Live review: Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit
Neil Young and Co. give the kids a great show, and Young gives his fellow performers a great example.
Reporting from Mountain View, Calif. - The
direct impact of Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit Concerts is as plain
as the joyful faces of the special-needs school's students, many of whom watch
each year from an onstage riser placed right behind the performers.
Those
faces were often captured by the video cameras that were otherwise trained on
the stars of this year's shows, which got underway Saturday at Shoreline
Amphitheatre just north of San Jose with unplugged sets by No Doubt, Coldplay's
Chris Martin, Jimmy Buffett, Sheryl Crow, Monsters of Folk, Fleet Foxes,
Wolfmother and Gavin Rossdale. Adam Sandler was scheduled to take over Buffett's
slot as the only change on Sunday's lineup.
In a fairly understated way,
Young and his wife, Pegi, the event's co-organizer, have a school of their own
going in this show, one that trains newcomers in service to a cause higher than
merely entertaining fans, and how to go about it with class and
humility.
"Thanks for being here," Neil said when he finally took the
Shoreline stage just before midnight on Saturday. His succinct statement applied
as much to the other musicians as to the crowd, which appeared close to filling
the 22,000-capacity amphitheater.
Young's performance also tacitly
addressed the dual focal points of the concert -- he would turn his back to the
crowd, wander back to the riser and play for the students, who include his son,
Ben, who has cerebral palsy. Their faces would light up, and then he'd return to
the front of the stage to do the same for the paying audience.
Others did
the same to varying degrees throughout the evening. Gwen Stefani spent most of
No Doubt's first number behind Adrian Young's drum kit singing to the children.
The emotion caught up with her midway through their set -- unplugged, as is the
modus operandi for all Bridge School artists -- in a performance of "Simple Kind
of Life."
"This is very emotional," said Stefani, who choked up and had
to grab a tissue when she finished. "These children and their parents are so
inspiring." Apparently big girls do cry.
The esteem musicians hold for
the mission of the event and its founders is hard to overstate. And impossible
to miss. Virtually every act described their part in the show as "an honor," "a
privilege" or both.
"This is my favorite gig in the world," said Crow at
the top of her 30-minute set, "after 20 years of touring."
In stepping
away from Coldplay for the weekend, Martin managed to be inspiring and playful.
He opened with an instrumental version of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I
Could Cry" born somewhere between the funhouse and the madhouse.
From
there he touched on Coldplay signature tunes including "Clocks," "Yellow" and
"Viva La Vida," finishing with a delightfully loopy singalong of the Penguins'
doo-wop hit "Earth Angel" that turned into one of those inexplicably touching
moments that likely will be etched forever in the memory of those who were
there.
Monsters of Folk, the indie-rock supergroup consisting of Bright
Eyes' Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, My Morning Jacket's Jim James and She and
Him's M. Ward, turned in a monstrously impressive display of musical democracy,
approaching some of the heights the Band reached in its heyday.
The one
act that evidenced any strain at the sonic seams was Wolfmother, which appeared
a bit lost from time to time trying to adapt its megawatt-dependent,
Zeppelin-esque music to the all-acoustic performance.
Young brought
everyone out at the end for a reprise of "Comes a Time," with which he'd
launched the show 6 1/2 hours earlier and which is sort of his version of the "a
time for everything" passage in Ecclesiastes that Pete Seeger long ago
transformed into "Turn! Turn! Turn!"
It crystallized the bona fide sense
of community he and Pegi have created. It's not that he is planning to ride off
into the sunset any time soon. But Young seems to be taking the requisite steps
so that, when he does, he'll know others will pick up the torch.
randy.lewis@latimes.com
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Bridge benefit: Gavin Rossdale, Wolfmother, Fleet Foxes go unplugged
-Bridge benefit: Chris Martin goes Coldplay-ful
Top photo: Sheryl Crow, from left, Pegi Young and Neil Young. Bottom photo: Gwen Stefani. Credits: Randi Lynn Beach / For The Times