Neil Young and Stephen Stills rolled back the years to perform a 13 song set at the Harvest Moon festival in Lake Hughes, California last weekend.
The event – which raises funds for the Painted Turtle Camp and the Bridge School; two causes that, as a father of a disabled child, are close to Young’s heart – also featured John Mayer and Lily Meola.
Young and Stills played a number of tracks from the CSN and CSNY songbook as well as a fair few Buffalo Springfield classics, including Helplessly Hoping, For What It’s Worth and Hung Upside Down. It was the first time the pair had played the latter since way back in 1967.
Stills also accompanied Young on those songs he’s virtually contracted to play on such occasions – Heart Of Gold, Harvest Moon (of course) and Rockin’ In The Free World, for which they were joined by John Mayer. Check out the videos below:
It marked the longest set Young and Stills have played together since the Buffalo Springfield reunion tour in 2011, although the pair did play last year at an autism awareness benefit in Los Angeles.
It’s been a difficult summer for Young, who was forced to cancel his Love Earth tour with Crazy Horse after himself and other band members fell ill. Young later said he was merely obeying his body: “I felt sick when I thought of going onstage. My body was telling me, ‘You gotta stop.’ And so I listened to my body.”
Despite that the 79 year old Canadian has been busy as ever this year. His run of late 80s/early 90s albums, Freedom, Ragged Glory, Arc and Weld have all been reissued and his classic 1974 album On The Beach is set to receive the 50th anniversary deluxe treatment come November.
Meanwhile Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s September 1969 set at Fillmore East is set to come out in the last week of this month. The latter has been mixed using nothing but analogue tech, much to Young’s satisfaction.
“There’s not one digital piece of machinery working in the making of the record,” he has said. “The vinyl comes out is just like a vinyl would have been in 1969.”
