“Wrong!” he barked, waving one hand, as if to cut off a rehearsal band. Part of the audience had started clapping to the beat — but not quite on the beat, as Mr. Young complained. His tone was even, his exasperation clear.
“It’s something that you probably don’t know,” he said, peering into the house from the stage, “but there’s a hell of a distance between you and me.”
At face value, that was an acoustical observation, a remark about natural reverb from somebody who has made a lifelong study of it. But it was also an assertion of order, and, on some level, a formal rebuke”
That was Nate Chinen in the second paragraph of his New York Times Neil Young review at Carnegie Hall. Now here I am reviewing the same moment.
“You can tell Neil is straining to be nice but he isn’t really managing it, he stops “Ohio” and tells us we clapping off beat. Sweetly enough but you just know what he’s thinking.”
So was it nothing major or a rebuke so harsh other publications have picked up on the story?
I went back to the tape., Neil’s voice was quite warm and his first words were a sweet joke: “I’m calling the musicians union to bring in replacements.” Unless, of course, Nate though he was being sincere. At no point was Neil barking and there was no order to be restored. So Nate and I sat through the same show and Nate twisted what happened to suit his story. He didn’t lie but his interpretation was faulty and he truncated the quote to make a point.
In the grand scheme of things, who cares? Well, that’s true except for one thing: every time I have first hand knowledge of a situation and then read a report in the paper, the report has an agenda. Not just New York Times, everyone. They all don’t lie but they don’t give an accurate description of the truth.
It is one thing to claim that Neil Young was being a dick at a concert when he really wasn’t, it is another thing to claim Speaker of the House John Boehner was being a dick when he really wasn’t. I have no deep feelings for Boehner, and I am not saying the reporters do that, what I am saying is I want my news from the hip and without coloration (color your Op Eds all you want). But if they can’t get Neil Young right, what is happening with the big stuff?
As if we didn’t know.