Live music: Neil Young at the 3Arena, Dublin

4/5

Neil Young fans are devoted. When two silhouettes came out throwing seeds — yes, real seeds — we all knew we were in for an opening treat.

News from concerts in Glasgow and Belfast was that he was opening with solo material from the early albums and this early piece of drama matched the description.

Sure enough after the would-be farmers left the stage, up popped the great cultivator of song himself, sitting alone at a piano playing the opening bars of ‘After the Goldrush’. The crowd exhaled before drinking it in. That voice, at 70, is still so pure. But above all, the intent was still there. He was singing it as if he had just written it and 14,000-odd people sat there as if “all in a dream”.

“Wonderful” shouted the man behind me. It sure was.

From the piano the troubadour moved to acoustic guitar and treated us to ‘Heart of Gold’. By the time he finished ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’, we were putty in his hands which made all the more disappointing to see him take to an organ for a rendition of the somewhat preachy ‘Mother Earth’.

With his newly arrived backing band the Promise of the Real, the Canadian started into ‘Out on the Weekend’ before realising he had attached the wrong harmonica. “A technical flaw,” he declared. He was in good form. After taking us through a stonking rendition of ‘Alabama’, probably the highlight of the night, Young appeared to stab himself in the thumb.

“It’s very dangerous up here,” he remarked, met with a round of applause. He was getting into walk on water territory now. The voice was beginning to soar and he started enjoying it. Alas, after a fine rendition of the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young number ‘Ohio’, the inevitable grunge indulgence arrived. ‘Love to Burn’ was a full 17 minutes while ‘Country Home’, though shorter, felt as long.

For a while, the songsmith was just jamming and while many enjoyed it, there was a sense he was losing the audience. At one point a colleague turned to me and asked when the interval act was going to end. It was harsh but he had a point.

It was therefore no surprise that ‘Keep on Rockin in the Free World’ was greeted with a mixture of relief and genuine excitement. But instead of taking us into the home front with aplomb we hit the final straight with more Crazy Horse.

A very good gig which had promised to be great.