There are many, many, many people who believe that Neil Young can do no wrong, and it’s certainly hard to argue with his track record. Even the Canadian chameleon’s most bizarre changes of colour and stripe end up on all-time-favourites lists. I’m prevented from siding with the “Rusties” — as Neil Young Trekkies are called — only by an unfortunately dreadful concert in 1984 he performed with his band the International Harvesters.

But more on that later, because his 1978 “Rust Never Sleeps” tour was undeniable history. It was everything you’d want in a Neil Young show short of a replay of the Band’s “Last Waltz” with the tribute glory focused on Neil instead. By the time the Rust tour was over, both the readers and the critics of Rolling Stone, who usually disagree on what’s best, voted him Artist of the Year (a tie with the Who) and Male Vocalist of the Year and named “Rust Never Sleeps” the Album of the Year.

I had a pretty good seat for the October 1 show at Maple Leaf Gardens, which was very fortunate in that cavern for an ostensibly “intimate” production like this. In Toronto, as everywhere on that long, long tour, the stage lights were dim as a herd of cloaked figures with pen lights for eyes (the Sand People from “Star Wars”, I later found out) prowled about making preparations while the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” played.

As soon as the crescendo slammed into its piano power chord at the end the elves dispersed and a massive packing case lifted off the stage to reveal Neil, worn out, poor thing, fast asleep. Happily he woke up and found an acoustic guitar handy and a microphone already strapped to his cheek, and he started playing “Sugar Mountain”, never once rising beyond his knees.

What an opening! Quirky, but of course! But we were witnessing a birth and it was something to behold. Neil, obsessed with age, perhaps the curse of his surname, was explaining that you can’t be 20 when you live on Sugar Mountain. Too old or too young? Fortunately the next song, Neil all the way up on his feet now, and dressed all in white, was “I Am a Child”, so we were starting to get our bearings.

The theatrical trappings continued through a hefty, hit-packed-to-the-rafters show, Neil climbing ladders to sing from the top of the amps, some guys in lab smocks taking notes, wizards with cone heads at the control board, the Sand People scurrying around making adjustments, and dragging him off, prone again, at the intermission.

In the midst of all this, the full four seasons of music, a perfect emotional arc. Young had his piano and banjo and a bunch of harmonicas he kept dunked in water, and on cue he had Crazy Horse, the best Neil Young band of all and one of the best in rock anytime. Frank Sampedro on guitar and keyboards, Billy Talbot on bass and vocals and Ralph Molina on drums and vocals. Man, could those guys thunder.

After “I Am a Child” Neil kept the acoustic set going with the lovely “Comes a Time”, the drop-dead gorgeous “Already One” and that stunner on piano “After the Gold Rush”.

Cue the Insane Stallion and we went heaving into “Thrasher”, followed by an acoustic version of “My My, Hey Hey (Into the Black)” — I reckon the whole Gardens was singing along with “this is the story of Johnny Rotten” — then “When You Dance, I Can Really Love”, “The Loner”, “Welfare Mothers” and “Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown”.

Having tested the barn’s foundation, Neil got quiet again to listen for any warning creaks. During “The Needle and the Damage Done” you could have heard a pin drop, pardon the pun. What a chunk of gloomy ecstasy that song is. Then he did “Lotta Love” and “Sedan Delivery”, and then things got truly dangerous.

“Powderfinger” is on my list as one of the best rock songs of the ages, even as its lyrics remain rock’s foremost example of being able to stir the soul despite being, as a whole, utterly incomprehensible. And the guitar soloing in that tune is my second favourite after the solos that come with the very next song he played, “Cortez the Killer”.

I had irrevocably peaked by this point. Everything else from here on out was gravy, and a rich sauce it was: “Cinnamon Girl”, “Like a Hurricane ” (during which a Sand Person furiously peddled a fan that kept Neil’s hair blowing all over the place), “Hey Hey, My My” and, finally, “Tonight’s the Night”.

That was a bleak choice for a closing number, but it was great (scary-great), and maybe Neil had had a premonition that the fans would be talking about this show for generations to come. That was the night.

You know what was missing from the set list, though? “Helpless”. That was the song that finally got me to pay attention to Neil Young. Before that his shrill voice and weird guitar solos were just too much for me. But for coming over to Neil Young’s side, via Crosby Stills & Nash, I was rewarded over and over again. When you have a logbook of monuments like “Heart of Gold”, “Old Man”, “Down by the River”, “Ohio” and “Helpless” charting your course through life, you can forgive him his most bent moments, even that electronica nonsense he was literally buzzing with for a while.

He took the Omeemee and the Winnipeg in him to LA when he became an American, and for that I admire him all the more. But considering that I grew up near Toronto it’s amazing I didn’t see him in concert before he got famous. The first time was just a glimpse through the crowd at the ‘72 Mariposa Folk Festival, and then of course there was the CSN&Y reunion tour in ‘74, when they played Varsity Stadium on July 2. That just happens to be #15 on my all-time list of favourite concerts, so good work, fella!

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Dylan, Young & Clapton: If you can’t sing, sing louder.

And though the rust never slept, it did have long vacations on the farm. When Neil brought the International Harvesters to the Grandstand of the Canadian National Exhibition — Toronto’s big cotton-candy-and-carnival-rides fall fair — on September 1, 1984, my sister and brother-in-law and I didn’t quite feel we got our money’s worth. It was fundamentally laid-back, an after-supper jamboree on the porch straight off the just-released “Old Ways” album.

With Ben Keith on pedal steel guitar, Anthony Crawford on guitar, banjo and fiddle, Rufus Thibodeaux also on fiddle, Spooner Oldham on piano, Tim Drummond on bass and Karl T Himmel on drums, Neil drove the tractor through “Are You Ready for the Country?”, “Motor City”, “Comes a Time”, “Hawks and Doves”, “Bound for Glory”, “Are There Any More Real Cowboys?”, “Amber Jean”, “Heart of Gold”, “Too Far Gone”, “Roll Another Number”, “Southern Pacific”, “The Needle and the Damage Done”, “Helpless” (thankyou!), “California Sunset”, “It Might Have Been”, “Razor Love”, “Flying On the Ground is Wrong”, “Soul of a Woman”, “Field of Opportunity”, “Old Man”, “Four Strong Winds”, “Get Back to the Country” and “Bite the Bullet”.

A year later Neil and the Harvesters were back on the exact same stage, without me in the audience this time, and I guess someone had whispered in his ear. This time he played “Powderfinger” too.

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Neil can be laid back, but he doesn’t bottle up his bile. This George Bush guy is pissing him off mightily. Check out the politics of Neil Young on his website and especially his “Living with War” blog.

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* See #7: David Bowie
* See #8: The Tubes
* See #9: Pink Floyd
* See #10: Bob Marley
* See #11: Bob Dylan
* See #12: Heatwave
* See #13: Watkins Glen
* See #14: The Who
* See #15: Crosby, Stills Nash & Young
* COMING SOON: The Compleat Dorseyland Concert Directory