Neil Young's 'Live at the Cellar Door' is Deceivingly Inviting

Neil Young had just released his third solo album, “After the Gold Rush.” He was on top. He was at the peak of his career during one of music’s greatest eras. He was 25 years old. It was late 1970. Young came to Washington D.C. to play a series of six solo shows at the Cellar Door nightclub. It was just him, pouring his heart on the stage, admitting his mistakes and letting them pass through his music, taking the audience on a twisted journey through his past. It was bliss.

You can hear the outpour of emotions, both dark and joyful, on Young’s latest release, “Live at the Cellar Door,” a compilation of the best moments from that six-night stint back in 1970. It includes his first live performances of “Old Man” and “Bad Fog of Loneliness.” Although none of the renditions blatantly stand out from any other Young performance, the sounds bring the listener back into the soul of 70s music and offer an intimate look inside Young’s youthful state.

The final track opens with Young admitting, “This song is about dope,” to which the audience responds enthusiastically. “It’s about what happens when you start getting high, and you find out that people you thought you knew, you don’t know anymore, because they don’t get high and you do.” Young speaks over eerie wisps of piano strings before he embarks on one of his earliest songs, “Flying on the Ground is Wrong.” Although it’s the closing track, it embodies the mood of the album.

The entire set holds a similar gnawing tone. It pulls at you. It’s reminiscent of the golden days while it dwells on the worst. It’s caught in purgatory. You can feel the small, cozy Cellar Door walls around you. It’s inviting, yet steers you in an unexpected direction down a foreboding road. It’s Neil Young at his best.