In the summer of ’96 I went to an Oasis/Neil Young concert at Molson Park in Barrie.  Near the end of the Oasis set I was violently pulled to the ground while crowd surfing and knocked out cold.  An hour later I awoke with a benevolent, bearded old biker gently slapping my face and saying “Holy shit kid.  You alright?”  I was lying on a grassy hill near the back of the venue with the late afternoon sun shining and Neil working his way through “Sugar Mountain” about 100 metres away.    I was 17, and more than alright.

If there’s one thing Neil Young can do, it’s knock out an incredible live show (and occasionally one of its attendees).  From the 1979 album Live Rust to the 2006 concert film Neil Young: Heart of Gold, this has never been in question.  If there’s a second thing he can do, it’s make you wish you were 17 again. With songs like “Harvest Moon” and “Beautiful Bluebird” (from the seriously overlooked Chrome Dreams II), Neil has made looking back an art form.  But the granddaddy of them all is “Sugar Mountain,” written when Neil was a young Canadian rocker and no longer allowed into a local youth club. He was 21, and this made him feel old.  

Neil Young is now actually old, so it’s fitting that the title of his new live album is the title of his oldest, saddest song about being young.  Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 is exactly what it says it is, and it’s fantastic.  Fourteen tracks of his earliest work punctuated with playful banter and anecdotes.  Neil is in fine form and sounds decidedly youthful throughout.  Then he arrives at “Sugar Mountain.”  He introduces the song with a 30 second riff about never planning anything ahead, and then dances into it with as much heartache as he would 30 years later in Barrie.  I always wondered how Neil Young’s soul got so ancient, and this recording is like a fossil of his earliest days.  While early albums like 1969’s Everybody Knows This is Nowhere showcase his incredible songwriting and depth of talent, this is the first I’ve heard of the tortured reminiscence that has come to define his career.  He was 24, and he clearly felt impossibly old.  

Listening to it made me think of that summer - of being 17 - and the reckless freedom that came with it.  I don’t miss it, but the fact that it’s gone makes me sad nonetheless.  Neil Young seems to have known this all along:  You’re never too young to feel old, and you’re never too old to feel young.