NEIL Young arrived here a bit early for the Walton's Guitar Festival, which starts today. Then again, a glance at the programme suggests that, even with its promise of "the best in classical, jazz, folk, and world music", he might have had trouble fitting in. Maybe the festival fringe was the place for him, writes Frank McNally.
Much of Young's music would certainly be classified as "folk". But anyone who went to Malahide Castle on Sunday - or Cork on Monday - expecting an evening of his unplugged material may have needed counselling afterwards.
I think I saw a few such people heading towards the exit about 15 minutes into the number that ended his main set: No Hidden Path. Only diehard fans would have been familiar with it. And if the early leavers had found the first half of the song challenging, they made a good decision to go when they did, because it continued for another 13 minutes by my watch.
At nearly half an hour, that's longer than Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, to which I'll return in a moment. But - like the rest of Young's concert - it was also very loud. Behind the stage in Malahide, you could see aeroplanes taking off and landing at nearby Dublin Airport. You just couldn't hear them.
I enjoyed every minute of it, I must say - although this may be more of a comment about me than about the quality of the song. And having complained here recently about the sham of "spontaneous" encores, I also enjoyed Young's approach to the problem.
There's nothing like ending your show with a 28-minute version of a song nobody knows to test the audience's appetite for more. I suspect there were people afraid to clap afterwards in case he came back. But enough of us did and, having departed silently, the band returned without a word and played exactly one encore: the Beatles' A Day in the Life.
Complete with the swirling, cacophonous crescendo - but noisier than the Beatles ever played it - this was a threat to aviation. By the end, Young had broken all the strings on his guitar, which he propped against an amp, like a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier, before departing, again without a word. We didn't need hints from the lighting engineer to know the show was over.
In the Jurassic Park that is the 2008 outdoor concert season, Neil Young is that most threatened of the dinosaurs: the guitar hero. He's a great songwriter too, of course. But his devotion to guitar solos, long after most rock bands have abandoned them, borders on heroic. Not that this view may be shared by aficionados of the Walton's festival. If Amnesty International had a section dedicated to investigating rights abuses against guitars, the Canadian axe-man's file might now be reopened.
LOOK ON the bright side. As the dog days of summer begin this week, we should pause to appreciate the Irish climate, which at least spares us what Dante called the "great scourge of days canicular". The ancient Greeks dreaded the searing heat associated with the rise in the morning sky of Sirius, whose desiccating effect on men they compared to the death by thirst of those bitten by rabid dogs.
Desiccation is not a big risk in Ireland. Among public health hazards here, it ranks alongside rabies, in fact. And based on the evidence to date, the height of the Irish summer will be less a series of dog days than the usual dogs' dinners.
If the rain is getting you down, however, and escape to the Mediterranean is not an option, you can always visit the National Concert Hall this Friday night for some vicarious Spanish sunshine, courtesy of one of the greatest pieces of guitar music ever written: the aforementioned Concierto de Aranjuez.
A highlight of the Walton's festival, it is one of four pieces to be performed at the NCH by Paraguayan virtuoso Berta Rojas, accompanied by John Feeley and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. But it is by far the best known of the genre, from its use in countless films and TV documentaries. It even featured in Fawlty Towersas the tragic soundtrack for Manuel's surrender of his pet rat. For this and many other reasons, it evokes its country of origin as few pieces of music do.
Written in 1939, the concerto was a product of turbulent times, both for Spain and for the composer. The civil war had recently cost Rodrigo the scholarship that enabled him to study in Paris. And the concerto's exquisite slow movement is said variously to have been a response to the bombing of Guernica and to his wife's miscarriage of their first baby.
Officially, the piece was written in honour of the royal gardens at Aranjuez, near Madrid. Rodrigo wanted it to capture "the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds, and the gushing of fountains", qualities of a garden that a blind man - he had lost his sight during a childhood bout of diphtheria - could best appreciate.
By the time he died, at 97, the concerto had inspired multiple tributes, including a Miles Davis jazz standard. And the garden theme had taken an unforeseen twist. Such was the piece's popularity, Rodrigo ruefully compared it to a great tree that, while making him famous, had also overshadowed the rest of his long career.
Full details of the guitar festival are available at www.gfi.ie