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The 25th Annual Bridge School Benefit

The 25th Annual Bridge School Benefit
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, Calif.
October 23

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of his annual Bridge School Benefit Concerts, Neil Young brought a lineup worthy of some of the summer’s biggest music festivals to the Bay Area’s Shoreline Amphitheatre. Even better, the second day nine-hour concert yielded a treasure of collaborations between Young and the other acts.

Midday, Beck mined the rich vein of folk rock from his 2002 album Sea Change playing songs like the beautiful bummer “Lost Cause.” Then, on a cover of “Pocahontas,” Young joined Beck on vocals and harmonica as Beck’s young son shook a tambourine nearby.

As concertgoers stood up in the lawn for the first time during the warm day and hoisted their $12 beers up in the air, Mumford & Sons proved that their folky pub sing-a-longs translated effortlessly to large venues on opener “Sigh No More.” Later, Young returned again to the stage to sing with the young Brits on his “Dance, Dance, Dance.”

Following a classy bit of crooning from Tony Bennett and a quick run through of their greatest hits by the Foo Fighters, Marcus Mumford joined Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds’ set for a rendition of “All Along the Watchtower,” which elicited a howling response by the capacity crowd. After the Dylan cover, Young came out with Matthews and Reynolds, and they announced that they were going to do “something so old no that one knows it.” The trio then transformed the old minstrel number “Oh! Susanna” into a contemporary sounding acoustic song with shared vocals by Young and Matthews.

Current festival favorites Arcade Fire began their set with frontman Win Butler announcing that there was no place they’d rather be at the moment. Opening with the big chamber pop of Neon Bible’s “Intervention,” the band later slyly dedicated “We Used to Wait,” a song about the pleasures of waiting for mail, to the nearby headquarters of Google. Before closing with the gloriously anthemic one-two punch of “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Wake Up,” Arcade Fire were joined by Young for a gorgeous rendition of “Helpless.”

Young concluded the outstanding day of music with the Youngblood’s “Get Together,” flanked by a number of the day’s acts, putting a fitting end to what felt like a once-in-a-lifetime show.