The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

As I enter the Manchester Apollo for the first time, it almost feels like the crowd has come pre-prepared with the venue; the strange, seventies pallor of the décor reflected in the sea of silver hair in the audience. The folk rock circus is most definitely in town; Neil Young’s little private fleet of five silver coaches sitting in a line, serenely, outside in the drizzle. The stage is littered with assorted artefacts - a carving of an American native Indian on one side, a painter at the back of the stage sketching naff wide canvas works corresponding to songs in the set to come. The seats lie starch and dull, gradually filling up with mostly middle-aged couples.

It’s all frightfully anathema to my delicate indie sensibilities, honed by years spent at tiny, wilfully impoverished shows. Instead, I lounge, fruit pastels in hand, some 30 metres back from the stage, a friend beside me nervously clutching a pair of binoculars. The theatricality of the event isn’t lost on Young himself, an artist whose music has always been stepped in a keen sense of melodrama.

Who knows how many of these kind of shows he’s done. It’s all old hat to him; the nervous shuffle out towards his seat, the calm composure as he selects his guitar from the six that form a semi-circle around him; the silent, steady toying with the crowd’s desire to hear him speak (say anything!). Even his strange, aimless wanderings around the stage in-between songs seems oddly rehearsed; Young absent-mindedly strumming one of the guitars, warming his hands under the lights, gently stroking the piano.

When he does begin, with ‘From Hank To Hendrix’, his voice wavers outwards, rippling across a stony silent audience. He plays an opening acoustic hour, working through the classics with creditable gusto. He’s been here before, many times, but he still means it. We hope. The inevitable ‘Heart of Gold’ is followed by a strange, slightly histrionic version of ‘A Man Needs a Maid’, an unnerving, slightly apocalyptic organ part accompanying the chorus. We hear a heartbreakingly sincere ‘Ambulance Blues’, the frail voice carefully, delicately enunciating a long, bittersweet paean to lost times, which is strangely in keeping with the atmosphere tonight.

After the interval (interval!), we return to our seats as Crazy Horse bashfully take their place on stage. Having expected a delicate band accompaniment, I’m slightly taken aback by the bluster of Young’s performance and his thinning grey hair as it thrashes about. He and the group put on a real rock show, solos et al. Songs like ‘Hey Hey My My’ and ‘Down By The River’ are drawn out, played with and shaken, to the evident delight of the crowd. Nevertheless, in the surroundings, it can’t help but feel slightly forced, the Apollo staff agitatedly shining torches on anyone who dares to stand. With everyone passively seated, the performance adopts the appearance of a strange nostalgia piece, carefully staged to allow the audience a little piece of a past whose virulence has been dulled by time. At the end, after the inevitable encore, the crowd slowly file out, contented, as after a West End musical; the five coaches still sitting there, irreproachable.

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