Daryl Hannah shows husband Neil Young's softer side in new tour film

Fifty-seven years into his career, Neil Young has harvested millions of fans – but none of those followers is more devoted than his pet dogs.

"They love the music," says the musician's wife, actress Daryl Hannah.

"They go to every sound check and lay under the piano on the stage. Whenever Neil is playing, the dogs just migrate right to him and lay at his feet."

It's not just the dogs. During the 2020 lockdown, Young performed a livestream concert from the barn at his Colorado farm, surrounded by alpacas, ducks, chickens and even a horse.

"And every single one of the animals came over and laid down and watched him," Hannah says. "It was so cool. I think they're really drawn to the music."

Hannah, known for appearing in films such as Blade Runner, Splash and Kill Bill, directed that livestream – and she's stayed behind the camera to make a documentary about Young's 2023 solo tour.

Filmed largely on her phone ("and it's not even the most recent model"), it captures the star's return to the stage, aged 75, after a four-year break, with his dogs in tow.

"He was very nervous about it," she recalls.

"There's always a point where he's like, 'I don't know if I can do this… We'll see'."

"It's funny, because he didn't do any rehearsals before the tour. He likes things to be real and spontaneous. But as soon as he walked out on stage, he was fine."

Playing without a band, the shows were loose and unpredictable. The setlist changed every night, and even recurring songs like Heart of Gold and Like A Hurricane would be played in different settings, on different instruments, without warning.

It's a set-up that caused his director a few headaches.

"It was really hit or miss because every day he would go out to do sound check, and he would choose one of his three pianos and play something like Expecting To Fly," says Hannah.

"So we'd set a camera on that piano but, when it came to show time, he wouldn't go near it. There were quite a few shows where we literally got no footage.

"I was frustrated in the editing room, trust me."

Despite those challenges, Hannah captured spellbinding, stripped back versions of rarely-played tracks like Vampire Blues, If You Got Love and Prime Of Life.

More revealing, however, was the footage she shot off the stage.

Large stretches of the film take place on a silver eagle tour bus, where Young rides shotgun beside his longtime driver, Jerry Don Burden.

Together, they shoot the breeze like Vladimir and Estragon - but rather than waiting for Godot, they're waiting for the next arena car park.

The conversations are wonderfully mundane. There is ample discussion of scenery, snacks and setlists ("people think they want to hear the hits, because that's all they've ever heard", Young observes.)

It's punctuated by stretches of companionable silence, where Young drums on his knees, or interacts with his son Ben, who was born with severe cerebral palsy.

Later, the musician emerges from the bathroom, stares into the camera and deadpans: "Now there's no risk of having to pee in the middle of the show".

Capturing that day-to-day normality was Hannah's motivation from the start.

"So many performers put on a persona, and Neil just does not have that quality at all. Whatever he's talking about with his bus driver, he continues talking about with the audience.

"People think of him as this intimidating, inscrutable person who'll make an album the record company refuses to put out," she continues, referring to the time Geffen Records sued Young for submitting two albums it considered "musically uncharacteristic".

Hannah says people who judge him on that basis have got it wrong.

"He just has an absolute, uncanny commitment to his creative muse," she argues.

"He's not driven by financial interests, he's not driven by self-aggrandisement, he's not driven by anything other than that creative force, and it's pretty incredible to witness.

"Having spent so much time with him, my perception is that he's completely guileless. He has a lot of warmth and innocence, so I wanted to show that."