'Energy turns kinetic' at HORDE Festival

Arizona Summer Wildcat Tom Collins/Arizona Summer Wildcat Rock legends Neil Young and Crazy Horse play at Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion Friday. Young and the band are headlining the HORDE Festival tour this summer.

What I'm talking about is the HORDE Festival stop in Phoenix at Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion. I'm talking about feeling the Neil.

The sixth annual festival was a two stage rock and roll extravaganza - the kind of package tour that's now all the rage. Nine bands, computer arcade on the concourse, Planned Parenthood and Amnesty International literature. Free condoms. Hot, beered up ki ds and adults, you know.

This here is a story about travel, as well as music, and that's important. Because getting from Tucson to the Northwest side of Phoenix on a weekday afternoon is an adventure. Which is to say I missed the following acts: Sky Cries Mary, Toad the Wet Sproc ket and the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Most importantly to my own personal mythology, however, I missed Neil Young's early acoustic solo set. He played "Out on the Weekend," "Heart of Gold" and "Buffalo Springfield Again," according to Sugar Mountain (www. scr uznet.com/~tah/html) a page that keeps track of Neil set lists.

I've been that "lonely boy out on the weekend, trying to make it pay." I've lived the song. That's why I'm talking about religion.

If it wasn't for the first time I heard "My my, Hey hey (Out of the Blue)" I would not be the man sitting at this terminal writing this that I am. If I hadn't played "Hey hey, My my (Into the Black)" loud and proud, man, I'd be nothing. I'd be pre-med.

So let's cut to the quick.

At 9:40 Friday night, I was ready with my friend's Pentax K1000 to go into the pit below the main stage and photograph the man and his band, Neil Young and Crazy Horse. I was sweating. My heart was pounding, my hands were shaking as the other photographer s and I were led through the crowd. There were waves of energy flowing off the stage where three large candles burned in anticipation of the coming. The stage manager told us to stay out of Neil's line of sight or he'd be fired.

He was due at 9:50 p.m. He and Frank Sampedro and Ralph Molina and Billy Talbott. The world's greatest garage band, real homegrown noise makers.

The Jolly Roger flew over the drum set. The stage hands quietly, fastidiously put that black Les Paul guitar up on stage.

It's times like this you find it hard to swallow. Like right before your first kiss or your first at bat. The moment before you fall in love. Arteries vibrating on some senior prom dance floor and your feet hurt from being in rented shoes too long, but th en you don't feel them anymore.

And then like actually falling, it just starts, it just happens right then. Potential energy turns kinetic in a split second. And Neil Young picks up his guitar.

He huddles briefly with the band, amps start popping and then the crunching first notes of "Into the Black" come screaming out speakers and I'm right there. My hearing is threatened.

I could see his bald spot and could tell that his chin length hair was thinning. I could see the wrinkles round his eyes, the stripes on his socks. His thick fingers. I could see he wasn't as tall as I always thought he was. He looked all jowls and scowls . He looked his 50 years. But he didn't move like them.

He moved with all the near epileptic enthusiasm that I heard as a 14-year-old playing a really beat up copy of "Like a Hurricane" on my radio and singing along. Jamming on my tennis racquet.

Neil Young is the ocean.

Neil Young is a rock star.

And that's a strange world to be in.

I got it.

I saw Primus play and I saw all these crazy kids start moshing around to the sound of a dork with a bass. They were throwing chairs. The set had to be stopped. Les Claypool took to the stage and said there had been injuries.

"My word of advice, as always, is don't get violent, get naked," Claypool told the audience. They didn't listen, but the show went on.

See this is not the '60s.

Neil knows.

He got up there and slammed through "Hippie Dream" a caustic assessment of the Vietnam era youth.

"Take my advice, don't listen to me," he sang.

He doesn't talk on stage much. He asked the audience to give a hand to the rest of the bands.

"Now I'm gonna go back in my hole and not talk anymore," he said.

There is a world famous tape from the Bottomline in New York City, 1974. It's Neil, alone and acoustic, just how I missed him. It's Neil talking, just rapping between songs about meatballs and bad weed and playing "Southern Man" too many times.

"You may just listen to those songs on a piece of plastic," he said, "but I actually play them." He does.

That night he played "Buffalo Springfield Again," again. I wonder why. I think maybe he's getting old, that he'd actually go back.

This guy from Amsterdam I talked to in the parking lot outside speculated that Neil had canceled his scheduled European tour not because of injury, but because he's just too old.

We talked about the Bottomline tape, how ebullient Neil was then. Guy said he'd seen him in a restaurant having an argument over the kinds of bottled water available. He said last time he saw Neil he just walked away from him, but that years ago he would stop and talk to fans.

I'm not going up to Northern California and I'm not going looking for his ranch.

But there is something between us. Me and him and this guy from Holland and my friend Rob and Sam Nijensohn and Steve Hilger and Constantine Cambras and Devin Manelski.

When those last sledge hammer chords of "Rockin' in the Free World," were played and the strings were broken and Neil stalked off the stage, I was alone in a half empty row of seats. I was out on the weekend.