Weld (1991)

Figuring out where to start with this one is difficult for me. Weld documents the 1991 Smell the Horse Tour and as I mentioned before, the Cleveland stop at Richfield Coliseum was my first ever concert. My dad and a friend of his took me. It was an eye-watering experience…and not just because of the smoke (Smell the Pot, more like). I’d never seen that amount of people or heard that amount of noise before. Social Distortion and Sonic Youth were interesting openers, who I knew in limited quantity before the show. Having seen the Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust covers before (and I think maybe seeing a VHS of the film), it was really exciting to see the giant Fender amps. Little did I know this wasn’t a regular Neil Young thing. He only brought them out for three tours I know of, now known as the “Rust Trilogy” (1978, 1991, 2012).” For me, it was “holy crap I know those are fake, but this show is so loud it sounds like it’s coming from those two story tall speakers.” I tracked down a recording of this show and I can’t really correlate it to my 30 year gone memory of it, but it’s a nice feeling listening back to it, knowing I was there then and writing about Neil now.

Weld is the post-Ragged Glory release I’ve listened to the most, it has a legendary reputation, and an interesting release structure. Aside from the Weld double album, there was an experimental third album called Arc (see below), and a VHS/Laserdisc concert film. Interestingly, the VHS/Laserdisc was mixed by David Briggs while the double album was tinkered with by Neil and bassist Billy Talbot. These days, Neil agrees with many fans and Shakey author Jimmy McDonough that the film mix was much better. I’m not sure I can speak well on this. While I can play Weld at CD quality on nice monitor speakers, the only access to the film I have is the Vimeo stream on Neil Young Archives and I’m not sure what quality the sound is at. What I can detect is the film mix by Briggs is cleaner, more precise sounding, but Weld still sounds like the most badass rock concert you’ll ever hear. I’m not sure that every performance between the film and the album are the same. The film credits indicate its made from Buffalo and Pittsburgh performances, but the album is less helpful in that regard.

The most interesting aspect of the film is that half of the focus is on the audience rather than 100% on the band. You see a lot of early 90s style and a lot of singing along. This is especially effective during the “Gulf War” version of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” with its air raid sound effects and battlefield lighting and smoke. The effect on the audience is at once astounded and devastated. Neil was obsessively watching the CNN coverage of the Gulf War at this time and it was a tricky needle to thread to show support and criticism in a rock concert. Farmer John (guitar tech Larry Cragg) ties a yellow ribbon to the Rust Never Sleeps mic stand, and Neil projects peace signs all over the crowd. Aside from these visual aspects, the music is virtually the same.

And what music it is. “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” is the dirtiest version of this song I’ve ever heard. Just a burly, roaring mass of distortion delivered like a sledgehammer. It makes me confident that this is one of the most badass sounding songs in existence. Following it up with a fast, electric, but lengthy “Crime in the City” shows the anger and emotion Neil is feeling at this time. He wanted to express some feelings about the war and about the Bush administration and Old Black is his megaphone. “Love to Burn” is epic but a bit muddy compared to its effortless Ragged Glory version. Live staple “Cinnamon Girl” is fun, but it’s never been one of my favorites. “Mansion on the Hill” is missing a little low end in this rendition, but I still love this track. The live harmonies are well done and the band’s heart is clearly into the new material (love Billy’s ad lib “Still!” during the last chorus). And then of course there’s “Fuckin’ Up” (the audience loves singing along to this). Poncho is living his best life on this co-written song and the live performance has him front and center with rhythm guitar and background vocals. This is a great version of the song, with vibrant tone and lengthy solos that sound like a jet engine. And more Billy ad libs!

I still don’t like “Welfare Mothers” but the only thing to say about this performance is that Neil and Billy have a whole routine in this one that is sort of funny, but still needlessly derogatory and ill conceived.

There’s a somewhat common belief that Weld contains the best performance of “Cortez the Killer” ever recorded. I remember I would play disc 2 more because it opened with this. For me, it’s better than the Zuma and Live Rust versions. More grand-sounding than the studio version and comparable to the Live Rust performance, but without the embarrassing reggae intonations. The guitar sounds are just incredible here, full of unique flourishes, and that idiosyncratic tone that can only be Neil on Old Black. It glides and shimmers, tugging at emotional heartstrings. The band takes its time here and it counts. I love when Neil hits the distortion right after a beautiful solo to get that foreboding atmosphere back into the song, never letting you off the hook. Then, of course, there’s his playful “he came dancing across the water” guitar strumming that is so unique to this song.

A perfectly good “Powderfinger” follows but it’s not different enough from prior live performances to really set it apart. Still a classic. I think “Love and Only Love” is slightly better on Ragged Glory, but it’s possible it lends itself better to a studio environment than a live one. It’s a live staple, so what do I know? Here it’s mostly a vehicle for tremendous guitar solos (the last one is a doozy) whereas I gravitate to the riff on this one a bit more overall.

“Rockin’ in the Free World” has a good showing here, but it’s been done better elsewhere (SNL) and this rendition doesn’t add much to that. I do love that in the film, Neil smiles and walks over to Poncho’s mic stand to sing the chorus with him, considering it was Poncho that said the line that inspired the song. You also get a full on demonstration of the Whizzer in the final act of this song… Have I talked about the Whizzer before? Neil uses an old Fender amp and its tone is controlled by volume knobs. He wanted to be able to control that on the fly, so he custom built a red box with foot switches on it that manipulate servos attached to the volume knobs of the amp (no wonder he got so into model trains). You see him stomp on it quite a few times towards the end of this song.

Throughout Weld, you can really tell that Neil is just in love with sound, particularly guitar tone that straddles the line between grating and gorgeous. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the 14 minute “Like a Hurricane,” another widely acknowledged all timer performance. It’s magical. No other way to describe it, really.

“Tonight’s the Night” and “Roll Another Number” are pretty much as they’ve been heard elsewhere. Good performances, but not especially noteworthy.

Top 3:

1. Cortez the Killer
2. Like a Hurricane
3. Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

Cut song: Welfare Mothers

During the Smell the Horse tour, Neil had dinner with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and they talked about an idea Neil had to make an album using the kind of feedback and distortion effects he was getting on stage. Moore encouraged him to do it and Arc was the result. 35 minutes of all the most distorted and feedback drenched moments from the tour, with bits of vocals, drums, and bass floating throughout. It’s a hard listen unless you are somewhat used to listening the harsher side of ambient noise experiments. At this time I was being introduced to things like Godflesh, Techno-Animal, Painkiller, The Boredoms, Naked City, Zeni Geva, etc so it was kind of a cool meeting of the minds to get a very contemporary experiment like this from Neil. Is it good? Well…if you love the sound of Old Black and Neil’s amp just careening off the walls, then yeah, this is like the longest live breakdown in a Crazy Horse show. If you love Neil for his melodies and songwriting, then no, it would be tough to get through this. That said, I absolutely adore the moments where Neil’s fragile voice sings the “Like a Hurricane” chorus amidst all this noise, like the eye of a storm. You also get to hear a lot of Ralph Molina’s drums in this, not something that generally is front and center when listening to Neil and the Horse. It’s amazing that Reprise put this out after Neil’s low selling experiments of the 80s, but he did just give them the very successful Freedom and Ragged Glory.

Between recording Ragged Glory and the Smell the Horse tour, Neil and the Horse did a short set of shows in the fall of 1990. Way Down in the Rust Bucket, the officially released recording and film of November 13, 1990, was released in 2021 and has a much different vibe than Weld. The set list is very different than Weld, with some truly rare songs making their way to the live show (Seriously…”T-Bone” is on this). The Catalyst is a small club in Santa Cruz and the vibe is more bar band than arena rock. There’s a laconic, shambolic atmosphere, and the band sounds like they are having so much fun. Billy Talbot in particular is having a wonderful time, being quite chatty on stage, bantering with Neil throughout. The crowd was all friends and people from the community, so there’s definitely a party vibe going on.

Having listened to both live albums back to back, it’s difficult to really say one is better than the other. They are different enough to be two sides of the same coin. Maybe it’s best to say they complement each other. Where Weld is the distortion drenched statement piece, Way Down in the Rust Bucket is potentially the more fitting live document. You don’t get the gorgeous noise of Weld’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” but you do get the longer, relaxed “Love to Burn” with a band fully in the pocket, totally in sync and happy. While the video quality is not amazing, the film really shows this atmosphere off, with Billy cutting it up and acting the MC for the evening.

That laidback feeling is in full effect on opener “Country Home,” especially when Neil’s voice first kicks in. He sounds like he’s smiling and just having fun. It’s kind of hilarious they follow up this brand new song with a throwback to Re•act•or on “Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze,” which is all stretched out. There’s 19 songs on this and I’ve covered most of them elsewhere so I’ll just point out some rarities and special moments. He reaches back to American Stars ‘n’ Bars for the lascivious “Bite the Bullet” and a couple songs later, the never played before live “Danger Bird” from Zuma.

Before that, we get probably the first live performance of “Over and Over” (my personal favorite from Ragged Glory), which unfortunately goes on to be played only nine more times in the last 32 years (according to the indispensable Sugar Mountain). It’s beautiful and joyous, with such soulful playing. The presence of that song right away gives the edge to this over Weld. When “Danger Bird” follows it, it’s kind of surprising. “Danger Bird” is more in the vein of “Cortez the Killer” in that it slowly unfurls amidst fragile guitar lines and a piercing tone. Quite a come down from the rollicking “Over and Over.”

“I just want to sing it a little longer…” says Neil as he launches into another verse of “Don’t Cry No Tears” after it wraps up. “That’s a little Las Vegas ending we put on that for you there…” Maybe this was just some substances talking, but it’s incredibly charming how Neil talks to the audience throughout his career. He’s always making little comments like this, affectionally known as “raps” when people talk about live performances. I’m glad they left some of these in there. Great version of “Fuckin’ Up” on this one, more fun than the bludgeoning Weld version. “T-Bone” wears out it’s welcome quickly, but the groove is so fun, I’ll allow it. It fits this setting for sure. Likewise, the ramshackle “Homegrown” is perfectly executed sloppiness. Apparently the crowd was throwing samples of marijuana up on stage during this as the local community of growers was out in in force that night. This is a song I’ve always thought was a bit goofy, but I’m absolutely in love with this performance.

Where this performance really takes off is the last 40 minutes, when Neil just pours his heart out via guitar. A gorgeous “Mansion on the Hill” starts things off and sets the tone for the next three songs (despite the harmony being off slightly in parts). “We’d like to reach way down in the rust bucket for this one” prefaces a lovely intro for “Like a Hurricane.” It’s a very fragile performance, Neil’s voice shaking more than usual, his guitar twinkling through the melodies. It’s almost like he’s trying to make as little mark on the microphone, letting the words come out in a breath. His solos are amongst his bluesiest for this song. The subdued beginning to “Love and Only Love” belies the monster that is about to follow, a roiling mass of riffs and solos.

By the time you reach the finale song “Cortez the Killer,” it’s unclear if you can take anymore. Who are you kidding? It’s “Cortez!” It’s a truly amazing performance, where the band takes time and care into crafting the right mood for this classic. If the preceding 2+ hours was a party, this was the contemplative ride home, staring out the window in the near silence. It’s night music. Again, Neil’s barely-there vocal mixes in with the tones, a perfect blend of vulnerability and below the surface anger.

Top 3:

1. Over and Over
2. Cortez the Killer
3. Homegrown

Cut song: T-Bone