Strange Brew 02 20060928 Brew_02_20060928.pdf · Booker T and the MGs, and Pearl Jam. He has...

Strange Brew 02 � Neil Young celebration (part one) � 2006-09-28 � 1

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Forty years ago, in 1966, Neil Young made hisrecording debut as a 20-year-old member of theseminal, West Coast folk-rock band, BuffaloSpringfield, with the release of this band’seponymous first album. After more than 35 solostudio albums, The Godfather of Grunge is stillon fire, raging against the System, the neocons,war, corruption, propaganda, censorship and thedemise of human decency. Michael Waddacorpays tribute the Canadian-born songwriter andmusician for his unrelenting courage anduncompromising individualism in a world gonecrazy and short of adorable eccentrics in therealms of rock music.

The latest Neil Young album, Living withWar (Reprise Records, May 2006), may wellbe his best since 1994’s haunting Sleeps withAngels. From the first listening, one has nodoubts that the folk-metal protestor is stillrailing against the system, refusing to sell hissoul. He is disconsolate over the mockery ofAmerican democracy, the neocon, militaristBush Administration and what appears to bethe dearth – if not, the decay – of good senseand human decency in the corridors ofAmerican political powerhouses.

At a time when so many of the inspired andinspiring musicians of the 1960s and 1970s havebecome parodies of their former selves with littleor nothing of any artistic substance to contributeto rock culture, Young’s heart continues topound with passion – and this is the dominantspirit of his new album. This work is reviewed inthe next edition of Strange Brew (edition three:Neil Young, part two). Living with War is animploring, heart-felt cry for a return to humandecency and freedom from the malaise ofmodern living: Third World exploitation, debtand misery, idiotic political and businessleadership, hyper-consumerism and the lies ofmarketers, American imperialism and militarism,censorship and the invasion of privacy andpersonal rights.

Warmth of familiarity

His detractors will deride him, proclaiming thatYoung is just another ageing hippie withpredictable polemics, no new songs to sing andnothing significant to add to modern thinkingand culture. Well, his new album may not havemany groundbreaking sounds and novel ideas.Instead, however, the familiarity of the man andhis music warm and reassure us in age of music-industry indifference and musical blandness andcreative poverty as epitomised by the mindless


MTV pop-and-rap-muzak machine. We aregiven the opportunity to enjoy another hearty,foot-stomping album with lots of unbridled,sing-along melodies, simple, memorable linesand that inimitable shaky, nasal tenor voicemany of us have come to love over the last fourdecades because it is so honest, frail andunpretentious.

Neil Young belongs to a rare cluster of rockartists that can still play honest, imploring andpassionate music at the age of 60. Bob Dylan canstill cut it on a good day, as does with his brand-new studio album, Modern Times. Mick Jagger,Keith Richards and The Stones fared reasonablywell on last year’s A Bigger Bang. Largely,though, we have long since said “goodbye” tomany of his rock contemporaries who havereached the age of 60. Crosby, Still and Nash,Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, Rod Stewart andtheir ilk are largely poor shadows of their formerglories as songwriters and genre leaders.

Perhaps Young’s 1979 masterpiece, Rust NeverSleeps, is much more than a paean about thedeath of The Sex Pistols and punk. Young sangwith conviction more than 25 years ago that it is“better to burn out than it is to rust” – and so histruism endures.

Travelling far and wide

Neil Young has traversed musical and topicalground more interesting and daring than mostrock musicians have from an externalperspective. From the adorable, smiling, mop-fringed pop star of the 1960s in high-fashiongear, he metamorphosised into the enigmatic,sombre, bare-souled counterculture troubadourwith scraggly, long hair and patched jeans in the1970s. Then he (mostly) squandered (or so itseemed) his talents in most of the 1980s,producing works that were largely bland orbizarre and, in some respects, lacking creativedirection or intrinsic meaning. Then he arose,reborn and revitalised, in 1988, 1989 and most ofthe 1990s to make some of his best music andstrongest anti-Establishment gestures, such asthrowing musical zap signs to the big American

corporations about the sponsorship of rockmusic.

Young has embraced several musical genres,from country and folk music to blues, rock,rockabilly and rock ‘n roll. He has shifted fromacoustic gentleness and introspection to blazing,hard-rock electric assaults and pointed diatribesabout political, social and environmental issues.Young has experimented with synthesisers,vocoders, orchestras, dobros, banjos, accordions,tack pianos and choirs. His songs havecelebrated and acknowledge Hank Williams,Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix andJohnny Rotten. Young has sung out againstRichard Nixon and George W Bush. He hasmade several quirky, but forgettable movies, andhe has co-organised and performed at scores ofbenefit concerts.

Young has recorded with Crosby, Stills andNash, The Stray Gators, Crazy Horse, StephenStills, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, NilsLofgren, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris,Booker T and the MGs, and Pearl Jam. He hasperformed on stage with Joni Mitchell, WaylonJennings, James Taylor, The Band, Bob Dylan,Emmylou Harris, Thom Yorke, Ryan Adams,Paul McCartney, Randy Bachman and manyothers. Most important, he has created animpressive and enduring oeuvre – a songbookonly few have beaten in folk, rock and alliedmusical genres over the last four or five decades.For many followers of the folk-rock-basedsinger-songwriter genre, Neil Young is probablythe most important member of this movementafter Bob Dylan in terms of overall songwritingabilities, messages, collaborations, influencesand endurance.

Staying true

In the Noughties, Neil Young is fusing the bestof his more illustrious past – and still ragingagainst the machine with unflagging vehemence.Best of all, he remains true to himself – andsounds as strong, witty and offbeat as ever withno signs of taking the back seat.


With the passing of time, old-fashionedeccentricity, fierce individualism, erraticcreativity and an unpredictable defiance oftrends and expectations have become thehallmarks of Neil Young and his music – not toforget his adroitness at writing a simple, strongmelody and a mesmerisingly frazzled guitarriff – along with some thought-provoking linesof street poetry.

When Buffalo Springfield had become one ofthe stellar American West Coast bands of thelate 1960s, he quit to go solo. Then, when hisearly solo career aroused the interest of fans andcritics, alike, he joined the early Crosby, Stilland Nash (CS&N) to create Crosby, Still, Nashand Young (CSN&Y). After CSN&Y, he wasglorified as a hippie icon and a folkycounterculture poet and revolutionary. So, indefiance, he amplified the volume and distortedhis fuzz box more than ever – and played withincreasing zest, abandon and distortion, drawingas much inspiration from the Beat Generation asthe Punk Generation. After a series of hard-rocking albums, he would delve back into hisAmerican folk and country music roots and playhis part in spawning both the alt country andgrunge movements of the 1990s.

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�� !"�!#$�Rocking in Canada

Neil Percival Young was born in Toronto,Ontario, in Canada on November 12 1945, theson of Edna “Rassy” Young (nee Ragland), aformer television quiz-show panellist, and ScottYoung, a well-known sports writer. He spentmuch of his earlier years in Omemee, a small,country town in Ohio, to which he would laterallude on his CSN&Y song from 1970, Helpless.

At the age of six, Young was struck with polio,which weakened his left side and since has lefthim with a slight limp when we walks. He thenmoved to Florida in the USA with his mother fora year to recuperate before returning home toOntario.

At the age of 12 or 13 (circa 1958/1959), Youngmoved westwards to Winnipeg, Manitoba, withhis mother after she divorced his father. Here, heattended Kelvin High School. This smallerCanadian city would have a profound influenceon him and became the topic, or background, ofmany of his later nostalgic songs, despitebecoming a permanent American resident after1966. He grew up in River Heights area ofWinnipeg, where we met Randy Bachman, aperson who introduced him to American blues.Bachman would later become the guitarist andone of the main songwriters of The Guess Who,Brave Belt and Bachman Turner Overdrive.

Overcoming setbacks

Young was fragile as a child, not only fromcontracting polio, but also because he had backproblems that necessitated him wearing a backbrace. Since his tenure with Buffalo Springfield,he also has been known to suffer from epilepsy(some say due to a harsh bash on his head by apolice officer following his participation in a1967 Los Angeles riot that left him minus atooth). Nevertheless, such physical and relatedpersonal maladies would not deter his steely willto succeed in life and music, as he later provedwhen writing and recording the Harvest, Re-ac-tor and Prairie Wind albums, for example.

Like many teenagers growing up in the late1950s and early 1960s, Young was hooked onrock ‘n roll, rockabilly and some blues, andtaught himself to play guitar at the age of 14. Hisfather gave him his first instrument, a banjo, as aChristmas present in 1958 shortly after histhirteenth birthday. He formed and played in afew rock cover bands in his high-school yearsand shortly afterwards, among them TheClassics, The Jades, and Neil Young and TheSquires. He later ventured off to play music soloon the Toronto folk circuit in the mid-1960s after


dropping out of high school at the age of 16.Although intelligent and gifted, Young was notconsidered an assiduous student during his high-school years.

During his “good, ol’ folkie days” in Toronto hebefriended several musicians, includingcompatriot Joni Mitchell and the travellingAmerican singer and guitarist, Stephen Stills. Bynow, he had begun in earnest his career as asongwriter of note with his early compositionsincluding Sugar Mountain, which he laterrecorded with Buffalo Springfield. In 1965, hejoined the future Motown funkster, the late RickJames, and Canadian bassist, Bruce Palmer, toform The Mynah Birds. This band recorded analbum in Detroit in the USA that was notreleased. Before long, James was arrested as adeserter from the US Army and Young andPalmer headed south to Los Angeles (LA),California, in Young’s black hearse, a 1953Pontiac nicknamed Mort, in search of their rock‘n roll dreams. Shortly after their arrival in LA inFebruary 1966, they rekindled their friendshipwith Stephen Stills. Within weeks, BuffaloSpringfield was born and signed to AtcoRecords, a division of Atlantic Records.

Tempestuous Springfield

After two largely tempestuous years and threemostly good albums (Buffalo Springfield, 1966;Buffalo Springfield Again, 1967; and theposthumously released Last Time Around, 1968),Buffalo Springfield disintegrated in May 1968and Young opted for a solo career. To theirbenefit, he and his Springfield band mates lefttheir mark as one of the West Coast’s seminalfolk-rock bands (along with The Byrds). In hisearly 20s, Young had already established himselfas a distinctive and inventive songwriter withsuch Buffalo Springfield classics as BrokenArrow, Mr Soul, I Am a Child, Down to theWire, Burned, Expecting to Fly, Out of My Mindand Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.

Neil Young signed Joni Mitchell’s manager,Elliot Roberts, as his manager, secured a recorddeal with Reprise Records and retreated toTopanga Canyon (the canyon referred to by

Spirit in their song, Topanga Windows, fromtheir eponymous album of 1968) near LA. Here,he wrote songs and escaped the limelight of pop-stardom. He took advantage of a US$17,000recording advance from Reprise Records andbought a home in the famed canyon. InDecember 1968, he married his first wife, a localhip-café owner, Susan Acevedo. It was inTopanga Canyon, too, that Young nurtured hislong-standing friendship with David Briggs. Hewould become Young’s principal album co-producer and musical sounding board until hisdeath in 1995. True to Young’s tenacity andloyalty, Elliot Roberts remains his manager 38yeas later and Reprise his recording label,although he had a brief and controversial tenurewith Geffen Records in the 1980s.

Neil Young’s sweetly gentle, eponymous debutalbum, rooted strongly in folk music, made littleimpact after its release in January 1969. Hissongwriting was weak by his Buffalo Springfieldstandards, the arrangements tended to be toofinicky and his dominant mood seemed toosubdued. But Neil Young did feature a fewpromising songs, notably Loner, Old LaughingLady and Here We Are in the Years. It wouldalso be his first collaboration with Jack Nitzsche,who helped Young to weave an elaborately well-crafted sound featuring of multitracked guitarwork. Guest musicians and advisors at handincluded Ry Cooder and both Jim Messina(former Buffalo Springfield recording engineer)and George Grantham from the newly formedWest Coast folk-rock band, Poco.

%& '#'(�)*#'%Breakthrough album

Young’s music and luck would change when hemet a loud, up-and-coming LA rock band, TheRockets, and invited them to jam on songsdestined for his next album. The Rockets –Danny Whitten (guitar), Ralph Molina (bass)and Billy Talbot (drums) – would become CrazyHorse and feature on his startling, breakthroughsecond album, Everybody Knows This isNowhere (produced by Young and DavidBriggs). Released to critical acclaim in May1969, the album featured the first of his truly


landmark solo-era songs, Down by the River,Cinnamon Girl and Cowgirl in the Sand.

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In hindsight, one cannot help wishing this hadbeen his debut album, with its gloriously rough-edged, fluid and well-written songs. Crazy Horseproved their worth on this album as idealmusicians who could empathise with Young andcollaborate on a more spontaneous, intuitivelevel. Unsurprisingly, Crazy Horse wouldbecome his dominant backing band for the nextthree decades. It has often been emphasised byrock writers throughout Young’s career that hecould have used musicians with far greatertechnical skill. I agree, but who would havewanted to sacrifice that majestic rawness – thecrude, staccato guitar riffs that are refrainedmesmerisingly over that hypnotic, no-frillsgroove Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina sustain asthe rhythm section?

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is a strong,cohesive and compelling work. The album hasonly seven songs, but they create the illusion ofbeing far greater in number – and leave thelistener fulfilled. With little doubt, this remains atop five Young album. Recorded in two weeks,its songs are kept simple, but they are assuredand the melodies are pronounced. In the quietermaterial, as on Round and Round (It Won’t BeLong), Young fuses folk, country and rock andarticulates his lyrics. Another chill-out classic isthe solemn, dirge-like Running Dry (Requiem forthe Rockets) with its beautifully tender, butforlorn violin playing by Bobby Notkoff – one ofthe finest guest solo performances in his entireoeuvre. Running Dry was one of those key earlysongs that would hint of his potential as an artistwith diverse interests, ideas, voices and musicalstyles.

The classic opening song, Cinnamon Girl, is thetype of song you yearned to hear on the radio

back in 1969. It has adorably unusual changes tothe structure and arrangement, including tempochanges. But, it is the longer, more fiery rocksongs with their epic guitar adventures thatallure us, as on Down by the River and Cowgirlin the Sand. Looking back, these epic guitarpieces were dazzling in 1969 – and thesepowerful songs remain among the best he haswritten.

Birth of supergroup

In an ironic move, given the second album’ssuperlative media attention and record sales,Young jumped ships again, made peace with anirascible Stephen Stills and joined CS&N inmid-1969. CSN&Y became the new darlings ofthe heady Woodstock-Altamont counterculturedays of 1969 with their scraggly hair, angelicharmonies, marvellous songwriting skills andhumorous onstage banter. In 1970, CSN&Yreleased a fine, but flawed studio album, DéjàVu, featuring Young’s heart-stirring Helplessand the touchingly anthemic Country Girl.Listening to Déjà Vu 36 years later, there is littledoubting that Young is the dominant talent: thestrongest songwriter, the most compelling (evenif flawed) voice and the most distinctive vision.

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It became one of the top-selling American rockalbums (at least seven-million copies in the USAalone) of 1970 – the year that also saw therelease of many popular landmark albums. Theseworks included The Beatles’ Let It Be, TheWho’s Live at Leeds, Led Zeppelin’s III, JethroTull’s Benefit, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, DeepPurple’s In Rock, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridgeover Troubled Waters, Van Morrison’sMoondance, Santana’s Abraxas, John Lennon’sJohn Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Free’s Fire andWater, The Doors’ Morison Hotel and GratefulDead’s Workingman’s Dead.


In July 1970, after an exhausting CSN&Y tour topromote Déjà Vu, Young and his first wife,Susan, separated. He bought the sprawlingBroken Arrow ranch in rolling, redwoodterritory in the Woodside area of northernCalifornia, south of San Francisco halfwaytowards Santa Cruz, near the Pacific coastline.Young settled there in September 1970 and itsince has remained his main home. Whilerecuperating from a back injury during his firstfew weeks at Broken Arrow, “he fell in lovewith the actress” watching the film, Diary of aMad Housewife (as he would later reveal in theHarvest song, A Man Needs a Maid). On hearingthat the actress, Carrie Snodgress, was starring ina play in LA, he asked his roadies to send hernote, saying “Call Neil Young”. Before the endof 1970, Carrie Snodgress was living withYoung at Broken Arrow, but – in Young’s ownwords in a letter to his father, Scott Young – thisrelationship did not last much longer thanBuffalo Springfield.

Another masterpiece

During most of 1970 and 1971, Young dividedhis time between CSN&Y and his collaborationwith Crazy Horse, the latter of which led to amellower, but equally brilliant third album, Afterthe Gold Rush, produced by Young, DavidBriggs and Kendall Pacios. Reprise Recordsreleased this album in September 1970 and itreached the top 10 of both the American (US)and British (UK) charts. Young largelyabandoned the proto-grunge sound that shapedEverybody Knows This is Nowhere and, instead,opted for a more restrained, country-tingedsound, with a greater predominance of piano andother instruments.

After the Gold Rush is best remembered for thescathing and scorching urgency of its rockclassic, Southern Man. This heartfelt cry forsocial justice, with its sharp stab at Southernbigotry, would become one of the enduringfavourites on CSN&Y set lists. The album alsofeatured the touching and wistful ballad, OnlyLove Can Break Your Heart, and the exuberantlyhappy When You Dance, You Can Really Love.The album also featured a forlorn rendition of

the 1958 country hit by Don Gibson, OhLonesome Me.

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After the Gold Rush remains anotheridiosyncratic Young masterpiece – a work ofremarkable cohesion, sonic adventure and skilfulsongwriting made more compelling by thefragility of his voice. It is one of his mostenduringly excellent works – perhaps hiscrowning glory – partly because it is eclectic andexplorative in content and spirit, and partlybecause the songwriting is consistently uniqueand excellent. Originally intended to be asoundtrack for a film based on a script of thesame name written by Dean Stockwell, Youngfollowed his own muse and recorded most of thisalbum in his newly built home studio in TopangaCanyon with guest artists including a then 18-year-old Nils Lofgren on piano and accordion.

The start of the 1970s was a fertile period whenmany promising songwriters had entered themusic scene in the wake of Bob Dylan’s highlymasterful and prolific mid-1960s creative periodthat commenced with 1964’s Another Side ofBob Dylan and ended with 1968’s John WesleyHarding. While many of these talented singer-songwriters would lose their sheen andinfluence – as well as their lives in some cases,among them Tim Hardin, Phil Ochs, TimBuckley and Nick Drake – Young would proveto be an enduring, albeit erratic talent. Younghad defined his musical style and established thefoundations of his talents with Everybody KnowThis is Nowhere and After the Gold Rush. Fromhere, he would build musical critical mass andbecome one of the most celebrated and seminalrock and folk-rock artists of the 1970s andbeyond. More recently, Nirvana, Pearl Jam,


Sonic Youth, Teenage Fan Club, Oasis andPowderfinger are just a few of the morecontemporary rock bands that have cited Youngas a major influence or inspiration.

The massacre of four students by state troopersat Kent State University in Ohio during an anti-Vietnam War protest on May 4 1970 inspiredYoung to write one of his most memorablepolitical songs, Ohio. This song was recordedwith CSN&Y at the Record Plant on May 21with Calvin Samuels on bass and JohnnyBarbata on drums and released as an AtlanticRecords single on June 4 1970. Today, Ohioappears on five compact-disc compilations:Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s So Far (1974);Crosby, Stills and Nash’s two-disc CSNanthology and four-disc CSN box set (1991); andon Neil Young’s Decade (1977) and GreatestHits (2003). According to David Crosby, innotes to the aforementioned CSN box-setbooklet, Neil Young wrote the song in 20minutes after he had read the Life magazineaccount of the massacre.

The big MOR hit

Breaking away from rock ‘n roll, Crazy Horseand rural California, Young retreated in 1971 towrite and record a mellower album, Harvest,with The Stray Gators in Nashville, Tennessee(earlier sessions) and then at Broken Arrow inCalifornia. The album was produced by Youngwith help from Elliot Mazer, Jack Nitzsche andHenry Lewy and released in March 1972.

While being a more subdued album, its mostlymasterful and evocative songwriting, includingthe catchy poppiness of Heart of Gold, wouldendear him to a wider audience and become oneof his top-selling albums. Harvest is said to havesold more than four-million copies in the USA,alone. For many fans, this remains his bestalbum – and it is the one for which he is bestremembered and enjoyed from a populistperspective. To Young’s dismay, Harvest notonly reached the top of the US and UK albumcharts, it spurned an overplayed and overlycelebrated top 10 single, Heart of Gold.

Harvest has to be one of the most contentiousalbums in Young’s portfolio. Is it a classic five-star masterpiece or an adorable four-star workwith flawed production and a few disposablesongs? Or is it a meagre three-star work thatdeserves a “good” label without much adulation?This album gets fans and critics flummoxed.Critics generally rate it from three to four stars,with some publications becoming more generousin their praise with the passing of time. Thisnear-masterpiece is founded largely on cohesiveand sometimes lush arrangements, mostlyexcellent songwriting and some of Young’s mostemotive and best-articulated lyrics of the 1970s(if you ignore a few of the throwaway lines thatcrept into songs like A Man Needs a Maid).Harvest is a subtle sonic taiji, shifting fromsongs of hope and optimism to ones of loss andangst. The plaintive, haunting and imploringsongs reflecting Young’s loneliness, fears andsensitivities are the works that endeared many ofus to him in 1972.

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These touching works were epitomised by thecutting sadness (albeit a touch of malechauvinism) of A Man Needs a Maid and thepathos of his popular anti-heroin song, TheNeedle and the Damage Done. Other standouttracks include his second diatribe aimed atredneck Southern bigots, the masterfullydisconsolate and acerbic Alabama, the moresanguine, mid-tempo Out on the Weekend, thesentimental, though evocative tribute to hisranch caretaker (Louis Avila), Old Man, and theoft-overlooked, but prolonged Words (Betweenthe Lines of Age), with its sardonic musings onfame and fortune.


A key element to the success of Harvest was themagical soundscapes devised by the adroitarranger, the late Jack Nitzsche, withsympathetic performances from The StrayGators, as well as a small cluster of guestsingers, including Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor,David Crosby and Graham Nash. Heart of Gold,however, had created an artistic problem forYoung: he feared he had gone too mainstream.This issue was later alluded to in his ownhandwritten liner notes to the original Decadeanthology released in 1977. Young wrote:“Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road.Travelling there became a bore, so I headed forthe ditch.”

In December 1972, he released his soundtrack toan autobiographical film, Journey through thePast. The album was largely panned by criticsand fans and it remains one of his mostforgettable albums, mostly because he seemedbereft of fresh musical ideas and compellingsongs to sing.

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Matters didn’t improve much for Young whenhe released 1973’s Time Fades Away, a chaoticand flawed live album produced during a darkperiod, which included the death of the CrazyHorse guitarist, Danny Whitten (1972), and theYoung-Crazy Horse roadie and friend, BruceBerry (1973). The album, however, does featuresome strong, enticing material, including theadmirable Don’t Be Denied. The touring bandfeatured Jack Nitzsche (keyboards), Ben Keith(pedal steel guitars), Tim Drummond (bass) andJohn Barbata (drums – ex-The Turtles andJefferson Starship), as well as guestperformances from David Crosby and GrahamNash.

3� 4�'#(5%Stark masterpiece

Young seemed to have fallen off the pedestal co-created by fans and critics – and when hereleased On the Beach in July 1974, it appearedthat both Young and the pedestal had crumbledin the ears and eyes of many fans and critics. Atthe time, the album was largely dismissedbecause it seemed so dark, despairing, nihilisticand even self-loathing. There was even someirony in the cover picture, with Youngabandoning his more familiar country setting andhis far more familiar blue-jeans-and-checked-shirt garb for white slacks, white shoes and apastel-yellow sports jacket. He stands alone,close to the sea, with his back to the camera; yet,somehow, we sense his mood of mockery,desolation and angst.

More than any other album, On the Beach wasunfairly criticised and dismissed. Produced byYoung with David Briggs, Mark Harman and AlSchmitt, On the Beach is a work of incrediblesimplicity, starkness and honesty and, for somefans, ranks as a top five Young album. Today, itmerits a fresh listening and rediscovery, hence afresh 2006 review in the third edition of StrangeBrew (to follow).

Between May 1974 and February 1975, Youngspent most of his time with CSN&Y for aprolonged American tour. As with the previousCSN&Y collaborations, Young’s songs tendedto outshine those of his CS&N colleagues.

More doom and gloom

For us as fans, it seemed as if Young was deepinto his dark night of the soul in the mid 1970s.The torturous images and sounds persisted onthe follow-up album, Tonight’s the Night, whichReprise released in June 1975. Many critics ratethis album as Young’s finest hour, although thiswriter disagrees. Produced by Young and DavidBriggs and featuring Crazy Horse, Tonight’s theNight was recorded at LA’s SIR studio beforeOn the Beach – and frequently is regarded as asolemn and disconsolate public wake to


commiserate the deaths of Danny Whitten andBruce Berry.

Tonight’s the Night is probably the most difficultof the great Neil Young albums to enjoy and, forme at least, took many years to appreciate itssubtle depth and wandering beauty beneath theout-of-tune vocals and sometimes dubiousproduction. Back in 1975, Young remarked: “Idon’t think Tonight’s the Night is a friendlyalbum.”

His voice is vulnerable and, at a times, out oftune. The album is so racked with pain anddisillusionment, one wonders at one point ifYoung is not singing from “the other side”,staging his own one-man wake. This is aharrowing journey deep into self-reflection andmay be the most brutally honest and searchingalbum in his portfolio, which is made moreconvincing because of its raw, dishevelledproduction.

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Even the bleak duotone cover with its hand-scrawled name and title has a jilting effect.Hidden behind sunglasses with one hand in apocket and the other raised like a dementedpreacher, Young looks like a lonely, broodingbar-room troubadour – or maybe a post-stardom,lunatic-fringe cabaret artist – playing his dark artin vain to an indifferent and inebriated audienceon the seedy fringes of some nameless city. Thealbum’s beauty lies in the frailty of the man’svoice and his sound – not to forget the bleak andoften menacing lyrics. Such qualities, however,would retard record sales, but strengthen hiscredibility with rock critics and fellow singer-songwriters.

Besides the fragile, elegiac title track that set themood at the beginning with its ragged pianolines played by Nils Lofgren, other highlightsongs include yet another of his pointed stabs atthe hollowness of fame, World on a String, themischievous, country-hued Roll Another Number(For the Road), a sobered-up Albuquerque andanother exploration of the futility of the drug-induced fringes of life in the form of Tired Eyes.

More sanguine mood

If anything, both Tonight’s the Night and On theBeach helped Neil Young to exorcise some ofhis inner demons and turn towards lighter, morecomforting subjects and sounds, as he did withthe release of a more accessible and upbeatZuma in November 1975. (Zuma is the name ofa California beach where Young and DavidBriggs each owned a beach house). Produced byYoung and Briggs, Zuma saw Young return towider commentaries about death, despair, futilityand injustice, as he did on the album’s eerieCortez the Killer, a barbed song about the greedand injustice of the Spanish Conquistadorsagainst the Aztecs.

Zuma suggested Young was feeling moresanguine and tired of grieving in public. Hebrought Crazy Horse back into the studio with anew guitarist, Frank “Poncho” Sampedro. CrazyHorse brought some outlandish rock ‘n rollverve and spiritual merriment to the album, but adark undertow continued to lurk in the lyrics, asif to ensure there would be a continuing thread tolink Zuma to On the Beach and Tonight’s theNight. It is a strong album, but too flawed byYoung’s best standards to merit a five-starrating. Critics tend to allocate three or four starsto Zuma.

Other standout songs include Don’t Cry NoTears (a song he wrote in Canada with TheSquires), the upbeat Lookin’ for a Love and theraunchy, hair-of-the-dog Barstool Blues, a trackthat marks Young and Crazy Horse’s return toragged guitar rambles, some of their best sinceEverybody Knows This is Nowhere. BarstoolBlues would be the nexus to Young’s next studioalbum, American Stars ‘n Bars.


Miami vice

Young kept his mid-1970s workload runninghigh, having also rejoined CSN&Y for concertsin 1974. This later inspired a post-Springfieldcollaboration with Stephen Stills in Florida,which led to the release in September 1976 ofThe Stills-Young Band’s nine-track Long MayYou Run album. It received mixed, but largelyunenthusiastic reviews, but it should not bedismissed as a mere one- or two-star album.

Yes, Long May You Run is flawed: the endless-summer Miami vibe and the salty smell of theAtlantic Ocean seem to have made Stills andYoung complacent. The songwriting is erratic;the mood is too slick; and the raunchy,improvisational sounds of Crazy Horse havemade way for what sounds like overlycompetent, let’s-not-veer-from-the-scoreSouthern session musicians. Besides Stills’bluesy and imploring barstool thoughts ofdrunken seduction that form the promising, butunderdeveloped Make Love to You, the Youngsongs tended to have the edge, with the gembeing his lament to his beloved, but ageinghearse, Mort, in the title track.

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In 1976, Young also performed on stage at TheBand’s farewell concert, The Last Waltz, at SanFrancisco’s Winterland. Young played a strongversion of his CSN&Y classic, Helpless. Thatsame year, he also toured with Stephen Stills topromote their new Stills-Young Band album, butYoung quit the tour before the end because oftensions between him and Stills. Young sentStills his infamously worded telegram to confirmhis departure: “Funny how things that startspontaneously end that way. Eat a peach. Neil.”

The great year of punk, 1977, saw the release ofan eagerly awaited anthology, the three-recordDecade, spanning his work from 1966 to 1976.This 35-song anthology remains a definitiveintroduction to the early Neil Young. It isavailable on double CD. To date, this is the bestYoung anthology, but it reminds us, almost 30years on, we are still waiting for the much-toutedand long-overdue Neil Young Archives box sethe has mentioned in media interviews since the1990s. Besides featuring some of his obviousgreat songs from his earlier solo albums, such asCinnamon Girl, Southern Man, Heart of Gold,Tonight’s the Night, Cortez the Killer and Like aHurricane, Decade features Buffalo Springfieldclassics like Mr Soul, as well as Young’s potentOhio protest song from his time with CSN&Y in1970.

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( ��%� ��:)� #��'%�%#*'Magnificent Hurricane

That same year (June 1977), he released acomparatively tepid, but surprisingly differentalbum, American Stars ‘n Bars, which was savedby featuring the magnificent Like a Hurricane,one of the best rock songs of his career. It alsofeatured Star of Bethlehem (with EmmylouHarris) and Homegrown. In many ways,American Stars ‘n Bars issued a warning thatYoung would become more unpredictable and,in many respects, far weirder in the decadeahead. The introduction to the album must havestunned many fans back in 1977, with the firsttracks – including The Old Country Waltz andHey Babe – being boisterous bar-room sing-along songs with a boozy, country-hick feelemphasised by some odd lyrics and the pedal-steel guitar playing of Ben Keith.


Again, the cover – one of the best-designed onesof his career – is telling with a booze-drenchedYoung’s face pressed up against the camera witha high-heeled barmaid clutching a partly filledwhiskey bottle. In this sense, American Stars ‘nBars seems to be an offshoot of Tonight’s theNight with its darker, intoxicating themes andallusions to a twilight world.

Time to mellow

In September1978, Young released anotherlaidback country-inflected album, Comes aTime, featuring the title track, the top 10 US hit,Lotta Love (starring singer Nicolette Larson) andLook out for My Love, as well as HumanHighway and Already One. Produced by Youngwith Ben Keith, Tim Mulligan and DavidBriggs, this album saw Young re-exploring thecountry and folk part of his musical roots andreturning to popularity in the USA, where thealbum peaked at number seven in the charts.

Recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, it showcaseda restrained Crazy Horse along with the Gonewith the Wind Orchestra featuring J J Cale andBen Keith. Steeped in country instrumentationand moods, it features generous use of banjo,dobro and fiddle, as well as alluring backupsinging from Nicolette Larson.

What immediately distinguished Comes a Timefrom American Stars ‘n Bars was its morecohesive sound and structure, as well asstronger, though subtle songwriting. Perhapsmore than most Young albums, this is the onethat took the most time to appeal to many Youngfans, but it has dated well and is well worthrevisiting if you do not mind Young’s countrystyle.

One also senses that Young draw on some of theproduction lessons learnt with Harvest becauseComes a Time has pared arrangements and lessfinicky detailing, which contribute to its enduingappeal. If Harvest was lush, effusive andsometimes melodramatic for a laidback, country-inspired fare, Comes a Time was understated,subtle and unimposing.

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Young, too, seemed to be in excellent control ofhis singing and acoustic guitar playing, attributesthat benefited from the notably goodperformances from the rest of the band, as wellas the Larson’s superbly sympathetic vocalharmonies. More so than with On the Beach,Comes a Time may well be Young’s mostfrequently underrated or ignored masterpiece –the one great album that has endured, but not yetdeserved the popular attention it deserves. It alsofeatured some of his most skilful celebrations oflove.

Back to folk-metal

A year later, in July 1979, Neil Young reachedanother creative peak with his stunning anddichotomous Rust Never Sleeps, one of mostmemorable albums of that year and one of thebest of his 40-year career. Voted as RollingStone magazine’s 1979 album of the year,Young produced the album with David Briggsand Tim Mulligan. The one side of the originalalbum was devoted to a more laidback, liveacoustic set featuring folk-based songs likePocahontas and Thrasher. The other halffeatured the blistering power-rock side of Youngand Crazy Horse with songs like Powderfingerand Sedan Delivery. This material prophesies theonslaught of grunge, hence the endearing epithetgiven to Young of The Grandfather of Grunge –or the Godfather of Grunge.

Intriguingly, Young opened and closed thealbum with different versions of Hey Hey, MyMy (Into the Blue/Black) and mixed studiorecordings with live ones. But what makes RustNever Sleeps a particularly indispensable workare those qualities that dominate most otherdesert-island rock albums: strong, memorable


melodies; splashings of great guitar hooks andmotifs; an overall atmosphere that seems totransport the listener to a hitherto arcane world;and enough flow of simple, thought-provokinglyrics that seem to reflect worldly and personalissues and concerns that matter to us and keep usintrigued.

In the case of the lyrics, we sense on the surfacea relatively calm, mundane world until we plumbtheir hidden and not always subtle meanings andnuances contained in allegories and metaphors.Thrasher, for example, is not just about the lossof innocence, but a reflection on, if not seriousindictment of, the extravagant and waywardways of the CSN&Y supergroup and rockstardom in general. This theme echoes back toOn the Beach.

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First good live album

Rust Never Sleeps material had already beentaken on tour, which led to the release inNovember 1979 of Live Rust, a 16-track, doublelive album produced by Young (aka BernardShakey) with David Briggs and Tim Mulligan.In general, this is a good, spirited albumfeaturing some of his career-defining songsranging from the gentle, acoustic ones to theraucous rock ragers.

Besides showcasing some of the Rust NeverSleeps songs like Powderfinger and SedanDelivery, it featured other classics like After theGold Rush, Like a Hurricane, When You Dance,You Can Really Love, Cinnamon Girl and TheLoner. He lightens up notably well on Cortez theKiller – and one senses here, as well as

elsewhere in this record, that he is celebratinghis first decade of post-Buffalo Springfieldmusic. At the time, many fans and critics wereannoyed that Young had released a live album sosoon after a sister studio album, particularlyconsidering that many thought the acoustic setswere weak and uninspired. More than 20 yearslater, however, we find this album has a specialplace of its own in the Young back cataloguebecause of the sheer sonic power and passionateplaying of Young and Crazy Horse on the rocksongs.

!*7#'(�7%��Shifting down

Then came another surprise period – the releaseof his two last Reprise albums beforecommitting to Geffen Records and, in manyrespects, the weirdest and weakest phase of hiscareer. First came Hawks and Doves inNovember 1980 and then Re-ac-tor in November1981.

For Young, Hawks and Doves (produced byYoung with David Briggs and Tim Mulligan) isa lacklustre, 30-minute, light-medium-weightaffair – a well-produced record with some goodsongs and competent playing, but it barelychallenges the listener or threatens to redirect thefuture of rock.

Revisiting the spirit of American Stars ‘n Bars, itfeatures some bar-room-style country-rock songsbefore shifting towards a lighter, not-too-challenging acoustic set in the latter half. Thebeautiful Little Wing, a quirky Captain Kennedyand the seven-and-a-half minute The OldHomestead are the half-gleaming gems in alargely tarnished crown.

Its themes are obscure and vague – and one isnot always sure what Young intended withmessages and meanings. Hawks and Dovesremains one of his most enigmatic works. Hereturns to his penchant for country music, but,unlike Comes a Time two years before, Youngseems to be too light-hearted, nonchalant anduninspired to be taken seriously.


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Shock rock

Then came a real shocker – a record thatchallenged and tested Neil Young fans andseemed to rekindle old debates about whatconstitutes a good album: the cacophonous andboisterous Re-ac-tor with its stark red and blackcover. Released in October 1981 and producedby Young with David Briggs and Tim Mulligan,this album was dismissed by rock critics andwriters at the time (this writer included). Inhindsight, it remains a controversial andchallenging work, but seems more enjoyabletoday with its pubescent garage-band antics of T-Bone and some other good material. Theoveramped thrash-and-trash minimalism of T-Bone got fans and critics either amused orexasperated with Young’s repeating two linesthroughout the nine-and-a-half-minute romp:“Got mashed potatoes / Ain’t got no T-bone.”

The better songs include the opener, Opera Star,along with the hard-rolling, steam-train song ofSouthern Pacific and Rapid Transit. (Young is atrain enthusiast and has a 4,000-square footmodel-train barn at Broken Arrow). The closingtrack, Shots, was also a favourite for many fansat the time. This boisterous, if not cacophonous,seven-and-a-half minute romp gets a hell-bent,duelling Young and Sampedro trading guitarshots like modern-day gangsters. It is absurd,amusing and, yet, also compelling and amongthe most bizarre album tracks of his 40-yearrecording career.

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Techno affair

More shock would follow in 1982 with therelease of Young’s largely dismissed and much-criticised experimentation with synthesisers andvocoders, Trans. After all the raunchy andunbridled pre-grunge guitar indulgences of RustNever Sleeps and Re-ac-tor, had Young growntired of burning, overamped Gibson and Fendersounds? Some fans admire Trans and eagerlycite his electronic dabblings as being aptexpressions of the growing concerns at the timeabout the deepening influence of computers andautomation on human life. Young himself saidhe was looking for an outlet to communicatewith his younger son, Ben, who was strickenwith cerebral palsy, unable to speak andconfined to a wheelchair.

In a rare interview for Mojo magazine withBritish rock writer, Nick Kent, to mark hisfiftieth birthday in 1995, Young was quick todefend this album: “Well, let’s say I don’tunderrate Trans. I really like it, and think ifanything is wrong, then it’s down to the mixing.We had a lot of technical problems on thatrecord, but the content of that record is great.”

Again, Young had entered another fickle,unpredictable phase – one that would becomeprogressively clearer as the 1980s unfolded.Within a handful of years, he would shift to:

• recycled rockabilly on 1983’sEverybody’s Rockin’;

• down-home country music on 1985’sOld Ways;

• bland automation and bizarre electronicdabbling on 1986’s disappointing rockouting, Landing on Water;

• tepid rock on 1987’s Life; and• a seemingly newfound love of blues that

just was not blue enough on 1988’s ThisNote’s for You.

Nevertheless, Young’s contentious musicalportfolio of the time should be seen in thecontext of his personal life – and his devotion tohis family in extraordinary circumstances. Hisfirst son, from his partnership with Carrie


Snodgress, Zeke, was diagnosed with cerebralpalsy. Then, not long after the birth of his secondson, Ben, with his second wife, Pegi Young, hehad to deal with the emotional upset of havinganother son diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

To compound matters, Pegi had a brain tumourand was given a 50:50 chance of survivingsurgery. Young also admitted in a 1990sinterview that he, as with compatriot JoniMitchell, suffered in the 1980s from post-poliosyndrome, a condition that could render him tooweak even to lift a guitar. The latter conditioninspired him to start lifting weights andexercising more regularly.

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Neil and Pegi Young spent most of the early1980s isolated at Broken Arrow ranch takingspecial care of their son, Ben. They enrolled fora programme run by the Institute for theAchievement of Human Potential and devoted atleast 15 hours of their waking day to support andhelp Ben, who could neither walk nor talk. Evenwhen Crazy Horse was summonsed to BrokenArrow to record the Re-ac-tor album, Youngpared his recording sessions to ensure he couldspend time with Pegi and their son, even if CrazyHorse demanded more recording time together.

The ‘80s dilemma

Then there are other perspectives. Was Youngitching to get through the 1980s without all hiswits intact? Had he lost his muse – or did hereally want to be flakier and more carefree thanever before? In hindsight, though he is largelyforgiven when one considers that the ‘80s wasthe worst decade in rock music. It is difficult tosurmise why the 1980s was such a disappointingperiod for music. Did the planets conspire to jinxthe musical creative process; was it that we had

reached the nadir of the Me Generation and post-War materialism; was it the impact of theReagan, Thatcher and other stateadministrations; or was it simply that all creativearts go through heightened periods ofdebilitation, disinterest or desolation?

Young, in a Mojo interview (published inDecember 1995), told British rock writer NickKent: “Maybe my ‘80s music should be lookedat as one record.”

Everybody’s Rockin’ is one of those dreadedalbums that foreshadowed the infamous arrivalof the quasi-nostalgic, revivalist and trite tributecovers albums that would come to prominence inthe Nineties and Noughties. It takes a special giftand a highly imaginative approach to abandonyour own superlative songwriting skills and torework other (and often lesser) artists’ material.On this album, Young returned to his rock ‘n rolland rockabilly roots with lacklustre results bycombining ‘50s-era covers with a few of hisordinary original songs.

In Young’s defence, he admits that the albumwas incomplete and meant to have additionalsongs to complement his envisaged concept, butGeffen Records terminated the recordingsessions ahead of schedule. This album,however, is strictly for Neil Young completistsand die-hard fans of rock and rockabilly from thelate 1950s and early 1960s. Most critics agreethis is Young’s most treacherous albumdeserving, at best, two stars. From here, it wasaxiomatic that his next album would be better.

Crash landing

While 1985’s Old Ways did not get critics andfans gushing, it was a welcome return to familiarmusical ground – this time, country music.Approaching his fortieth birthday and perhapswanting to slow the rock tempo for a while,Young found solace in his mellower countryroots. The seeds of this album went back threeyears when Young first recorded the songs withCrazy Horse. Geffen Records rejected the tapes,citing country music as too unhip anduncommercial. Young’s dalliance with country,


however, became more serious. Besides touringwith American country artists like WaylonJennings, he returned to the studio with a newband, The International Harvesters, andrerecorded Old Ways. Guest musicians,unsurprisingly, included Waylon Jennings andWillie Nelson.

Enigmatic and erratic again, Young would leavemany fans dumbfounded in August 1986 withthe release of his largely pedestrian rock album,Landing on Water. Curiously, the album coverfeatures an aircraft safety-sheet image of apassenger aircraft floating on water with itsescape slides down. The once high-flying,inspired songwriter seemed to be running out ofideas and impetus. As with Trans, he returned tosynthesiser doodling and dabbling in his rocksound – and some of this worked to good effect,as it did on one of the few good songs, Bad NewsBeat. Nevertheless, for all his love of change andexploration of technology, Young appeared to betreading water and in danger of drowning,artistically. What makes this album even morepitiful is the wider period in which it wasconceived and produced.

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His final record for Geffen Records, the ever-so-slightly better Life of 1987 saw Young reunitedwith Crazy Horse, but still messing around withsynthesisers. He had his dig at David Geffen andthe music industry moguls with his reference to“record company clowns” in the song, Prisonersof Rock ‘n Roll. The Geffen-Young affair led toan acrimonious divorce, with Geffen taking himto court for making “unrepresentative” records.

Bluesy turning point

Young’s muse and fortunes started to improve in1988 when he signed to Reprise Records again

and released his bluesy, big-horn rock album,This Note’s for You – a title mocking thecorporate sponsorship of music by big-brandnames like Budweiser and Pepsi. In an ironictwist, MTV banned the video from its playlist,but it went on to win an MTV video of the yearaward. Produced by Young with Niko Bolas(The Volume Dealers), This Note’s for Youfeatured a 10-piece band, The Bluenotes, thatincluded a horn section that seemed to lackpassion and shine. While this album receivedmixed reviews (and continues to), it hinted ofimprovement and better songs and sounds tocome. The wry title track is memorable, as are afew others, such as Hey Hey and Sunny Inside.

Young later took the band and new material ontour, during which he was sued by soul singer,Harold Melvin, for using the name of his formerbacking band, The Bluenotes. Young changedthe band’s name to that of the new album’sopening song, Ten Men Working.

The musician hardly endeared himself to fansand critics when he returned to the CSN&Y foldin 1988 to record the competent, but pedestrianAmerican Dream, the follow up to 1970’s DéjàVu. Each of the key players, Crosby, Stills, Nashand Young, fell below par – and one doubts ifthis album created any CSN&Y neophytes.Young’s songs, however, tended to have theedge over those of his compadres.

>&#!3#'(�7%��Return to form

With the short-lived CSN&Y reunion behindhim, Young returned to peak form with therelease in October 1989 of his foot-stomping,happy-go-lucky Freedom album. Produced byYoung with Niko Bolas and Tim Mulligan,Freedom would prove to be his best work sinceRust Never Sleeps. Even the cover hints of whatis in store. Looking like part-Chairman Mao onecstasy with his star-studded worker’s cap andpart-rock ‘n rock renegade troubadour, he’sstrumming an acoustic guitar and appears to bemoving out of the cover and into your livingroom.


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This is the real Neil Young: up close andpersonal – and he makes the point all too well onthe dazzling, floor-thudding opening track,Rockin’ in the Free World, the closest Younghas come to writing a true-blue rock anthem –perhaps even the idea for a global “freedom”anthem. Reborn, reinspired and reunited withCrazy Horse guitarist, Frank Sampedro, Youngrocks as though there is no tomorrow – and wejoin him as crazed comrades of his NewRevolution.

As with Rust Never Sleeps, he used two differentversion of a powerful song to bookend an album,with an eclectic, but cohesive assortment ofsongs sandwiched in between and moving fromlighter, more introspective acoustic pieces toheavier, stepping-out electric rockers. He foundhis songwriting skills again – along with a senseof balance and fun. Does Young love those yearsending with a nine? He closed the 1960s with thedevastingly good Everybody Knows This isNowhere in 1969 and he bade farewell to the1970s with his deeply inspired Rust Never Sleepsin 1979. Now he was saying goodbye to hisweird 1980s and seeking absolution withFreedom. The title said it all!

Without doubt, the fiery, part-cynical sing-along,Rockin’ in the Free World, alluded to the pitifulstate of America and the idea that if there everhad been an American Dream, well, it was just adream long spent. To make his point, Young andSampedro render some of their most savagelyraw and adventurous guitar work, sending shockwaves all the way to Seattle, Washington, to

provide impetus to the city’s budding grungemovement.

Young even delved back into his youth andamped up a splendid version of The Drifters’1963 hit, On Broadway, written by Jerry Leiber,Mike Stoller, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.(George Benson had a massive hit in 1978 withhis version of this song). Young brings asneering, mocking air to the old song – andsounds as though he’s swaggering down NewYork City’s famed theatrical street, laughing atthe folly of humankind and our endlesspreoccupation with the dramatic and foolish.

But there are plenty of other good songs onFreedom, including songs from his limited-edition Eldorado EP sold in Japan and Australia.Other notable songs include his acoustic-driven,heart-stirring duet with Linda Ronstadt, Hangin’on a Limb, the languid, spacey rock ballad,Wrecking Ball and the epic, almost-DylanesqueCrime in the City (Sixty to Zero, Part One).

Joyfully alive

The return to Reprise Records was payingdividends – and fans and critics, alike, werewarming fondly to Neil Young again. Hisfollow-up album to Freedom, the raunchy,unrestrained rock classic, Ragged Glory, wasreleased in October 1990. This is a sizzlingwork, alive with spontaneity and adventure –even if the album’s best songs do not rival theglorious standards he set on albums likeEverybody Knows This is Nowhere and After theGold Rush. Produced by Young with DavidBriggs, he and Crazy Horse rediscovered theirquintessential hard-rocking, tight and fluidElectric Equine sound that is joyfully alive – thetype of flaming live sound you hone by being onthe road playing for appreciative audiences,rather than self-indulging in seemingly endlessand fastidious studio sessions with too muchtechnology and time on your hands.

As with On the Beach, this masterpiece merits afresh appraisal and it is revisited in more detailin the third edition of Strange Brew (to follow).


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flowing, particularly on his studio albums. First,however, came two live albums in 1991, thesizzling, grunge-fest in the form of Weld and thedisposable 35 minutes of cacophonous outtakesof stage feedback in the form of Arc. The twoalbums were originally released together. Weldis often rated as Young’s most dynamic livealbum, with tracks culled from his RaggedGlory/Smell the Horse Tour. The featured songsinclude Cinnamon Girl, Like a Hurricane,Cortez the Killer, Powderfinger, Rockin’ in theFree World and Mansion on the Hill.

Wistful sojourn

After the heavier sounds of Ragged Glory andWeld, Young mellowed, returned to Nashvilleand recorded the exquisitely gentle and wistfulHarvest Moon, a subdued celebration of thetwentieth anniversary of Harvest. Once again,Young partnered with The Stray Gators: KennyButtrey, Tim Drummond, Ben Keith andSpooner Oldham. Linda Ronstadt, James Taylorand Nicolette Larson were among the featuredguest singers, as was his half-sister, AstridYoung.

Some critics have tended to regard HarvestMoon (produced by Young with Ben Keith) as acompetent, but tepid work not worthy of muchcelebration, but it ranks as one of his finestworks of the 1990s – if not a must-have Youngalbum. Compared with Harvest, it is a more

mature, subtle and cohesive work. It also hasmore acoustic instrumentation and a more fluidand laidback atmosphere. Harvest Moonembraces some of the spirit of Harvest, but,thankfully, it makes no effort to mimic or reviveit. Harvest Moon has its own atmosphere andpersonality, and, again, we see Young escapingthe hectic rock circuit to return to hisquintessential self as the reflective songwriter.To its discredit, Harvest Moon suffered from adearth of passion and inventiveness.

The album opens with Unknown Legend, aheartfelt eulogy to a blonde Harley-Davidsonrider, before shifting into his delightful trip downmemory lane in the form of the luscious FromHank to Hendrix, an acknowledgement of onemarriage that did not endure. From there, it rollsgently from one song to the next, neverthreatening to rock out and make outrageousstatements. Instead, he intensifies hispreoccupation with love – and the listener is leftwith no doubts that this is his long-overduecelebration of his marriage to Pegi Young. Thisis best encapsulated in Such a Woman, with itswords “Our love will live / Until the end oftime” – the one song he set aside for JackNitzsche to work his magic with on the stringarrangements as one of America’s finest rock-eraarrangers. The title track is another tribute to hiswife, Pegi – and the one marriage that hasendured many musical phases and life passages.

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Yet Young finds inspiration to comment onenvironmental degradation and concerns, as hedoes on Natural Beauty (a 10-minute songrecorded live at the Civic Auditorium inPortland, Oregon) and War of Man (inspired byThe Gulf War).

In the wake of the commercially successfulHarvest Moon, Young returned to the road andthe MTV studios for more live work in 1993.


Apart from touring with Pearl Jam and Booker Tand the MGs, he recorded and releasedUnplugged, a warmly received live album thatdisplayed his more personable and charmingside. Besides rendering a stunning acousticversion of Like a Hurricane, complete with somethrilling pump-organ motifs, he revisited BuffaloSpringfield days with a prosaic anddisappointing rendition of Mr Soul. He alsoplayed a tepid version of Long May You Runfrom his 1976 collaboration with Stephen Stills.

As a live album, Unplugged shows another,more intimate view of Neil Young. The songsare mostly good and the performances finewithin the context of acoustic instrumentation,but some of the material, such as Mr Soul andPocahontas, did not lend itself to the MTVUnplugged format. In some respects, the overallUnplugged performances are too light andrestrained. It is fine to unplug the instruments,but not the musicians’ zest. In hindsight, the bestsongs were those from Harvest Moon: UnknownLegend and From Hank to Hendrix.

Idiosyncratic and introspective

The mellower mood – but, this time, withrefreshingly unusual originality – was extendedto embrace his excellent 1994 studio album,Sleeps with Angels. This is his finest work of themid-1990s and came close to rivalling thesongwriting strength of Ragged Glory, but with amore subdued, introspective atmosphere and amore idiosyncratic approach to songwriting,instrumentation and arrangements. The highlightsongs include his elegy to Kurt Cobain, the titletrack, along with the elegantly restrained TransAm, inspired by his love of trains.

Starring Crazy Horse and produced by DavidBriggs (his last collaboration) and Neil Young,Sleeps with Angels also features the light-hearted, but disposable tirade against junk-product consumerism, Piece of Crap, and thehaunting, 15-minute epic, Change Your Mind,which harps back to his pioneering days ofgrunge guitar and abandon. To create a newambience distinct from some of his other 1990salbums, Young and his band exploited the tack

piano, bass marimba, vibes, flute and accordion,all of which sculpted one of his most unusuallyarranged and sounding albums of his career –along with one of the most sadly underratedworks.

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Grunged-out in Seattle

As The Godfather of Grunge and having touredwith one of Seattle’s finest grunge bands, it wasno surprise when Young released his grunge-soaked, off-the-cuff Mirror Ball album in 1995with Pearl Jam as his band not long after beinginducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inJanuary 1995. Mirror Ball has been muchmaligned, primarily because it lacks strongmelodies, as well as contrasting lights and shade,and because it is regarded as little more than anindulgent studio jam with Pearl Jam. Yes, thesongs could have been more melodic andadventurous, but the adolescent, garage-bandspontaneity and extreme vivacity and rawnessare what make this album so attractive when youare in the mood for a dose of solid, no-frills rockthat is not meant to be taken too seriously.Mirror Ball reminds us of the importance ofYoung’s lighter, more childlike side. The albumwas recorded at Seattle’s Bad Animals studioover two intense sessions in four days – and itshows.

The standout song is I’m the Ocean, a blistering,stream-of-consciousness hard-rocker about aweird nightmare that ranks among his finestworks since the Rust Never Sleeps album.Another great song is the slow-burning, bluesygrunged-out Scenery, a cynical stab at theshallowness of American patriotism and


idealism. This song is made even morecompelling by the larger-than-life guitarfireworks interspersed with some crazed, honky-tonk piano patterns and backed by thunderousdrumming. Rarely cited by critics as a song ofany worth (some critics loathe it), Throw YourWeapons Down is a hypnotic, muscular rompthat is so delightfully indulgent. Young and PearlJam’s Stone Gossard and Mike McCready torchtheir guitars and create a grunge-meets-psychedelic pyrotechnics that is mind-blowingas it blazes upwards, threatening to get seriouslystratospheric. The notion of old rockers onsteroids has seldom sounded so wonderfullyindulgent and inspirational.

As much as Mirror Ball has flaws andlimitations, it reveals the younger, morespontaneous side of the musician and his greatability to improvise and create some of his mostsearing and gut-tugging guitar solos. This albumis an indulgent celebration of music across twogenerations of rockers – and it is worth having inyour Neil Young album collection if you areclose to being a completists. If Young is oftencelebrated as one of rock’s great Primitives, thenhe makes a strong case by jamming with suchabandon with Pearl Jam.

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�'*%5� ��# 3�)5�7�The next nadir

The remainder of Neil Young’s 1990s paledfrom an outsider’s perspective with the releaseof fewer and weaker albums than usual:

• the surreal, otherworldly and sketchyguitar solos that formed the soundtrackfor the Jim Jarmusch-directed cult movieabout the afterlife, Dead Man Walking(1995), starring Johnny Depp;

• the mostly anaemic 1996 album ofBroken Arrow with Crazy Horse; and

• the noisy romp of a live album, 1997’sYear of the Horse.

While being a largely disappointing work,Broken Arrow is not unlistenable – and wasshortlisted for a Best Album Grammy in 1996.The best track, the touching, ethereal song ofreflection, Slip Away, is a kindred song to Sleepswith Angels. The album also features the 10-minute fuzz-fest of distraction anddisconsolation in the form of Loose Change.

These below-par works were followed in 1999by the third CSN&Y studio album, LookingForward, to which he contributed three good(but far from classic) songs. Their subsequentLooking Forward North American tour grossedslightly more than US$42-million, making it oneof the highest-grossing rock tours of 2000.

Young shifted up a gear, creatively and quality-wise, at the end of the millennium with therelease of warm and promising Silver and Gold(2000), a light, country-rock affair that markedhis return to pastoral moods and themes. Matureand content, Young reflects, with some fondnessand honesty, on his musical and personal past.The highlight songs of Silver and Gold(produced by Young with Ben Keith) include theobviously nostalgic Buffalo Springfield Again,Razor Love, The Great Divide and the title track.

After a rebirth in the 1990s, the early Noughtiesproved to be a bit too weird for us as Neil Youngfans. His disappointing live album, Road Rock(2001), proved just one point: artists need tolimit their output of live albums, especially whenthese recordings do not reflect them at their beston stage.

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To add salt to our wounds, he released a dullstudio album, Are You Passionate?, in March2002. The tacky cover – probably the worst inthe Young back-catalogue – says it all. Thisshould have been a passionate, soul-infusedalbum considering that Young used one of thebest bands from the Atlantic-Motown-Stax soulheydays to back him, Booker T and the MGs.

�'*%5� �A*��>�A4A new weirdness

After a dismal and largely soullessexperimentation with soul and R&B, Youngcame the closest to making a concept album withthe release in August 2003 of the much-overlooked Greendale (produced by Young withL A Johnson). It is a competent work, but it doesnot stretch his songwriting talents or guitarplaying. The album revolves around a fringecommunity of 20,000 or so arty, eco-psychedelicback-to-Nature types and, more specifically, theexperiences of the Green family.

In essence, this is a gently paced country-blues,slow boogie, soft grunge album that stretchesover 78 minutes with the emphasis being onYoung as the narrator of Greendale vignettes.The melodies are low-key and Young and CrazyHorse (minus Frank Sampedro) slide into – andsustain – a hypnotic groove with Youngdelivering eccentric tales about grandpa, drugstashes, Satan in the local jail, cop killing andpainting psychedelic art. There is some flakyphilosophising – and we can only hope Youngwas expressing some of his thoughts with histongue in cheek.

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A tasteful, but near-predictable, single-discGreatest Hits was released in 2004, but broughtnothing new or surprising to Young fans. Ifanything, besides being a much-needed incomebooster for Reprise Records in the light ofYoung’s weaker album sales of recent years, theanthology might serve as a lightning version of AYoung Person’s Introduction to Neil Young. Ithas obvious choices, such as Cinnamon Girl,Ohio (the great CSN&Y single), Heart of Gold,Like a Hurricane and From Hank to Hendrix,but it ignores some of his essential albums andcreative periods – and is far too biased towardshis 1969-1979 period. Compiled by Young, headmits that his final choice was based onpopularity – record sales, Internet downloadsand airplay.

Prairie recollections

Prairie Wind (2005) finds Young back in alighter, more nostalgic mood, returning to hismellower country and folk roots, as he did onHarvest Moon and Silver and Gold. There is alsoa link between this album and one of his finestsoft-rock albums, Comes a Time. This timearound, much of is heart travels back to hischildhood growing up on a windswept Canadianprairie, hence the title and the back-coverphotograph of him as a prepubescent boy.

Prairie Wind provided Neil Young with aperfect channel to celebrate Elvis Presley, an oldguitar, the windy prairies, conversations with hislate father, boyhood fishing and the passing ofgood times. But there are also concerns about hisown frailty and mortality. What makes PrairieWind all the more poignant is knowing it waswritten and recorded mostly around the time hewas diagnosed with having, and then undergoingsurgery for, a potentially fatal cerebralaneurysm. Young was admitted to a New YorkCity hospital at the end of March 2005 to havehis aneurysm treated safely through aneuroradiological procedure. Around this time,Young also had to contend with the death of his87-year-old father, Scott Young, and thedeparture of his grownup children from home.


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Recorded in Nashville, Prairie Wind carries asimple dedication for his late father: “ForDaddy”. Superbly produced by Young and BenKeith (who also plays dobro, pedal steel guitarand slide guitar), Prairie Wind featuresmusicians who have been working with Youngon his more recent acoustic albums: SpoonerOldham, Rick Rosas, Chad Cromwell and KarlHimmel. Emmylou Harris makes a special guestappearance on three of the 10 songs. If anything,the album sounds as if it was made out on theprairies, remote from city lights and noise.

On the rocking, good-times Far From Home,Young dreams of going to Nashville to become abig, wealthy star, but leaves us in no doubt aboutwanting to be returned to his roots when he dies:

“Bury me out on the prairieWhere the buffalo used to roamWhere the Canada geese once filled the skyAnd then I won’t be far from home.”

He is nostalgic, but not overly sentimental as heand an expanded band romp their way through alovely piece of country-boogie featuring theWayne Jackson Horns, as well as EmmylouHarris and Pegi Young on vocals. As he hasdone on many songs over the years, he alludes tothe destruction of nature. On sleepy, string-infused songs like It’s a Dream, we are drawnirresistibly to Young’s tender, melancholy side.This is one of the most touching songs he haswritten and sung in recent years. One cannothelp feeling his deep sense of loss knowing thatthe sweetness of childhood adventure andinnocence has become little more than a fadingmemory.

Neil Young also played at the Canadianperformance of the Live 8 benefit concertoutside Toronto on July 2 2005. Earlier in 2006,before commencing work on his latest album,Neil Young worked with film director JonathanDemme (eg, Silence of the Lambs andPhiladelphia) to produce the musicaldocumentary, Neil Young: Heart of Gold. Thedocumentary was premiered at Robert Redford’sSundance Film Festival.

Boxing time

Living with War – the new album reviewed indetail in the third edition of Strange Brew (tofollow) – sees Young in fine fettle, rediscoveringhis songwriting mettle. It is worth exploring –and leaves die-hard fans hoping he still hasplenty of steam left in him to make a few moregood albums. Recorded over a fortnight in April2006, the album was first released through theInternet on April 28 and then on CD on May 5.The giant American chain store, Wal-Mart,prohibited sales of Living with War because ofits (apparent) un-American messages.

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But, more than another album of original songs,many fans have become increasingly anxiousabout the continuing delay of the much-toutedNeil Young box set. The Young back-cataloguestretches way beyond 30 hours and at least 500original songs, many of them good ones. So it isnot much to ask Neil Young, with a few closeassociates (among them, Elliot Roberts), to setaside some time to shortlist his best 60 or sosongs and produce a boxed anthology over fouror five discs? If he is looking for someinspiration, he need not look further than thesterling efforts of The Band’s Robbie Robertson(five-disc anthology from 2005, A Musical


History) and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page (four-disc anthology from 1990, Led Zeppelin).

Sometimes flaky, sometimes superbly gifted,sometimes enigmatic and sometimes palpable,Neil Young has traversed more musical terrainthan most rock artists have – and he deserves tobe celebrated anew for his best melodies, hiskeenest lyrics and his most charmed moments ofeccentricity. Long may he run!

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• Neil Young, 1969 �• Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,

1969 �� [with Crazy Horse, w CH]• After the Gold Rush, 1970 [w CH] ��

• Harvest, 1972 [w The Stray Gators] ��

• Journey through the Past, 1972• Time Fades Away, 1973 [live] [l]• On the Beach, 1974 ��

• Tonight’s the Night, 1975 [w CH] ��

• Zuma, 1975 [w CH] ��

• American Stars ‘n Bars, 1977 �• Decade, 1977 [compilation] [c] ��

• Comes a Time, 1978 ��

• Rust Never Sleeps, 1979 [w CH] ��

• Live Rust, 1979 [l] [w CH] ��

• Hawks and Doves, 1980 �• Re-ac-tor, 1981 [w CH] �• Trans, 1982• Everybody’s Rocking, 1983 [mostly

covers] [w The Shocking Pinks]• Old Ways, 1985• Landing on Water, 1986• Life, 1987• This Note’s for You, 1988

[w The Bluenotes] �• Freedom, 1989 ��

• Ragged Glory, 1990 [w CH] ��

• Weld, 1991 [l] [w CH] �• Arc, 1991 [l] [w CH]• Harvest Moon, 1992 [with SG] ��

• Lucky Thirteen, 1992 [c] �• Unplugged, 1993 [l] �• Sleeps with Angels, 1994 [w CH] ��

• Mirror Ball, 1995 [w Pearl Jam] �

• Dead Man, 1995 [soundtrack]• Broken Arrow, 1996 [w CH]• Year of the Horse, 1997 [l] [w CH] �• Silver and Gold, 2000 �• Road Rock, 2001 [l]• Are You Passionate?, 2002

[with Booker T and the MGs]• Greendale, 2003 [w CH] �• Greatest Hits, 2004 [c] �• Prairie Wind, 2005 �• Living with War, 2006 ��

�� Essential � Nice to have

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%*�>��A*'%#'&�3 … Part two of the 40-year celebration of Neil Young will be featuredin the third edition of Strange Brew, to bepublished on September 30 2006. Among otherhighlights, Strange Brew 03 will feature reviewsof Living with War and On the Beach, the NeilYoung discography, a brief overview of Youngas a guitarist and a few snippets of trivia.

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