CityLife

Grungefather Young's Apollo double

NEIL Young, who plays in Manchester on Tuesday and Wednesday, has never played the 'please like me' games so beloved of today's X Factor fodder.

In fact, it's perfectly possible to argue that he's spent the bulk of his 40-something year career doing his level best to wrong-foot his fans.

He has always, as he famously admitted, preferred to be in the ditch rather than the middle of the road.

It was an approach he graphically demonstrated by following the worldwide success of the Heart of Gold single, Harvest album and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with the so-called 'Ditch' (or Doom) trilogy, including Time Fades Away, Tonight's The Night and On The Beach, a bleary, narcotic series of albums in which Young dragged his listeners through the sleazy underbelly of celebrity in a world going to hell in a handcart.

Not surprisingly, those records are now seen as prophetic of the soon-come punk but at the time lots of listeners were simply flummoxed by them.

At a notorious Manchester Palace concert in 1973, Young - after a support set by breezy young newcomers The Eagles - played the whole of Tonight's The Night end to end for a bemused audience who had never heard the record or, indeed, its like.

Returning for an encore, Young promised to play "something they'd heard before".

The audience thinking that now maybe they would get, to paraphrase Woody Allen, some of his early funny material, were instead treated to Tonight's The Night again!

Nineties

In the nineties he was even sued by his own record company for, ridiculously, not sounding sufficiently like Neil Young! Nor has age dimmed his rage or unpredictability.

On his last-but-one album Living With War he fulminated against George W Bush and the American invasion of Iraq with a fervour that made most other commentators look mealy-mouthed.

Meanwhile, live shows are equally likely to feature the coruscating electric guitar assaults of Crazy Horse or be, at least superficially, mellow and acoustic.

His energy and admirable cussedness wasn't even noticeably diminished by a recent brush with death. He suffers from epilepsy, and in 2005 underwent brain surgery to remove a potentially fatal aneurysm.

"Having the aneurysm didn't really take much from me physically," he shrugs.

"It was just mentally, mostly. It affected my outlook on life. I just think I became more thankful. I didn't worry too much about things because I was just so glad to be here.

"A lot of my disciplines in life slipped away for a while, but they all came back."

He will allow, though, that "different parts of the body don't work the way they used to".

Provocative

Young's latest tour is ostensibly to promote his most recent release, Chrome Dreams II. Even the titles of Young's albums are provocative, as this purports to be a sequel to an unreleased album from 1977.

The promise is that he will perform two sets, the first an acoustic performance and the second an electric set backed by a full band.

The tour also has an intriguing support act in the shape of Young's wife Pegi, who recently released her self-titled debut album.

"It's me, Ralph Molina from Crazy Horse, Ben Keith from Harvest and all of those records, and Rick Rosas," says Young.

"There's only four of us. It starts solo acoustic, I play for about an hour by myself, sitting down and playing different instruments.

"Then I have a small band that comes out. My wife Pegi is in the band. And by the time we get to the end we're doing improvisational electric music."

It will be, he insisted recently, "all personal songs, there's nothing about the war or hatred or politics".

That's in stark contrast then to his last US tour with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Having convinced his old comrades to play the whole of his Bush-baiting Living With War album, the shows attracted hostile reactions and even bomb threats in America's conservative heartland.

Young admits this was a "hair-raising, nerve-racking, terrible experience", although that hasn't stopped him making a film of the whole shebang, which was received with enthusiasm at this year's Sundance Film Festival. "I'm a Canadian, I don't have a vote, but I'm a citizen of the planet.

United States

"The leader of the United States is supposedly the leader of the free world.

"If you're going to be leader of the free world you've got to be ready for some criticism," he told the Sundance audience.

Sticking with politics, he once sounded very much like a supporter of Ronald Reagan back when he was President.

Young insists that he was merely observing that "he was an interesting leader. He was able to talk to people, able to get to the essence of small things by way of a representation of a bigger thing, and they understood".

He was also being more complex than people gave him credit for when his song Let's Roll was interpreted as a hymn of praise for 9/11 hijack hero Todd Beamer and, by implication the US administration's gung-ho response to the terrorist attacks.

"Let's Roll is a song about a hero on an airplane, it's not a song about a country responding to anything," he confirms.

"It's not saying let's go to war in Iraq. It's not about weapons of mass destruction."

True to form, he's kicked off an explosion of passionate discussion with his latest pronouncement.

"I think the time when music could change the world has passed," he said recently. "It's time for science and physics and spirituality to make a difference and to try to save the planet.

"If there is anything I can do through exposing different scientific theories about how to improve the world, that would be the best I can do.

"If I was to write a song about that, it would just be an accident that happened out of habit.

"But something that would clean up the environment, something that would end this struggle for survival with fuel would be a massive change. It would be like the wheel or the internet.

"That's the challenge for our generation.

"You can't put me here and put me there, I'm just who I am. I'm Neil," he concludes. "But I have my feelings."

Neil Young plays at the Apollo on Tuesday and Wednesday, supported by Pegi Young. Apollo. Click here to book.

Are you going to one of the shows? Why not tell us what you thought by entering our Reviewer of the Month competition.