A PIRATE FLAG flew above the drum kit of Crazy Horse as Neil Young took the stage at The Point last night. It gave the stage which was lit with flickering candles, the appearance of a conveyance for Peter Pan's lost boys.
Neil Young and many of his" fans may be gathering wrinkles and losing hair, but both still seem to see themselves as the eternal pirates, setting sail for the choppy seas of rock `n' roll.
After last year's tour with brattish guitar terrorists Pearl Jam Young this year sailed into Dublin with Crazy Horse, the band he formed after his departure from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
This was good news for Tony (42), from Dublin.
"I wasn't really interested in Pearl Jam, so I wasn't that interested in what he did with them, but Crazy Horse, that's a real band", said Tony, who has been a Neil Young fan since he first heard a Buffalo Springfield record in the Sixties.
Paddy and Maeve O'Neil, whose admiration of Young's music spans the last 25 years, have been away working for the UN in Russia and Ethiopia, but took this opportunity to catch up with their hero in Dublin.
"I not sure his fans are really that old", said Maeve. "I mean, look around, what kind of a concert do you have to go to feel young?"
While the audience certainly included many youthful faces, band almost an equal number of Pearl Jam tee shirts, the concert, seemed to be far more of a cherished event for the singer's older fans.
Poet John McNamee had brought a copy of his book The Trophy to present to the singer. He had first seen Neil Young play "way back in his long haired youth".
"In 1969", said this long term fan, "I hitch hiked from San Francisco with a black man from Louisville and a brown man from San Antonio to see Neil Young with Crosby, Stills and Nash in Phoenix, Arizona. It was a fraught and, `dangerous journey, travelling though the Arizona desert, a bunch of long haired kids, but I still remember the moment when the band came on stage. It was one of the most important days of my life."
The journey to last night's concert at The Point, however, was a little less of an ordeal. McNamee said "This time I took a cab."