In typical Neil Young fashion, virtually nothing was revealed about his 2024 U.S. tour before it kicked off Wednesday night at San Diego’s Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre, other than the fact he’d be backed by Crazy Horse, and that Micah Nelson would be taking over guitar duties from Nils Lofgren. Would he pull a Greendale and debut an entire rock opera nobody had ever heard? Would he focus the set around the three new studio albums he cut with Crazy Horse between 2019 and 2022? Might he repeat the concept of his 2023 solo tour by spotlighting obscure Eighties and Nineties album tracks and skipping most of his hits?
Anything felt possible when the curtain dropped after a high-energy opening set by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, revealing the iconic, oversized speaker cabinets and road cases from the 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. Young walked onto the stage alongside Nelson, drummer Ralph Molina, and bassist Billy Talbot, plugged in Old Black, and launched into an hypnotic “Cortez the Killer.”
They jammed for six minutes before Young sang the opening lines, igniting the crowd into a frenzy, but the big moment came near the end, when he began singing completely unfamiliar words. As he teased earlier this month, it was the legendary lost segment of the song that failed to record during the 1975 Zuma sessions because the console briefly lost power. Young recently found the lyric manuscript, and worked out where they originally fit in the song.
“I floated on the water,” Young sang. “I ate that ocean wave/Two weeks after the slaughter/I was living in a cave/They came too late to get me/But there’s no one here to set me free/From this rocky grave/To that snowed-out ocean wave.”
It was a remarkable moment to witness. After 49 years and over 540 live performances, the world finally got to hear the song as Young originally wrote it.
He followed it up with a powerful “Cinnamon Girl,” and a brief address to the audience. “We made a lot of records with a guy named David Briggs, a producer I knew from the first record on,” Young said. “He was truly great. When we play, we remember what it was like when we did it. This song here is one we did right after he went to the higher places.”
Young was talking about “Scattered (Let’s Think About Livin’),” from 1996’s Broken Arrow, which was the newest song they played all evening. The rest of the set was music recorded when Briggs was alive, largely between 1969 and 1979, beginning with “Don’t Cry No Tears.” He followed it up with a triple shot of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: “Down by the River,” “The Losing End,” and the title track. And it was a particularly mesmerizing “Down by the River” that stretched out for 16 blissful minutes.
This is a good moment to pause and reflect on Micah Nelson, Willie Nelson’s youngest son. He’s been playing with Young as an honorary member of Promise of the Real for the greater part of a decade, and he got the chance to perform with the Nils Lofgren version of Crazy Horse at three under-the-radar club shows late last year. But this was his first time playing as the sole additional guitarist beside Young on the stage, and it’s a fairly difficult task, since he had to replicate parts originated by Danny Whitten and Frank “Poncho” Sampedro. “I’m going to pay tribute and honor Danny and Poncho, and be true to the sound of Crazy Horse,” Nelson told Rolling Stone in March. “I want to bring Poncho and Danny’s spirit into the space with us, through me, as much as I can.”
That’s exactly what he did all night long. He was given the opportunity because Lofgren has commitments to the E Street Band this year, but Young could not have found a better person for the job. Nelson even harmonized with Molina and Talbot on background vocals like this is something they’ve been doing for years. (Molina is 80 years old and basically looks and sounds like he did when he was 40. Teams of scientists need to study him and figure out how this is possible.)
After the Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere mini-set, the quartet (Crazy Horse 4.0?) kicked into one of the greatest renditions of “Powderfinger” I’ve ever heard, thanks to improvisational guitar work prior to each verse by Young and Nelson. What came next was a 16-minute “Love and Only Love,” the band walking offstage, and then Young strapping on an harmonica rack for solo acoustic renditions of “Comes a Time,” “Heart of Gold,” and “Human Highway” that had the entire amphitheater singing along.
The band returned to wrap up the night with “Don’t Be Denied,” an autobiographical tale that carries a lot more emotional weight when Young sings it at age 78 as opposed to 28, and a thrashed-out “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black).”
Nobody walked into that amphitheater expecting a nostalgic night of Crazy Horse classics that completely neglected the 18 albums Young has released since the turn of the millennium. And nobody could possibly have expected him to perform at this level of intensity and passion at this point in his life. (We’ve already mentioned the miracle of his octogenarian rhythm section.)
He might duplicate this exact set when the tour continues the following night at the same venue. He might not repeat a single song. He may even perform a complete classic album, which is something he started doing late last year. The joy of seeing Neil Young is that you never have any idea what’s going to happen once the lights dim.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s 4/24/24 setlist in San Diego
“Cortez the Killer”
“Cinnamon Girl”
“Scattered (Let’s Think About Livin’)”
“Don’t Cry No Tears”
“Down by the River”
“The Losing End”
“Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”
“Powderfinger”
“Love and Only Love”
“Comes a Time”
“Heart of Gold”
“Human Highway”
“Don’t Be Denied”
“Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”
