When a music album has the ability to make time stand still because of its quality, you have to stop and listen.
Neil Young Live at the Cellar Door, released on Reprise Records, achieves that by bringing one of the archetypal musicians from The Summer of Love generation into the 21st century.
With just an acoustic guitar and piano to call on, Canadian-born Young takes artistic intimacy to another level by making listeners to the album experience what it must have been like to be part of the audience at on eof his solo shows in Washington D.C. towards the end of 1970.
Opening with the hypnotic Tell Me Why, Young goes on to weave a musical spell first spun as a member of the rock-folk band Buffalo Springfield in the late 1960s and continued as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Yound.
The second song on the album, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, could easily be mistaken for Bread’s Everything I Own made famous by, amongst others, Boy George and Boyzone.
Other highlights on the album include After the Gold Rush, Bad Fog of Loneliness and the climactic Flying on the Ground is Wrong.
Despite sounding like the actor Johnny Depp at times when talking to his audience, Neil Young certainly knows how to throw a concert.