POP REVIEW : YOUNG DOES IT HIS WAY AT THE PACIFIC

Neil Young’s record company promotion people probably weren’t too happy that he played just one song from his current album Saturday at the Pacific Amphitheatre.

They were likely even more frustrated that Young worked in half a dozen unrecorded new songs that won’t help promote any of his albums.

But then Young--like Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and a few other fiercely independent artists--has always been more concerned with following his own instincts than record company dictates.

In fact, that’s a major theme of his theatrical new tour, dubbed “In a Rusted Out Garage.” It’s his most elaborate and ambitious since the “Rust Never Sleeps” tour in 1978.

Most everything about Young’s nearly three-hour show reinforced the point that rock ‘n’ roll is at its purest when it’s banged out by a bunch of enthusiastic kids in an old garage--before music-industry accountants and marketing experts go to work on it.

That message was powerfully stated through the backing of Crazy Horse, the band Young has played with periodically for nearly two decades, as well as through numerous oversized props that create the garage-rock ambiance of the show.

After a curtain painted as a garage door (complete with broken windows and graffiti) was raised, the show began appropriately with forceful renditions of “Mr. Soul,” “Cinnamon Girl” and “Down by the River,” staples for any self-respecting garage band.

As the show progressed, giant cockroaches roamed the stage, huge mice wandered in and out of the “rehearsal” and a dog howled from a neighbor’s yard. Young also seemed to be saying that rock stars should always remember where and how they got started and never take themselves too seriously.

Although there were no songs from last year’s “Old Ways” country album or 1983’s “Everybody’s Rockin’ ” rockabilly LP, Young did return to his much-maligned “Trans” electronic album for a pair of songs. Even more dramatically than on that record, the juxtaposition of Young’s digitally processed vocals against the raggedy-edged rocking of Crazy Horse produced a powerful synthesis of man and machine.

In a couple of the new tunes, as well as in such older songs as “Cortez the Killer” and “Powderfinger,” Young returned to a favorite metaphor: the damage inflicted on Native Americans’ lives when outsiders try to change what they don’t really understand. It’s a metaphor that can be applied to society and politics, as well as to a rocker’s struggle for autonomy.

Young put as much energy and thought into his guitar solos as his vocals, playing with the abandon of an 41-year-young rocker with everything to gain and nothing to lose.

As a result, “Like a Hurricane” built to gale-force proportions behind Young’s screechingly intense electric guitar, while “Heart of Gold” became even more softly reflective than usual in a solo acoustic version.

At the show’s conclusion, an angry neighbor of the garage rockers shows up with the police, who literally pull the plug on the proceedings, suggesting that there will always be forces that try to come between a rocker and his music.

But after fleeing the scene, Young and his cohorts returned for an encore and one last hurrah, in the best tradition of rock’s refusal to submit to authority.

Young, Crazy Horse and the cockroaches open a three-night run at the Universal Amphitheatre tonight.