Neil Young and that voice-with-a-broken-heart of his played at Toronto's Massey Hall last spring, and director Jonathan Demme was there to capture the highlights.
After Heart of Gold and Trunk Show, Neil Young Journeys is Demme's third film about the Canadian artist, and it dips into Young's childhood a bit before featuring him on stage.
Young and his brother Bob drive around the town of Omemee, where they spent part of their childhood, and Young talks about various people he grew up with. He also mentions fishing and turtle-catching as a little kid, capturing in a few sentences the idyllic small-town Ontario childhood available in the 1950s. There's a brief homage to his famed journalist/novelist dad, Scott Young, and then the travelling troubadour arrives at Massey Hall.
The songs Young performs include new material from Le Noise and such classics as Ohio and I Believe In You. Some of the concert footage is right up the singer's nose, so close is the camera, but as it's Neil Young we're talking about, that can only be good. Some would say the man's guitar is the real star of the show, but that's for arguing about afterward in the parking lot. The words 'Neil Young in concert' mean plenty to some people and little to others; if you're in the plenty category, you'll want to see this.
