[VIDEO] Neil Young Brings New Concert Film To Slamdance Festival
Posted by Joseph Lee on 01.23.2012
Check out a clip...
Neil Young and director Jonathan Demme have put together a new concert film called Neil Young Journeys, which Young says has "grinding, blinding beauty to it."
The two last worked together on Neil Young: Heart of Gold, which focused on two shows Young performed at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium with Emmylou Harris, Ben Keith and Spooner Oldham. That premiered at the Sundance festival. Journeys was filmed at Toronto's Massey Hall during the closing shows of Young's 2011 solo tour. It played Saturday at the Slamdance Film Festival, a rival of Sundance. Demme says both Slamdance and the film have a "bad boy" attitude.
Young said: "'Journeys' is so different from 'Heart of Gold.' It's like the other side of the universe. 'Heart of Gold' was a massive production with great caretaking to present this whole image of this forgotten style of presenting music, in this great old chapel of country music. This film we just made is so opposite of that. It's just one person. The sound is completely different and the attitude of it is different. The look is different. ... The sounds are kind of enveloping. You get to move way inside, whereas, 'Heart of Gold,' you're way back, going, 'Oh, it's beautiful seeing it from the back, seeing all these beautiful people, these great musicians.' And this one here, you're like inside my instrument, inside the distortion of the guitar. There's nothing in the way."
This is the fourth time the two have worked together. In addition to Heart of Gold, Young also contributed an Academy Award nominated song for 1993's Philadelphia and the two made the 2009 concert film Neil Young Trunk Show.
The film officially debuted last September at the Toronto International Film Festival, and will be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.
Young also discussed the film's use of extreme close-ups that were used by a tiny camera on his microphone. He said: "It's more distorted and funky. It's a little bit more in your face. It's like zooming in on something, losing everything that's usually around it, and you're just losing everything else. There's no bass, no drums, there's no other guitars, there's no other voices, there's no synthesizers, there's no echo. There's just this thing. It's a big sound, because you're right up on it. It's like a fantastic voyage into your guitars."
The film features songs from Young's 2010 album Le Noise, as well as "After the Gold Rush", "Ohio" and "Down by the River". It also has a road trip Young takes to one of his Toronto shows from his hometown of Omemee in Ontario.
Demme said: "This whole world of cars and music, that's a big chunk of Neil's DNA. He's all about cars and driving and music in motion. I don't think we had any discussions. It was just like, well, we're going to Canada to shoot the concert in Toronto. Obviously, we'll drive down there from Omemee and take a look and see what's changed, and kind of just discover the past in the present. The same way the songs are very often kind of reflective. It put a lens up to his life. He's a medium for all of our lives. Certainly, our generation, whatever Neil's been singing about for the last 40 years or whatever, it's like, 'Thank you. That's exactly what I was feeling. You've put it into words and music.'"
