British Summer Time Hyde Park : Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Hyde Park, London (GB) - Jul 12, 2014

Neil Young is someone that I wanted to see so much, that I was happy to pay the money purely to see him and Crazy Horse. "Well duh!'' I can hear you say, but I'm referring to the fact that I was completely disinterested and unwilling to listen to any of the support acts, all of which I'd never heard of and had absolutely no desire to acquaint myself with! Fortunately, my cousin, Lee and pal, Barry were in total agreement and so we turned up at the park, maybe a half hour before Neil Young was due to come on!
Well, Ol' Neil (as Lynyrd Skynyrd once referred to him) and 'The Horse' eventually came on to a rapturous ovation and being a man who likes to do what he wants to do, he launched into 'Love And Only Love', a song I'm frankly unaware of from the 1990 album, Ragged Glory. A couple more not so well known tracks and then a beautiful rendition of the classic 'After The Gold Rush' from Young's 1970 album of the same name.
Young then dipped back into the back catalogue before noticing some members of the crowd calling for more well-known songs, so he kicked off an acoustic section of the set by saying: "You sad bastards out there stop crying and complaining. This one's for you sad bastards," and he went straight into 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart', although the grin on his face, and the way he playfully threw a grape into his mouth, suggested he was either joking or being deliberately provocative.
I guess Neil then wanted to fly his freak flag so he launched into Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' In The Wind' and played 'Heart Of Gold', which got a great reaction.
The electric guitar finally replaced the acoustic and Neil launched into 'Barstool Blues' and 'Psychedelic Pill' before giving everyone, from hard core, long term fans and relatively new appreciators like me what we were really there for with 'Cinnamon Girl' and 'Rockin' In The Free World!'
Okay, I'm going to come clean! Neil Young is someone I love and whom I have a lot of respect for, and what I was seeing was top quality musicianship! The thing is that Neil's songs can be long winded at the best of times ('Cortez The Killer' and 'Ordinary People', for example!) and Neil frankly seemed to want to stretch out every song with unnecessarily long solos which kind of dampened the atmosphere rather than enhanced it. I mean, he probably could've fitted in another couple of songs if he'd have been a little less self indulgent! Add to that the fact that the tempo on 'Rockin' In The Free World' was about a half a second too slow which made it sound lacklustre instead of the driving, angry song of a generation which we all love!
Neil played a new song, 'Who's Gonna Stand Up And Save The Earth', a hippy anthem if ever I heard one which is loaded with environmental messages and criticisms of governments and big corporations, in other words, 'Meh!'
The band then left the stage and returned to play a 16-minute version (16 Fucking minutes!!) of 'Down By The River', from Neil Young And Crazy Horse's 1969 album 'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere'. It was amazing....... for about 8 of those minutes before shuffling replaced the dancing and I was thinking enough now!
The band then took a bow, before walking off with Neil eating the grapes from the whicker basket that Young had been picking at all night!
So to summarise, it has to be said that as brilliant as the concert was, and it truly was brilliant, the overwhelming feeling that I had was one of being slightly disappointed!