POP MUSIC REVIEW : A Night of Spirit, Warmth and ‘Angels’

Neil Young’s annual Bridge School benefit concert is about as close as you can get in contemporary pop music to actually meeting performers without having a backstage pass.

The musicians don’t stroll the grounds of the outdoor Shoreline Amphitheatre between sets the way they do at some folk festivals, but the most imaginative of the artists, free of pop’s normal commercial considerations and restraints, use their half-hour on stage to reveal themselves in ways that make you feel you have shared a personal moment.

And those warm, enriching instances abounded on Saturday night.

The most striking sequence in the five-hour, mostly acoustic affair began near the end when Young played “Sleeps With Angels,” the bittersweet song he wrote for Kurt Cobain following the Nirvana leader’s suicide in April.

Young followed with an emotionally charged version of “Hey Hey, My My,” the 1979 song that includes a line quoted by Cobain in the latter’s suicide note: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

Though over the years Young has frequently denied the self-destructive interpretation that many young rockers have given those words, he has refused to discuss the meaning of the song since Cobain’s death.

But he sang it with such biting authority on Saturday--forcefully countering the quoted line with the words “once you’ve gone, you can’t come back”--that it was a clear rejection of the “live-hard, die-young” philosophy. The song instead stood as testimony to the positive, liberating qualities of heartfelt rock ‘n’ roll.

The song took on an even greater note of celebration on this night because of the generosity of spirit that the event is founded on.

The rear of the stage was occupied throughout the evening by more than a dozen students from the Bridge School, most of them seated in wheelchairs with family members and school staff at their sides. Young’s wife Pegi co-founded the school in 1986 as a way to provide tailored educational programs for children with severe speech and other physical impairments.

Ever since Young began this acoustic concert series eight years ago to help fund the school, audiences have been treated to all-star guests delivering adventurous half-hour sets, most of them highlighted by new songs or seldom-heard old ones.

Though the guests over the years have included such top names as Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, the chance this year to see Young alone would have been worth the $25 admission.

The veteran rock singer-songwriter, whose “Sleeps With Angels” album is one of the year’s most acclaimed works, hasn’t toured since last fall. One reason is that the album, a series of reflections on love and the deaths of some people close to him, is so personal that he felt uncomfortable doing anything that looks like promoting its sale.

But this year’s concert lineup was so strong that the organizers added a second show for Sunday at the 21,000-seat venue, and it too sold out. Besides Young, the bill each day included Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who haven’t toured since 1991; the industrial rock band Ministry, which has been off the road since 1992, and--most important--Pearl Jam, which hasn’t stepped on stage since a brief spring tour.

After conventional opening sets by singer-songwriter Pete Droge and Mazzy Star, Ministry’s Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker stirred things up with one who-would-ever-have-guessed selection after another. The set began with Jourgensen--the master of sonic assault--leading us through a psychedelic-tinged rendition of Bob Dylan’s tender “Lay Lady Lay.” The singer-guitarist proceeded through numbers by Ten Years After and the Grateful Dead and topped things off by playing harmonica (!) on “Midnight Cowboy.”

Following the middlebrow musings of the Indigo Girls, Petty and the Heartbreakers played in a much harder and more satisfying style than they have on their recent recordings. The set’s highlights were “Time to Move On” and “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” songs from an album due next month. Both exhibit the tension and introspection that recall Petty’s best ‘70s and ‘80s work.

Pearl Jam largely sidestepped its familiar material in favor of one new song, “Corduroy,” and rarities from the Seattle group’s repertoire that have never appeared on album, including a disarming daydream about Christmas memories.

Most significantly, singer Eddie Vedder seems to have recovered nicely from a period of self-exile. The usually active performer sat motionless on a stool the entire set, but he sang with renewed passion and determination.

At the end of the group’s hit “Daughter,” Vedder offered a few lines from “American Pie,” the 1971 Don McLean song about the death of rock star Buddy Holly. In this context, Vedder used it as both a sweet ode to Cobain and as a reflection on his own disillusionment in the weeks after the suicide--a time when the pressures on him made him question his own musical future.

Though Jack Irons, a longtime friend of the band, sat in on percussion, there is apparently no decision on a permanent replacement for drummer Dave Abbruzzese, who left the band earlier this year.

Backed by the trio Crazy Horse, Young devoted his set to songs from “Sleeps With Angels.” He was joined by Pearl Jam for the finale, “Piece of Crap,” the marvelously lighthearted tune about how hard it is to get anything of honest value these days, whether in music or in the neighborhood hardware store.

It was a moment of supreme irony. In a contemporary rock world where loyalties are normally divided across both generational and stylistic lines, Young is someone all fans can believe in. It’s his vital, creative spirit that helps make the Bridge School benefits arguably the most consistently rewarding event on the pop calendar.