse, but there’s something in the bounce and swing of it that feels like Neil Jam.
I was glad for “Hey Hey, My My” to reward the gentleman that bellowed for it early in the evening after a particularly great noise had been manifested on that stage. “Like a Hurricane” is not my favorite of the Neil classics but the added energy of the chrome hearts enlivened it. I confess I began plotting my exit while “Old Man” was going on (because my Salon deadline was early the next afternoon so I had to get home and write), and I was poised at the edge of the amphitheatre by the start of “Rockin’ In the Free World,” or as I will always remember it, RITFW.
It is always a weird moment for me when he does this song because I have heard Pearl Jam’s version exponentially many more times than I have heard Neil play it, and PJ’s interpretation is via the Clash, pedal to the metal and speedometer on red, and my muscle memory gets impatient. So it was actually quite a wonderful thing to be walking to my car with it still playing onstage behind me, joyfully singing along as I walked through the parking lot.
I said this on instagram, I said it in my Salon essay - sometimes you don’t know how much you need to see something until you are standing there in front of it. I really wanted to see this show but I didn’t realize how much I needed to see it until the beginning of “Cowgirl in the Sand.” It was this combination of knowing this is where I belong and that these songs are things I carry with me always. I am grateful that there are many places where this can happen for me but the depth of that particular realization at that particular moment was profound in a way I didn’t anticipate. I am thankful to whatever cosmic force prodded me into going to this show.
That said, let’s talk about ticket prices. I finally found a ticket I felt okay about buying (in terms of the price/location ratio) about a month out and honestly when I looked the day before I was irked because I should have waited it out, I could have gotten myself one section down and one section more towards center. That would have let me stand up all night and been surrounded by people who were less interested in beer runs. But I also know myself well enough that I would have just been looking every day and driving myself bonkers. Once I found a ticket I was happy with, I bought it just so I didn’t have to think about it any more.
I appreciate Neil not wanting the scalpers to get in on the action by insisting on using the Ticketmaster resale marketplace but that also means that you cannot get any bargains. There was a noticable amount of empty seats in the areas in front of me Wednesday night, right across the mid-center of the amphitheater bowl, and I was sitting at the first row of the price break. I got in for $219 but everything in front of me was in the $292 range, which went down to $232 at some point. I just could not justify that extra $100; the same thing happened to me when I went to see Springsteen in Pittsburgh in 2024 – the front row behind the stage was almost $400 so I sat a couple of rows up for $250. I sat in the same section a few rows further up in 2016 and paid $125. We have to talk about ticket prices because most people reviewing shows are getting in for free and aren’t out there in the trenches and ticket prices are definitely a barrier in people getting to see live music. I wish you all could’ve seen this one.
