Days after National Guard troops shot and killed four students at Kent State University in 1970, Neil Young wrote “Ohio,” and with the rest of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, recorded one of the greatest of protest songs.
“Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’ / We’re finally on our own,” Young sings in “Ohio” of the turmoil at Kent State and the broader clashes between Vietnam War protestors and the government.
Fifty-five years later, a few weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard into the streets of Washington D.C. this summer, Young and his band, the Chrome Hearts, recorded “Big Crime,” another hot-off-the-presses song, at their soundcheck before a concert in Chicago.
“Don’t want soldiers walking on our streets / Got big crime in DC at the White House,” he writes in “Big Crime,” arguing that it’s not the citizenry who need policing most in this moment.
At the Hollywood Bowl on Monday, Young and the Chrome Hearts played those two songs back to back early in their set. “Big Crime” isn’t going to be the new “Ohio” – few of his songs can match the power of that one – but it felt good on an emotional level to see the 79-year-old singer-songwriter still singing about concerns he’s always had, about peace and freedom and love for the planet and all of its people.
The night delivered 18 songs in two hours, from political and environmental protest numbers to love songs, from wistful tales of days and friends gone by to, at one point, an ode to his tour bus.
The show opened with a pair of classics, “Ambulance Blues” from the bleakly beautiful 1974 release “On The Beach,” and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” an oblique love song from 1969’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.”
Both are epic in scope – the pair played out over the first 20 minutes of the show – with Young trading guitar licks with guitarist Micah Nelson and bassist Corey McCormick as Spooner Oldham added organ fills and drummer Anthony LoGerfo powered the beat.
“I first played here with Stephen [Stills] and the [Buffalo] Springfield in 1966,” Young told the crowd at the close of “Cowgirl.” “Finally made it back here.”
That’s not entirely accurate – Young and his band Crazy Horse played the amphitheater in 2012 – but it is true that he typically plays smaller venues, depending on the show he’s created. In 2023, he played shows at the Roxy to celebrate opening the venue 50 years earlier, as well as a run of shows at the Ford and Greek theaters on a solo acoustic tour.
And Young hadn’t played to a Southern California audience this big since he and Promise of the Real played Arroyo Seco Weekend in Pasadena in 2018. Outside of Oldham, the Chrome Hearts were all members of Promise of the Real. (On a somewhat related note, this week the fashion brand Chrome Hearts filed a lawsuit against Young, alleging the Chrome Hearts band name on merchandise violates its trademark. The term “chrome heart” appeared in Young’s 1976 song “Long May You Run.” The fashion company was formed in 1988.)
Given that, the setlist included more of his bigger, louder rock and roll hits – “Southern Man” and “Ohio” got big cheers at their opening notes early in the show – mixed with deeper cuts that touched on the themes of the Love Earth World Tour.
“Be The Rain” and “Sun Green,” which close his 2003 album “Greendale,” reached back to Young’s concerns about the environment, capitalism, and corruption. [His opening act, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, played a whole set of gospel blues built around the good reverend’s proselytizing about saving the earth by fighting overconsumption and the ills it creates.]
“Long Walk Home,” from the late ’80s record “Life,” personified Liberty as a young girl endangered by the times. “America, America / Where have we gone,” Young sang. “It’s such a long walk home.”
Young didn’t talk as much between songs as he has at times in the past, but did offer a short anecdote about a conversation he’d had with a new tour bus driver as they were driving along six or eight months ago.
“He said, ‘You got new songs?’” Young said. “I said, No, I hadn’t written in a long, long time. He said, ‘Why don’t you write one about your bus?’”
“Silver Eagle,” which appears on his new album “Talkin’ to the Trees,” was the result, and as played on Monday fits neatly into Young’s catalog of traveling tunes. “You carried my friends, you carried me,” Young sang. “Silver eagle, I’m feeling free.”
That and “Big Crime” were the only new songs in the show, which meant fans got many of the hits they came for.
“Harvest Moon” delivered a gentle, lilting melody with lyrics that celebrated the simple pleasure of walking in the moonlight with a loved one. “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” from 1970’s “After the Gold Rush” remains as beautiful and plaintive a portrait of love lost as ever has been written.
Those soon shifted to a pair of the heaviest rock songs in Young’s catalogue. “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” feels like an apocalypse, its dark lyrics set against the squall of Young’s guitar soloing and the storm of the rest of the band.
That slipped seamlessly “Like a Hurricane,” a slower number that in live performances burns harder on a grander scale than the original version on 1977’s “American Stars ‘n Bars,” Young’s guitar soaring throughout. [The song also saw a synthesizer descend from the rafters wrapped inside a cutout of a large bird, something Young has featured during “Hurricane” for decades, the bird known alternately as Stringman, the brand of the instrument, Danger Bird, or the Dove From Above, according to fan sites online.]
“Old Man,” another of Young’s best-loved songs, closed out the main set. “Old man, look at my life / I’m a lot like you were,” he sang, now an old man himself, though he was in his 20s when he wrote it for 1972’s “Harvest.”
Then, with the encore, Young shifted from his usual show-closer “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World” to the country rock shuffle of “Roll Another Number (For the Road),” one last tune before heading back on the bus and onto the next city.