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View the past work of a magical performer with new eyes with the latest DVD release from Neil Young.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold

August 19, 2005. Nashville, Tennessee. A man is sitting alone on a stage at the Ryman Auditorium, the hallowed shrine of American music, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry. He is playing and singing, though the evening’s performance is long over and the hall is now empty. When he finishes, there is no applause; he puts his guitar into its case, snaps it closed, and walks off into the shadows. Neil Young has just finished two performances of his newest album, Prairie Wind, to a crowd whose adoration has never waned, but some things never change: as soon as the audience is gone, Young plays one more song, this one for himself and the sheer love of the music.

Trilogy

Neil Young: Heart of Gold, a groundbreaking union of film and music ministered by director Jonathan Demme and Neil Young, is the permanent record that emerged from these two concerts at the Ryman. Young, accompanied by musicians – strings, horns, and singers, including a gospel choir – performed, in its entirety, Prairie Wind, the album Young had finished recording only months earlier. Following that, Young offered a selection of other songs, mostly from the world-conquering Harvest and Harvest Moon albums, which, taken with Prairie Wind,” together feels like a trilogy.

Watch the trailer for Neil Young: Heart of Gold (windows media) here.

This was not, however, just another concert of new work and past hits randomly patched together. All of the works melded into a rational whole, a connected body of work. Young not only refocused the emphasis of many of the songs he’d performed over the years, but took a fresh look at how these songs relate to one another as well. At the end of this film, many, even the most fanatical Young-devotees, will view his past work with new eyes.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold is Jonathan Demme’s (Philadelphia, The Silence of the Lambs (for which he won an Academy Award for ‘Best Director’), Married to the Mob, Something Wild, Swimming to Cambodia, Melvin and Howard and the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense) intimate musical portrait of legendary singer/songwriter Neil Young, filmed on the occasion of the world premiere of Young’s Prairie Wind concert at Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium last summer. Young’s music provides an emotionally rich view into this unique artist’s relationship to family, friends, mortality, and the passage of time. Young is accompanied onstage by many long time musical companions, including country star Emmylou Harris, Neil’s wife Pegi Young, and bandleader/steel guitarist Ben Keith.

Jonathan Demme

Since 1988, Demme (pictured, below right) has worked with a versatile team at his company Clinica Estetico, producing or directing a number of documentaries as well as feature film projects. Many of these have focused on Haiti, such as the acclaimed Haiti Dreams of Democracy, Tonbe Leve (Fall Down, Get Up) and Courage and Pain. In 2004, he completed The Agronomist, a documentary on the Haitian radio journalist Jean Dominique, who was assassinated in April 2000 on the steps of his radio station. He also produced Konbit, an album of Haitian music, and has published four books about the art of Haiti.

He also directed the documentary Cousin Bobby, and produced the Academy Award-nominated biography Mandela, as well as Into the Rope! (about the ‘Double Dutch’ craze), The Uttmost (a portrait of producer Kenny Utt) and One Foot on a Banana Peel, The Other Foot in the Grave (about living with AIDS). He also recently produced Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, a documentary on the life of Beah Richards, directed by Lisa Gay Hamilton.

Demme’s creative interests have also lured him into the musical domain. He directed the Robyn Hitchcock concert film, Storefront Hitchcock, as well as the award-winning Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense. He has directed Artists United Against Apartheid’s Sun City, Neil Young’s The Complex Sessions and music videos for Bruce Springsteen (perhaps most notably he co-directed Springsteen's Streets Of Philadelphia music video) and for Les Frères Parent, The Neville Brothers, New Order, KRS-One and the Feelies, among others.

Demme’s films have been nominated for 20 Academy Awards. In addition Demme was voted the 45th ‘Greatest Director of all time’ by US listings magazine Entertainment Weekly.

On Neil Young: Heart of Gold Ilona Herzberg serves as producer, the executive producers are: Bernard Shakey, Elliot Rabinowitz, and Gary Goetzman. Director of Photography is Ellen Kuras, ASC. Michael Zansky is the production designer. Andy Keir is the editor. Costumes were created by Manuel. The tunes are all supplied by Mr Young.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold is out on DVD now.

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