Neil Young was just a few bars into an indignant old song at Carnegie Hall on Monday night... when he abruptly threw the emergency brake.
“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...
“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.
I love Neil.
