Most Rockers Neil Young's age consider getting around to one album or tour every few years to be as about as ambitious as they want to be. Not Neil, who seems to keep himself busy every waking hour - and probably fills the time between with dreams about what he's going to do when he wakes up. In addition to continuing to put out new material at a pace that is a distant memory to his contemporaries, Young has been mining his archives and releasing retrospective material at an astonishing clip. Perhaps that process got him thinking about the idea of getting the surviving members of one of his early bands back together for another of the things he is passionate about - his annual benefit to benefit the Bridge School, a school in Northern California Neil and his wife, Pegi, started 24 years ago for special needs children. Neil even broke out his leather, fringed jacket for the occasion Saturday (10/23) for the brief reunion set with Buffalo Springfield band mates Stephen Stills (looking trimmer than he has in years) and Richie Furay. Jim Messina, unfortunately, did not participate. He was in Nevada for an appearance with Kenny Loggins. Young, Furay and Stills were joined by drummer Joe Vitale in the late Dewey Martin's role, and Rick Rosa playing bass for Bruce Palmer, who died last February. The 6 song set included Mr. Soul, Rock & Roll Woman, Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It, Burned, Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing and For What It's Worth. The concert also featured appearances by Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, Billy Idol, Lucinda Williams (joined by surprise guest Emmylou Harris), Elvis Costello (with Emmylou throughout his set) and Kris Kristofferson, who had planned to play with Merle Haggard but instead found himself solo, asking the crowd to say a prayer for his ailing friend, who Kristofferson called '...the closest thing to Hank Williams' left on the planet.
RollingStone.com
