Release Date: 1/01/1989
Recording Date: 2/1990
Label: Warner Reprise Video
- Genre/Styles
- Country-Rock, Singer/Songwriter, Folk-Rock, Album Rock
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What the Critics Say
Subtitled "A Live Acoustic Concert," the Freedom video is a 30-minute, seven-song performance taped September 5-6, 1989, its first two songs, "Crime In The City" and "This Note's For You," drawn from Neil Young's show at Jones Beach on Long Island, and the remaining five from a show at the Palladium in Manhattan the following night. "Too Far Gone" features Ben Keith on dobro and backup vocals and Frank Sampedro on mandolin, and Young plays piano on "After The Gold Rush." On the remaining songs, he accompanies himself with acoustic guitar and harmonica, stalking the stage as he sings into a cordless microphone on his harmonica holder. Stripped of other instrumentation, songs like "Crime In The City" and "No More" (both found on the Freedom album) seem starker and less musically interesting. "Ohio" (dedicated to "students killed in China") and "After The Gold Rush" are such familiar favorites that they come across in any setting. The triumph of the mini-set is the closer, "Rockin' In The Free World," which Young sings to an audience that presumably has not heard it before, but which is nevertheless singing the song to him by the end. Young is a simultaneously intense and distant live performer, and in this solo format it's the songs that are emphasized. (Broadcast on MTV on Feb. 25, 1990, Freedom subsequently was released as a home video.) ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
