Neil Young's classics hit home

The rock legend still finds urgency in the oldies as tour wraps at the Hollywood Bowl.

- MIKAEL WOOD

YOUNG performed with the Chrome Hearts, a band he convened for his recent "Talkin to the Trees" LP.

The jeans. The flannel shirt. The silvery mutton chops peeking out from beneath a weather-beaten train engineer's cap.

Neil Young had dressed perfectly for the part of Neil Young on Monday night at the Hollywood Bowl, and he'd brought just the right songs too, among them "Harvest Moon," "Ohio," "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)," both "Southern Man" and "Old Man," as well as "Cowgirl in the Sand," the last of which he punctuated by telling the audience that he'd first played the hillside amphitheater with Buffalo Springfield in 1966.

"Finally made it back here," he added with a little grin.

Considering how ambivalently Young has pursued traditional rock stardom over the intervening decades, you could look at his Love Earth tour - which the 79-year-old wrapped with Monday's two-hour show after three months on the road as the work of a crank in his dotage giving in to popular demand and doing the hits everybody wants to hear.

But listen to what those hits are saying.