Neil Young + Santa Monica Flyers- Rainbow Theatre, London, England, November 5, 1973

Hemmed and hawed a little bit about including a Tonight’s the Night-era show. Anyway, we’ve got Billy and Ralph in the band with Ben Keith, and with Nils brought back into the barn in recent years.

And it’s not as though we really need an excuse to listen to this stuff, right? It’s fucking great. A while back, Neil suggested that he’d be releasing the Rainbow Theatre show officially – but since the Roxy LP came out last year covering roughly the same period, I think we’ve got a ways to go before that happens. Too bad – it’d be great to hear it in all its multitrack glory. As it stands, this audience tape is not too bad, though. It’s a wild performance overall, with Neil testing the patience of his audience with rambling patter that ranges from the scuzzy to the nonsensical to the puzzlingly sincere. Definitely interesting to hear Neil at this stage, seeing where the boundaries lie between audience and performer. 

The music is great, too, obviously, with a full run-through of the original, then-unreleased Tonight’s The Night kicking the evening off. It’s the same songs as Roxy, but the vibe is more aggressive and exploratory, I think. The band knows the material backwards and forwards by now and they’re willing to turn it all inside out – especially on the title track reprise, where things float dangerously close to the edge of chaos. They’re peering into the void! The temptation to call this tour “tequila-soaked” is high, but I don’t know – it might be more of an act. The acoustic section is surprisingly clear-eyed, with focused readings of “Flying On The Ground” and “Human Highway.” The long “Helpless” that follows is one of the greatest versions of the song, too, with a painfully raw vocal and harmonica solos worthy of Dylan in ‘66. (Then again, the lurching “Cowgirl In The Sand” that closes the evening sounds pretty toasted). 

Tying it all together is the touching dedication of “Don’t Be Denied” to Danny Whitten. “He was almost here,” Neil says. And for a second, his friends conjure up his ghost. The Horse is spooky on this evening in London, keeping jive alive at the Rainbow. 

nya thanks 'doomandgloomfromthetomb'