Neil Young & Promise Of The Real at 3Arena, Dublin on Wednesday June 8th 2016

It’s not often a city can say they’ve hosted both Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young in a little over a week but in the past fortnight, that honour was bestowed upon Dublin. Whilst Springsteen played two nights at the sold-out, 80,000 capacity Croke Park, Young, despite being every bit as well known, entertained a 3Arena which was only at two-thirds capacity. However, the 70-year-old singer proved, albeit fleetingly, on Wednesday night that when he gets it right, he has as much a right to be selling out Croke Park as his American counterpart does.

When you’ve had a career as long as Neil Young has, the ability to not only put on an excellent live show, but to also use your position of power at centre stage to put across your political/environmental views(See Bono & Springsteen) is one which nobody can begrudge. Young prefers to express the latter and takes aim at the age of agribusiness, as he did on most recent album ‘The Monsanto Years’, throughout the set. Two stage-hands spread seeds across the stage for the opening salvo, only for a team of fumigators to come and destroy it all as Promise Of The Real join Young.

Ironically, the simultaneous arrival of the fumigators and POTR could essentially serve as a metaphor for tonight’s show. Young opens the show solo with After The Gold Rush on piano before moving swiftly up and down(and from one side of the stage to the other) through the years with solo acoustic renditions of From Hank to Hendrix, Heart of Gold and The Needle And The Damage Done before sitting at an organ for a silence-inducing version of Mother Earth. As concert openings go, those five songs were pretty impeccable.

Alas, things then began to deteriorate slowly. The next hour consisted of solid, enjoyable rock’n’roll as Promise Of The Real and Young traded blows with their guitars, with Young proving that, despite his age, he’s perfectly capable of keeping up with his much younger allies, who are relishing every moment on stage with him. Alabama is a distinct highlight, as is the on-stage banter between Young and certain members of the crowd who were intent on seeing some of Young’s more well-known materal. “Somebody’s already asking for Rockin’ In The Free World up there, I think we’re done,” he laughs.

Young is renowned nowadays for his long, drawn-out guitar solos when playing live. For some, these solos and extended versions of songs are the stuff of dreams, but for others, they can become tiresome very quickly. Love To Burn, a tour debut, is the first song to get the over-inflation treatment as it carries for an astonishing, albeit brilliant, 18 minutes. Had the show ended then, all would have gone home ecstatically raving about a near-perfect show. However, just over an hour (yet only seven songs) later, there are mumbles and grumbles of ‘ego stroking’ and needless self-indulgence” among those spilling out onto the Dublin quays.

The closing songs of the set were a mixed bag – with Seed Justice and Monsanto Years doing little to stir those in their seats, other than to head to the bar. However, Wolf Moon and Rockin’ In The Free World picked things back up again. Young closed the set with a seemingly never-ending Love And Only Love with as many false finishes as that Lord Of The Rings film, to the point that the notes for this song have three different timings scrawled down and scratched out before settling on a final figure. Somehow, there was still time for an altogether unnecessary encore of Fuckin’ Up which saw some members of Promise Of The Real lose the run of themselves slightly – attempting to play guitar with your fringe doesn’t belong at a Neil Young gig, or any gig for that matter.

When all is said and done, there’s no doubting that Young is a bonafide master of his trade, although one who perhaps needs to hone in on what it is that the majority of his fans will enjoy. However, at 70 years old, and with such a distinguished career behind him, it’s not likely that Neil Young cares what I, you, or anyone else thinks. He’ll just keep on rockin’.

Photo by Michelle Geraghty from Neil Young & Crazy Horse at the RDS in 2013.