What do they say? They can get precious and sentimental, as any
good friend waxing nostalgic can. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,
which Neil recorded with Crazy Horse in 1969, recalls the events
of one summer when I wanted desperately to impress my best buddy's
female cousin, who was visiting our small southern town. Having
a crush at age 14 was bad enough; giving her a name like "Cowgirl
In The Sand" guaranteed she'd remain out of reach.
Or they can turn bizarrely cryptic--again, as pals enjoy a good
taunt. 1973's Time Fades Away is scarred beyond repair
from too many spins on my girlfriend's parents' ancient turntable
(tracking force: five grams); what accounts for the pattern of
white paint drips and the circular indentations on the sleeve?
Perhaps one of her numerous art projects back then...
In the autumn of '78 I was trying to finish off college when
I heard the news that terminal adolescent Who drummer Keith Moon
had died. See Elvis/Lennon/Cobain notation above: a chunk of me
died, too. Was it time to think about growing up? A few months
later Rust Never Sleeps was released. In "Powderfinger"
Neil's character said, "And I'd just turned 22/ I was wondering
what to do." Close enough. I veered off the planned trajectory
(law school) and into an uncertain world, publishing punk/new
wave fanzines and, of course, living and breathing rock 'n' roll.
Neil, of course, had also set his personal matters straight, boiling
over with those famous sarcastic lines, "It's better to burn
out/ Than to fade away." (Those of you presently experiencing
discomfort at this reminiscence have Neil Young to thank.)
I'm looking at the album sleeves from the early '80s and they're
oddly silent. Can't really blame Re-ac-tor, 1981: with
that hideous red and black geometric design, he's an ugly bastard.
Trans, who came into the world the next year as a document
of Neil and his wife's struggle with their kid's cruel disability,
seems totally numb. Only when I'm playing that elegiac acoustic
version of "Transformer Man" from Neil's more recent
Unplugged does Trans even stir. Lord knows what's
on the mind of Everybody's Rockin'. In '83 he was the garish,
pink-suited, rockabilly-fixated redneck cousin that the family
had tried hard to overlook.
The '90s slowly yawned, as if the costume ball of the decade
just ending was all part of an elaborate cosmic joke played on
those of us who couldn't recognize one another, much less ourselves.
I went dressed as a commission-hungry shoe salesman.
It's old hat among writers now to cite Freedom and Ragged
Glory as Neil's return to form. The more accurate view is
that he was finally settling in for the long haul. "Rockin'
In The Free World," admittedly a terrific song, as terrific
musically as "Satisfaction" or "All Along The Watchtower,"
tends to be cited as a personal manifesto. Sorry, no dice, as
you know if you've logged the man's sense of irony. Consider,
instead, the conclusion of "Eldorado," a colorful little
Southwestern fable, in which a "great bullfighter" comes
out into the ring: "He kills the bull/ And lives another
day."
In short order: I visited Tucson for the first time in the fall
of '90 and caught the Neil/Crazy Horse "Don't Spook The Horse
Tour" the following spring. That tour's live document Weld
offered a surging, epochal version of "Cortez The Killer"
to play over and over in the car deck as reassurance that the
sight of a new world was no mirage. That yeah-but-it's-dry heat
sure tasted good when the wife, the cats and I washed up on the
shores of Tucson in the summer of '92.
Harvest Moon, Unplugged, Sleeps With Angels
and Mirror Ball are kinda leering at me now. The latter,
especially, has a satisfied smirk on his sepia-toned mug. Maybe
his life, like mine, is imperfect and full full of fits and stalls,
but contains the kind of goofy self-assuredness one gets from
knowing rock and roll on a first-name basis.
It's last year's Sleeps With Angels, though, that really
gets under my skin. During "Change Your Mind" there's
an airless moment when just snare and bass creep around like burglars
on the back stairs. Young murmurs with a hint of unspecified dread,
"You hear the sound/ You wait around and get the word/ You
see the picture/ Changing everything you've heard." Right
on cue the guitars crash down with finality: "Destroying
you with this/ Must be the one you love/ Must be the one whose
magic touch/ Can change your mind."
This extraordinary song not only restates Young's as-ever central
lyrical theme (you need love to live), but works on another level
as a sonic metaphor for (you guessed it) life. Not a bluesrock
jam but a series of elliptical jazz extrapolations, it features
Neil and Crazy Horse interacting through sheer metaphysical intuition.
It's not surprising that they arrived at this point after a quarter-century
together; what is unique is the sheer joy they seem to get from
still doing it together. Then again, loyalty and intuition are
Neil's trademarks.
And I guess those are lessons I've learned from Neil: when things
conspire to cloud your mind, trust your instincts. Maybe I'll
get to thank my friend for that one day.
The Music Menu:
(1) A Dreamer Of Pictures by David Downing (Bloomsbury,
UK) is an easy-to-read history, up to '93, that offers loads of
historical trivia and some well-reasoned analysis of the music
(such as how Young tends to write/record in discernible cycles).
Rock bios can be pretty stiff; this one's not.
(2) Speaking of which, writer Nick Kent has assembled a slew
of essays and interviews in The Dark Stuff (Penguin, UK).
A huge chapter on Young concludes with a quote from the transformer
man himself: "In a sense, it's all about running away. I've
been running all my life. Where I'm going... Who the fuck knows?
But... the point is just to see how long you can keep going strong."
(3) The Neil Young Appreciation Society has a quarterly magazine
called Broken Arrow. Write 'em at 2A Llynfi Street, Bridgend,
Mid Glamorgan, CF31 1SY, Wales. There's plenty of info, from concert
reviews to insider interviews, plus regular coverage of bootlegs.
(4) Speaking of which, allow me to recommend to the copyright
mavericks in the room: Rockin' With Angels, from Oct. 22,
1994 in Sedona, a good audience recording CD featuring Neil and
the Horse doing most of Sleeps With Angels (20 minutes'
worth of "Change Your Mind"); and Farmyard Connection,
a disc that collects his Farm Aid 3 and 5 appearances, and more,
with pristine sound quality no less.
--Fred Mills
