Simply Neil
Today (November 12, 2021) is Neil Young’s 76th
birthday. His music has been a part of me for forty years. I'm fifty-two.
In that time, I’ve learned there are some truths, both good
and bad we have to keep in mind about our boy Neil...
NEWTON’S FIRST LAW OF NEIL: All Neil albums (with
the exception of two, maybe) have at least one song that is substandard, and
often truly horrible at that.
But that’s okay because…
NEWTON’S SECOND LAW OF NEIL: All Neil albums have
at least three songs and other moments that make them worthwhile.
Consider Trans, considered by many (not me) to be the
nadir of Neil’s career. Half of the
album was Neil doing songs a la Kraftwerk, with synthesizers, vocoders, drum
machines, and the like (this was 1981 and well before MTV made such standard
issue). The remaining songs used
traditional instrumentation with Crazy Horse in support. Honestly, the electronic songs are better (with
one exception) than the traditional songs.
I think “Sample and Hold” and “Transformer Man” are easily among the top
twenty songs Neil ever did. In these
songs Neil employs more complex chord changes than he normally does—I think
most would agree his song structures are usually pretty straightforward—so we
see a different and compelling side of him. And the Crazy Horse-backed “Like An
Inca”, a low-key rocker with Latin percussion accents and restrained solos, is a
lost classic which Neil resurrects in concert from time to time. Trans
falls short, but these three songs make it worthwhile, and I don’t think Neil
should be at all ashamed or embarrassed by this album.
Many of Neil’s albums improve over time. For example- Tonight’s
the Night was slagged and sold poorly upon initial release, but it’s now
considered acknowledged by and large as a Freaking Masterpiece.
The same goes for our individual experiences with Neil’s
work. When I was kid I thought Harvest was absolutely brilliant—a close
second to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the rank of Greatest
Albums Ever.
Forty years on, I confess I rarely listen to Harvest
any more, haven’t for years. “Heart of
Gold”, frankly, isn’t all that, and the album in its entirety isn’t really
representative of the Neil Young I’ve come to know. Thus…
NEWTON’S THIRD LAW OF NEIL: You can’t properly
assess a Neil album until a minimum of five years after first hearing it.
You’ll have to trust me on that one. But with that being said…
*****
I wish I could describe it in a way
that made sense or did it justice, but then it wouldn’t have been what it was.
It wasn’t really an emotion, or
even a series of emotions. It wasn’t a
sensation—far from it. It wasn’t an
intellectual experience or a visceral reaction.
It wasn’t mind-blowing or really even life-changing, though the impact
resonates to this day, forty years hence.
I dropped the needle, gently, on
the outermost groove of a record by Neil Young called Harvest…
*****
Neil has demonstrated more than once he can deliver a crowd-pleasing
album when he needs to, and those albums keep him relevant enough to sustain
his Excursions Into Alien Territory (as he subtitled Lucky Thirteen, his
absolutely essential compilation album covering his years with Geffen Records). And those excursions are what to me is most
representative about this genuinely original and blessedly oddball artist. A random
selection of my favorite Neil songs:
“Thrasher” This great song as always appealed to me,
but what its lyrics mean to me has evolved several times over the years that
I've been listening to "Rust Never Sleeps”. What never has left me is the
imagery, not particularly related to the lyrics—that of an old country filling
station, illuminated by a single outdoor lamp, by the side of a lonely highway
in the Canadian prairie…
“Like A Hurricane” The guitar solo as God intended. I
don't like Neil's solo versions of this song (and I especially loathe that
god-awful version off of "Unplugged" with the harmonium). 'Cause if you don't have a loud sloppy guitar
solo, what really is the point? And man, what a solo.
“Burned” From Neil’s Buffalo Springfield days. It
contains one of the first songs I ever learned to play all by myself. I was
especially proud of learning the simple guitar solo, especially the little part
at the end. I mimicked the vibrato sound
at the end of the solo by bending the guitar neck, since my old Epiphone didn't
have a whammy bar.
I used to replicate the echo effect for “Burned” and “Like a
Hurricane” by placing my old Yamaha DX40 amp into, God help me, the downstairs
shower stall. This seemed like a good idea to me at the time because, see, I
was Gifted. And Talented.
I'm lucky I didn't end up like Keith Relf. Or Les Harvey
from Stone the Crows.
*****
The little <pop> of the
needle on the vinyl.
The muffled thump-thump of the instruments
emerging.
A riff on an acoustic guitar. Hey I could play that…
The harmonica. A wistful melody.
♫ Think I’ll pack
it, and buy a pickup ♫
The steel guitar, carrying by radio-wave
the Sound of God. It destroyed me.
♫ See the lonely
boy, out on the weekend ♫ That’s me…
*****
The first Neil Young album I bought with my own coin was Decade,
a three-record set that served as more of a retrospective than a traditional
greatest hits collection. It had some hits, some overlooked gems, and a couple
of previously unreleased tracks, making it in many ways the forerunner for all
the damned boxed sets out there nowadays.
Most of which kinda suck. To this day I consider Decade to be an
essential part of any self-respecting music fan’s library. I remember I had to save a while to get it
because being a three-record thing it was more expensive than even a double
album. I think I paid $15.99 for it at Record Bar back in ’82.
I’d like to point out that Decade came out in 1976. That
“career retrospective” was released 45 years ago—three years before Rust
Never Sleeps came out.
More random Neil songs I dig:
“Cinnamon Girl” Is and ever shall be the greatest
guitar solo ever. One note. Repeat.
“T-Bone” I don't think you're a real Neil Young fan
unless you know from "T-Bone".
I think of this song (from the album Re·ac·tor) as the "beta
version" of the riff that ended up as the basis for "This Note's For
You" and eventually evolved into "Keep On Rockin in the Free
World". Personally, I think Neil
dug the riff at the time, but was too lazy to come up with real lyrics and was
content to bang around for 10 minutes.
“Mideast Vacation” Released in 1987, this mediation
on the state of affairs in the Middle East is still relevant and probably will continue
to be so for the indefinite future.
*****
I stretched out like Jesus on the
bed in my brother’s room, with his record, on his record player, taking me
away. I felt like I was stealing something…
♫ She’s got pictures on her wall. They
make me look up from her big brass bed ♫ I want to know what that’s like…I
want to be in her bed…with HER…I want to see her pictures…
I thought about those Twilight Zone
episodes I watched every night at 11 on WGN Chicago “You’re traveling to
another dimension…”
And then I didn’t think. For the
first time since my earliest memory […in the bathtub back at 300 Overton
Avenue…singing Yellow Submarine…] I wasn’t thinking. I was merely existing. I was ghostlike yet unified. I was not a God and had no desire to be a
God.
*****
Not all of Neil’s albums broke the bank. I found a lot of
his stuff in cut-out bins. You have to remember that Neil’s career took a big
downturn in the early 80s, so I was able to obtain Re·ac·tor, Hawks
and Doves, Zuma, and other killer stuff on the cheap.
YET MORE random Neil songs.
“Surfer Joe & Moe the Sleaze” This is one of his lesser-known
songs, but I love it. It's Neil as he
should be-- making big, loud, sloppy noise with Crazy Horse.
“This Note’s For You” You really want the live
version from Lucky Thirteen. The
studio version kinda sucks…
“Campaigner” About brilliant politicians who are
horrible people. ♫ “Roads stretch out like healthy veins...” ♫
*****
My little memory of Yellow
Submarine notwithstanding, I had discovered The Beatles in earnest on that same
stereo in that same room a year or two earlier when I was ten. I can still describe the things I saw under
their spell. Such vivid detail.
This was different. This was another realm of existence. Images had no meaning, concepts were
irrelevant, God was in his garden, I didn’t think—thank God in his garden I
didn’t think…
Side one played over and over and
over as I lay immune to time…
*****
Thus it came to be.
Now my Top Five Neil Albums:
5) Re·ac·tor
Maximum Rock and Roll.
I got this beautiful sum’bitch outta the cut-out bin at the record store
at old Greenville Mall for $1.99 and it’s one of the top three albums Young
ever did and anybody who says otherwise is wrong.
This is loud and sloppy Crazy Horse at its loud and sloppy
best. No subtlety here. If this is the Neil you like this is the Neil
for you. Opera Star, Southern
Pacific, and Shots do the heavy lifting here, with the real power
coming courtesy of Surfer Joe & Moe the Sleaze. The other four songs are filler but they’re
somehow perfect for this album and are better than some of the filler on Rust
Never Sleeps. Crank up the noise. Piss
off the neighbors. Come on down for a pleasure cruise.
4) Tonight’s the Night
·
NEWTON’S FIRST COMMENTARY ON TONIGHT’S THE
NIGHT: You can’t hope to appreciate this album unless you’ve been there...
·
NEWTON’S SECOND COMMENTARY ON TONIGHT’S THE
NIGHT: I’ve been there...
·
NEWTON’S THIRD COMMENTARY ON TONIGHT’S THE
NIGHT: I’m thankful to have been there...
·
NEWTON’S FOURTH COMMENTARY ON TONIGHT’S THE
NIGHT: I’m thankful I’m no longer there...
3) Freedom
Contains what I think is Neil’s greatest song, that being “Crime In the City (Sixty to Zero Part 1)”. This song grabbed me by the soul the very first time I heard it (playing on 96 WAVE, the very day of the album’s release, around 10 at night…They played the whole album…I was at the Sigma Nu house…We were drinking Schlitz…) and has never let go.
2) Rust Never Sleeps
Neil slams the coffin lid shut on he seventies with this absolutely brilliant work. Features the “Acoustic but not Freaking Folk Music Thank God” side one, with the second side chock full of blistering rock riffs that kick all ass. “My My Hey Hey” (Out of the Blue)”, and its twin “Hey Hey My My (Into the Black), feature the greatest riff ever produced anywhere by anybody, as well as the unofficial motto of rock and roll: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away”.
1) On The Beach
This one, most assuredly, not for everyone. It took me
thirty years to “get it”. When you get it, you’ll know. Man, you will know.
And Neil, God bless him, just keeps chugging along, releasing new albums regularly and curating that incredible music archive of his. What a legacy.
In closing, I’d like to leave you with a review I did of one of Neil’s recent releases, this one from his seemingly never-ending archive…
Bluenote Café (Neil Young & The Bluenotes)
Bluenote Café is a live album from the tour supporting This Note’s for You, Neil’s rhythm-n-blues revue album from 1988. As a studio album, This Note’s not bad, but it serves as an example of a problem inherent to the genre it tries to celebrate.
You see, an R&B revue project like this, with the big
sound and fat horns and all, does not translate well to the studio. With regard
to song stylings the genre is fairly limited—even with a bunch of brass there’s
only so much you can really do with it.
And the songwriting involved isn’t exactly Dylan (or Young, for that
matter), so you’re already behind the eight ball before you begin to roll tape.
But what the R&B revue has to offer, be it The Bluenotes
or your favorite regional act, is energy.
High energy. And lots of it. Those horns get popping and the beers start
flowing and ladies start dancing and you got a hell of a time going before you
know it. The ethos of Everybody’s
been paid and everybody wants to get laid.
The R&B revue truly is fun music, and it needs people to
make it special. And the acoustics or something about playing live in a big
room makes horns sound like they should.
You can’t get that in a studio. Thus Bluenote Café.
So I think Bluenote Café serves a loving and
respectful tribute to this marvelous North American genre. Neil’s obviously having a blast. The band is kicking. The arrangements are great. Three great Neil cuts here: “This Note’s For
You”, “Ain’t It The Truth”, an intense early version of “Crime in the City”
performed a couple of years prior to its official incarnation on Freedom,
and a pumped-up, pimped-up, tricked-out, 20-minute version of “Tonight’s the
Night” as the closer. With fat horns.
Such is why we love Neil.
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