The Shaman Neil Young and His Major ‘Rock and Roll’ Challenge

When night had engulfed the impressive Waldbühne theater in the Berlin forest, as if lost in a deep, distant dream far removed from the world’s troubles, one detail illustrated Neil Young well—not just as a great musician, but as a shaman invoking the supernatural forces of an alternative energy on the verge of extinction, but not yet extinguished, called rock and roll. A string on his guitar broke during the tumultuous performance of ‘Rockin’ in the Free World,’ and Young, with a smile caught halfway between earth and sky, stared at that string with such intensity and for so long that he seemed possessed by something nameless. He and his band were setting fire to the stars with their wild guitars during the more than ten minutes of one of the most iconic anthems of countercultural rock, and the broken string danced desperately and frantically over the neck of the guitar. Young watched it, moving in semicircles, accompanying its dance, squeezing the sound as if it were Judgment Day.

It was not Judgment Day, but this world has become a place that often seems to be rushing toward it. And if it is not rushing, it has been transforming into a space so different from the one dreamed that each day is a bit more conquered by the formulators of nightmares. A world surrendered or drugged, which hardly makes a difference, before the unstoppable advance of abusers, the intolerant, and the barbarians—different species for the same legion of destroyers of equality, fraternity, and solidarity. The leader of that world, puffing up his chest and feeling strong, is today Donald Trump, whom Neil Young decided to confront before any other musician when he said he was “the worst president in the history of the United States,” that he had “kidnapped the country with his persecutions,” and that perhaps he, a Canadian with American citizenship, might not be allowed to enter the United States. Young had already confronted Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. A few weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen also criticized Trump, and Young immediately supported his colleague against the insults and threats from the White House leader. “Bruce, you are not alone. Trump, we are not afraid of you,” Young wrote on his website.

Neil Young’s rock and roll is a challenge in itself. An overwhelming burst of electricity that leaves no one indifferent, especially live, when this shaman, known in intimate music circles as Crazy Horse, seeks to transcend through his craft, his vocation, his philosophy of life. The philosophy of countercultural rock, that independent republic of combative ideas against power, illuminated in the 1960s. And the counterculture, however utopian it was, however innocent it seemed, even if it felt foolish, was always that current line with which to spark lucid sparks in restless minds, free spirits, and committed individuals.

Neil Young’s challenge is to continue asserting the stage as what it has always been: a meeting place, but in his case, under the invocation of the flame of rock and roll. If the world seems every day a little more surrendered or drugged, where counterculture is relegated to a Netflix documentary, he is not. Neither surrendered nor drugged. Furthermore, he is willing to stand as the last Mohican in whom to believe, the most capable of promoting any challenge, no matter how difficult it may be.

With his gray, unruly hair sticking out from beneath his cap and his white sideburns marking him like tribal tattoos from a primitive world, this old-school troubadour, a traveler of a thousand battles at 79 years old, went on stage at the Waldbühne last Thursday, with his slight limp and a somewhat raspy voice as he launched into Ambulance Blues, a hidden gem from his immense catalog. It was 8:00 PM, still daylight in the Berlin summer, when this mid-tempo piece enveloped the 23,000 spectators in a sort of daydream, transitioning toward the imaginary territory he wanted to take everyone to. A territory built with the force of delirium.

Delirium, the space where hallucinations are conceived, where the impossible becomes possible, where the chimera finds meaning and pulses in the heart. The space of shamans. By the second song, he was already setting out on a strong journey with ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),’ another of Young’s anthems where guitars stand at the forefront, like soldiers about to land in Normandy. Music as a proclamation. A way of understanding oneself in the world, to seek representation, to connect through sound. “There’s more in the picture than you can see,” sang Young unleashed, and only five minutes of the concert had passed. “Rock and roll will never die,” he continued, proclaiming beneath the electric curtains demanding the listener’s commitment. “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” he shouted, now fully immersed in his voice, in the most famous line of the song, a battle cry of his philosophy.

This cry was amplified with an astounding sequence: ‘Be the Rain,’ ‘When You Dance, I Can Really Love,’ ‘Cinnamon Girl,’ and ‘Fuckin’ Up,’ compositions showcasing all the hallmarks of the great indomitable rock star. He sang with unleashed energy, beyond normal. In the gripping tension of his guitars, it seemed the mystery resided within. As if posing the same dilemma of existence in an uncertain and confrontational world: take a stand, don’t remain still, don’t fall asleep, don’t let yourself be drugged, don’t give up. Passages of fierce and mad guitars aimed at urging us to reclaim our place in the world. Young was going wild alongside Micah Nelson’s guitar, son of Willie Nelson, and Corey McCormick’s bass, two superb companions from The Promise of Real, the band that accompanied him on that groundbreaking tour that last brought him to Spain in 2017 and now forms part of Chrome Hearts, Young’s backing group that also includes Spooner Oldham on organ, a legend of the Muscle Shoals sound, behind the timeless soul of Aretha Franklin or Wilson Pickett.

Now, unlike in 2017, the concerts are shorter but could be said to be more intense. Or perhaps, more spiritual. More shamanic. Since time immemorial, shamans have always had the ability to change reality or collective perception because they possess knowledge beyond the logic of earthly life. Young has devoted decades to this pagan religion of rock and roll, where human energies connect with mystical or illusory longings. The proposal of rock has always been simple, only a whole system of banal entertainment wanted us to believe it was something that had expired, just as some fool might have believed that black-and-white film or books became obsolete. The proposal is the conjunction of guitars, drums, harmonica, organ, and the awareness that this urgent sound vehicle has always sought to crash against shop windows, against preconceived ideas, against the politically correct and, let’s say it loud in these confusing and strange times, against the abusers. Rock and roll, as Young well demonstrated in Berlin, is a strong statement, fearless, unrestrained, full of spirit.

When you saw him blowing the harmonica in ‘The Needle and the Damage Done,’ ‘Southern Man,’ or ‘Harvest Moon,’ or when you felt him making the stage a sacred place of improvisation and contained chaos in ‘Love to Burn’ or, especially, ‘Like a Hurricane,’ breaking the limits of what many call a show, of what would be a simple spectacle worthy of a Grammy, the listener, who could not follow the screens as they were off, but could follow the unbridled sounds, could understand that the best rock is an explosion of alternating electricity ready to blow up an environment. Sometimes, you are what you bill, what you contribute, or what a paper says. But Young, like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and a few others like them, have also been capable of remembering that sometimes, you are something more: a human being who can seek beyond the margins, who can find themselves outside the system, and who can silently scream above their possibilities. A person who knows they can be more than what they are told they are.

“This place is incredible,” the musician repeated several times during the performance. The Waldbühne is a wonderful place where music takes on more sacred connotations. There was a moment when the melancholic melody of ‘Name of Love,’ with its interplay of voices recalling the original by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, left the coliseum in ceremonial silence. The trees in the semicircle of this theater, where Rolling Stones or Pearl Jam, or greats of contemporary classical music have played before, were calm, like all the thousands of souls they sheltered. And it became a space reduced to a prayer. It was not the only occasion: also ‘Old Man,’ with that acoustic guitar, with Young illuminated by the orange spotlight, with night falling like a cloak covering the outlandish. It sounded tender, very innocent, as if it were the first time it had ever been heard in the history of folk. And in all that delicacy, it was understood that the best songs do not need technological fireworks to make noise inside people.

Noise, storms, decibels, delirium, and broken strings. The only encore of the concert was ‘Rockin’ in the Free World,’ the great invocation of the shaman of rock and roll. Before starting it, he said: “We all know where we are, and it’s good to feel this way, at this concert. The world is a crazy place now, so we must take care of each other everywhere.” And then he fell into a trance with the broken string. Three days earlier, regarding the concert he had given in Brussels, Young wrote in his newsletter to his followers that during that performance he noticed a butterfly flying free and wild on stage, between him and Corey McCormick as they wielded their guitars in one of their songs. It danced as if propelled by electricity, and he, Neil Young, felt that its flight enriched the experience of his live music. A butterfly or a broken string. Perhaps a minor detail, but in every little detail, we might be playing not just with the future, but with the present. Entering a trance with ‘Like a Hurricane’ or ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ was to understand that it’s better to feel like hurricanes or incomprehensible fires, just as the delirious guitar of shaman Neil Young called out, to challenge evil disguised as salvation.