It Sure Sounds Like Neil Young Played a Billionaire’s Birthday Party

Young and Crazy Horse played most of the album "Ragged Glory"

Neil Young in late 2023
Neil Young performs in concert during Farm Aid at Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center on September 23, 2023.
Gary Miller/Getty Images

Last month in New York City, the Rolling Stones played a private show in a much smaller venue than the band usually shows up. This month, it sounds very likely that Neil Young and Crazy Horse did something similar in Toronto. As Andy Greene reports at Rolling Stone, the Young concert was notable for two reasons: first, it featured the band playing virtually all of the album Ragged Glory. And second, it appears to be in celebration of the 50th birthday of billionaire Dani Reiss.

While Young doesn’t have a long history of playing for the billionaire set, Greene points out that Young has done something like this before — specifically, a 2016 private show for Carmignac CEO Édouard Carmignac.

Initial reports of the November 4 Toronto gig came via the website Thrashers Wheat, which offered more details about the concert, including a partial set list and details on the venue — The Rivoli, about which poster Stu notes, “I believe it’s licensed for 240 persons.”

Young and Crazy Horse played for an hour and 15 minutes, with an encore of “Cinamon Girl” and “Rockin’ in the Free World.” One Ragged Glory song was not performed that evening: album closer “Mother Earth (Natural Anthem).”

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Dani Reiss, in whose honor the event took place, is best known as the CEO of Canada Goose, the company his grandfather founded decades earlier. Under Reiss’s time as CEO, the company has grown dramatically and became a publicly traded company in 2017.

Earlier this year, Reiss spoke to CNBC about his company’s appeal to apparel buyers. “They want something that’s real and that’s classic and that’s going to stand the test of time,” he said — words that also might explain why he’s fond of Young’s music.

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