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Review: CSNY concert rocks in truly classic style
Monday, March 20, 2000 By Scott Mervis, Weekend Editor, Post-Gazette
I don't know whether it's Wheaties, Geritol or Viagra, but I'll have some of what Neil Young's having.
Not to take anything away from David Crosby, Stephen Stills or Graham Nash -- they all sound fine and could look worse for rock stars pushing 60 -- but Young blew through the Mellon Arena like a hurricane Saturday night, and you had to grab hold of something to stay standing. When it was all over, Nash, the English country gentleman with his teacup, would stroll through Young's wreckage as if he barely knew what hit him.
This was the first CSNY tour since 1974, and now that we've seen it, it's a shame it was such a long time coming. There's an incomparable magic to the soaring harmonies of CSN, and when you add the music and firepower of Y, you've got the classic rock of the gods.
In fact, it was somewhere during that loose third set, as the FM standards hit furiously, that it became clear that these were the guys for whom classic rock was named. That's "classic" rock, as opposed to the dinosaur variety no one wants to hear anymore.
Not only did we get the CSN hits, but Young brought his songbook, the Stills-Young team created a mini-Buffalo Springfield reunion and, surprising everyone, was Crosby pulling out "Eight Miles High" with Young going absolutely bonkers to be playing on a Byrds song.
Young hinted early on that this would be one for the ages.
"Pittsburgh," he muttered. "Pittsburgh's always good."
And it was.
The first set had a bit of a get-acquainted feel, opening with "Carry On" then revving into "Southern Man," before settling into a new-album sampler of Nash's lightweight "Heartland," Stills' Parrothead rock excursion, "Faith in Me," and Crosby's "Stand and Be Counted," possible theme music for Census 2000. Young fared the best with the more down-to-earth "Slowpoke," owing a lot to the great "Heart of Gold."
A slowed-down "Marrakesh Express," minus the signature pedal steel, didn't quite live up to Young's introduction: "When I came in this evening, I looked out the window and saw a long, slow [freight train] rolling by those historic buildings along that old P&L line. ... I felt good."
The first truly write-home moment came when Crosby stepped up proudly with "Almost Cut My Hair," a song about personal liberty that shouldn't mean a thing in the year 2000, but somehow does. With his gorgeous tenor still fully intact, Crosby played up the drama as Young attacked the riff with ear-splitting intensity. Young, wearing a tattered black T-shirt with some Greek doctor's name on it, threw his head-banging, hair-flying energy right into a "Cinnamon Girl," soundly slightly odd as a group effort.
One of the few criticisms of the tour has been directed at the vocals of Stills. Of the four, he's always had the husky, bluesy voice, and now, well, it's more so. But not so bad that he couldn't lead them, quite capably, through the harmonies of "Helplessly Hoping," which opened the acoustic set.
At no time during the night did they seem more like a group of happy old hippies than on Nash's sweet "Our House" and the sing-along "Teach Your Children." Crosby showed us how deep his feelings go with the earnest "Dream for Him," written for his 4-year-old son Django, and sat alone with Nash for a mesmerizingly beautiful reading of "Guinnevere." "Old Man," a song that Young handles best on his own, again got the full harmony treatment, and was a littler weaker for it. Young's other acoustic contributions were "Looking Forward," the new album's tender and hopeful title track, and a haunting version of "After the Gold Rush" that found him at the back of the stage working his wizardry on pipe organ and harmonica.
Through the first two sets, they stuck with the standard set list. In Act 3, the weapon we saw in Act I went off. They rocked through "Woodstock" as if it was Woodstock '99 and roared through "Ohio" as if it all happened yesterday, with Crosby yelling, demanding "I wanna know why!"
Young, now wearing a tattered white T-shirt on which he had scribbled "This note's for you," became an overwhelming force that Stills, no slouch on his Flying V, didn't even seem up to messing with. Young turned an almost 20-minute "Down by the River" into a full guitar concerto, taking it further and deeper into Crazy Horse territory, and refusing to let go, to the point where when he finally came back up for air, chanting "be on my side ... be on my side," you'd better believe the crowd of around 17,000 was.
By this point, they were playing with such abandon that it didn't matter if Stills hit a bad chord or Nash came in too early or Young too late on a verse of the show-stopping "Rockin' in a Free World." Who would have thought that a bunch of guys in their late 50s known for sweet harmonies would come to town and rock the place until Young had literally ripped the strings off his Les Paul.
They left without playing it Saturday night, so I'll say it for them: Long may they run.
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