Neil Young
Lambasted as a hippie figurehead, reviled as the Godfather of grunge, experimenter with tekno-rock and collaborator with Devo, name checker of Johnny Rotten and blasted by same John Lydon for using his holy name in vain, famously sued by own record label for releasing an album that “Didn’t sound like Neil Young”, what do you think of the man?
My first experience of him would have been discovering After The Goldrush in my sister’s record collection. Said collection was littered with Donny and David and the like, but I’d found an early Credence single in there one time, so I kept coming back for a peek in there just in case.
I loved Vic Reeve’s, I think it was, observation of the Goldrush cover;
He described a grumpy Neil Young, on the street, with an old lady in his rucksack.
At the time though the album was a bit hippy-drippy for me, and it wasn’t probably until I started hearing good covers (of what turned out to be, on further, later, investigation) brilliant songs, that I took real notice. I remember getting a bootleg video at a record fair, of The Doors Dance On Fire videos and after that was done the rest of the tape was Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Rust Never Sleeps live show- the one with Star Wars Jawa roadies humping the gear on stage.
This was more like it.
He’s another of them classic singers, not in the conventional, XfuckenFactor, Mariah Carrey pitch bending warbling, but like Bowie. Or Dylan. Or Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen… Not pitch perfect, never note perfect, but with character and an honesty you can trust. And with something to say.
Over the years I got into and out of and into Neil Young over and over again.
(Could you put your predictable, lame, sexual jokes here, please:
)
Cheers.
I remember my ex boss telling me about the time he saw him carried on stage on the infamous Tonight’s The Night tour in Glasgow. The support band, according to my ex boss, blew him off stage that night, playing a full support set, then having to go back on stage to play another full set to a braying crowd after Neil was carried back off stage a couple of songs into his own set.
But what did my boss know? The support that night were the feckin Eagles!
And I love the story of the time Neil invited his manager over to his farm to hear a playback of the stuff he’d been working on. The manager was understadably a tad confused as he was bundled into a wee rowboat with Neil, and paddled out to the centre of his pond for the promised playback. Turns out Young had transformed a shed on the left of his house into a speaker, with the barn on the other side being the right hand speaker. A trusty roadie was positioned on the bank to correct sound balance. Young’s yelled response as the roadie called across the lake, asking what adjustments to the levels were needed, was, “MORE BARN!”
Love it!
Anyhoo, surprisingly enough, mibee, this post was prompted by watching a Robot Elvis dvd (Cheers Mark!) and being reminded of what a fan of Neil Young Baz is. Songs from the length of Young's career pepper Robot Elvis and Baz’s solo sets.
And I got to also thinking about the forthcoming Stranglers album, and Baz’s writing (along with JJ) taking centre stage for probably the first real time; how close to a Stranglers/Neil Young crossover album as we?
