O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Neil Young, 43, Finds an Angry Focus for ‘90s

As Neil Young spent the 1980s wandering from style to style, trying on everything from country music to techno-pop to horn-band blues, a lot of his fans found themselves wondering just what the point was.

There was no mistaking the point of Young’s solo show Friday night at the Pacific Amphitheatre. The tone was intense, edgy and overridingly dark. This was no stylistic dilettante. This was an angry, passionate and focused rocker with a piece to speak.

The keynote statement was “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World,” a scathing new song full of resentment over the disparity between the haves and have-nots in U.S. society. One verse glowered over the image of a drug-ridden mother throwing her infant into a trash can. Another found Young, who flirted with Reaganism early in the decade, pouring stomach bile over the rhetoric of George Bush.

We got a thousand points of light for the

homeless man,

We got a kinder, gentler machine - gun hand.

The title refrain drew whoops and hollers--but maybe for the wrong reasons. On first listening, fans easily could have taken “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World” as another of Young’s many odes to the power of rock: After all, the song just before it was a show-opening version of one of Young’s best anthems to rock, “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue).”

But when Young returned to “Keep on Rockin’ ” during his encore, there was no mistaking the bitter irony in that refrain--and no denying the power of the song. Caught up in Young’s passion, the crowd took over, singing the chorus as Young hammered out its three dark chords on his acoustic guitar.

Two other new songs that Young played during his 90-minute show had the meat of substance and the hard edge of a singer with a fire in his belly. One juxtaposed images of uncontrollable, unpoliceable street crime with a vision of an artistic crime: a hot-shot record producer who thinks that the technical sound of a record is what makes it a hit, and that songwriting is just lackey’s work. In the darkest song of all, Young moaned “no more, no more” amid chilling, open-ended verses that seemed to speak of drug-induced paralysis and artistic impotence.

Where did the magic go?

I searched high and low,

I can’t find it no more,

I can’t get it back.

The best rock shows generate their own internal dialogue. Having explored themes of despair and loss through most of the set, Young capped the pre-encore segment with a feeling-filled reading of “Heart of Gold” that emphasized the lyric’s frayed and haggard determination to keep faith with an ideal.

Not many rock shows make one think about the historical meaning of one’s times. But there was Young, a 43-year-old Woodstock veteran, inserting “Roll Another Number” during a homespun segment at mid-set, during which he was joined by Ben Keith on dobro and Frank Sampedro on mandolin.

I ain’t going back to Woodstock for a while,

Though I long to see that lonesome hippie smile.

I’m a million miles away from that helicopter day,

I don’t believe I’ll be going back that way.

So much for the lasting significance of Woodstock that we’ve been hearing so much about lately. If you want to plumb that era for meaning that still resonates, Young seemed to be saying, don’t look to the big party on Yasgur’s farm, but to the fusillade at Kent State, where young people put their lives on the line for their beliefs. That was the implication, at least, in Young’s fiery, lamentationlike version of “Ohio,” dedicated to the dead of Tien An Men Square.

This was, by the way, a rock ‘n’ roll show, even though it was just Young with an acoustic guitar, a harmonica in a collar brace and a battered upright piano with a lovely, rich tone. Modern technology--wireless amplifiers and microphones attached to the harmonica holder--allowed Young to move about while he played. As is his custom, he hunched and swayed and moved with a floating gait that often recalls the loping steps of an Indian dance. And, as is also his custom, Young flailed and pounded at his guitar, mustering more rhythmic drive and percussive strength with a lone acoustic than some bands can achieve with a wall of amps.

If it turns out to be true, as Young sang in “Out of the Blue,” that “rock ‘n’ roll will never die,” Young’s own singular body of work will be one of the chief bulwarks against its mortality. Judging from this intense, powerfully performed show, and from the force of emotion behind the new songs, Young may have found on the verge of the ‘90s the focus that he spent the ‘80s wandering to find.

Opening act Maria McKee, reviewed recently as a headliner in smaller surroundings, may have been undermined by the large venue, losing touch with the intimacy of her new songs as she resorted too often to a belting vocal style. Despite that venting of her powerful pipes, McKee, who was accompanied by a keyboards player, seldom connected during her 25-minute set. Her monotonous, tinny-sounding guitar strumming was a drawback.