Search and destroy: Neil Young

ha, i just put them together in my mind because those two would seem to be two chaotic, drug gobbling peas in a pod

that's one of the funny things about the Band in general, is just their sort of dour frontiersman imagery esp in their photos juxtaposed with the fact they were all such good old boy party animals (except maybe garth)

like in that levon helm documentary about his last years, he talks about partying with procol harum and how they were some awesome dudes and how he was dropping acid

Neil doing Dylan-y stuff is by no means my favourite Neil ('Heart of Gold' is not Dylan-y, wtf's Bob on about?)

why was he living in phoenix?

Ashtabula got too hectic

my apologies if anyone here is their age, but i think most of us are also dealing with a hindsight awareness of neil's whole vibe. let's not forget "sugar mountain" was a b-side until the late '70s.

obv it's not even gaye-estate level actionable, but if i put myself in dylan's shoes it's not unbelievable he'd get a case of the green eyed monster

xp was it "Live Rust" that rehabilitated that song into the Neil canon?

I always liked Stealers Wheel, but it bothered me every time I listened to "Stuck in the Middle with You."

Neil should've responded with "yeah well the next #1 was A Horse With No Name...I hadn't even left and they'd replaced me"

(xpost) Yeah--with "Stuck in the Middle with You" and Mott's "I Wish I Was Your Mother" and Cockney Rebel's "Make Me Smile" and many more, there were a lot of spot-on Dylan imitations around that time. "Heart of Gold" really wasn't one of them. (Mott and Harley come a little later.)

xxxp "sugar mountain" was a live set mainstay for most of the 70s http://www.sugarmtn.org/song.php?song=550

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3Z3pW0zimc

haha hasn't Neil explicitly named "A Horse With No Name" as a ripoff of him

the Dylan quote is interesting to me because was Dylan trying to write something like "Heart of Gold"? if nothing else I hear e.g. "You Angel You" a little differently now

i know that a lot went into the album/songs, the divorce etc but to me there's always been an element to how focused and hungry and just overall great blood on the tracks is that seemed to be dylan wanting to be a little bit "alright kids, the king's back"

or maybe "Nobody 'Cept You" xp to myself lol

but yeah the rep of Blood on the Tracks as an emo classic misses the directness and leanness of its songs, after the relative bigness of the Band tracks he'd been up to for a couple of years

No sonic similarity between Heart of Gold and anything Dylan to me either, though hearing that beautiful Old Man cover opens it up a bit - but wow Dylan's band is rocking!

has a lot more drive than the Stray Gators had and I like it, would be fun to hear more Dylan versions of Neil.

a huge mistake perhaps

― Team Foxcatcherwatcher (Sufjan Grafton),

the hangover:

They Will Not Go Quietly: The Official ILM Track-By-Track DON 'n' GLENN Listening Thread

haha hasn't Neil explicitly named "A Horse With No Name" as a ripoff of him

― Οὖτις, Friday, March 20, 2015 1:37 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea, there is a part in mcdonough's shakey when they talk about it:

Ironically, "Heart of Gold" would be bumped from the charts by a clone---America's moronic "Horse with No Name". Young even received a congratulatory phone call from his father, who heard the record on the radio and assumed it was his son. Amazingly, Elliot Roberts immediately signed the band to a management contract, a bit of information that both Nitzsche and Mazzeo would use to wind up Neil. "I remember him callin' Elliot, yellin' and screamin'---'Waddya spendin' time with this copy band when you've got the original right here, Elliot?'"

Jeannie Field recalls Young showing up for dinner one night aroudn this time. "I was really surprised. He didn't usually hang out with us--it was so unusual. Well, I found out later that Elliot had brought America up to meet him, and Neil was so pissed off there was no way he was going to meet them. He was just hiding out."

haha

maybe now that the whole "blurred lines" precedent is in place, neil should go and sue america for "horse with no name."

i actually kind of enjoy that song but the first two things that pop into my head when i hear it are:

1) wow, this is a really brazen rip of harvest-era neil young

2) christ, these lyrics are dumb

when i first heard "horse with no name" it was in that breaking bad episode and i did genuinely think it was some early neil song like something cut from the s/t album or a buffalo springfield lost tune

I sometimes think Dylan hears his own music differently than others do. As in, literally. Would explain a lot, really.

xxp the heat was hot! what more can a guy say to describe heat?

Big Neil Young rip here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kldHXD2z4jA

it's funny how hard "horse" hits the CSNY vibe compared to all their other hits

i mean ween couldn't write a better neil parody

I forget who the comedian was, but I remember some bit about "'Horse with No Name'? It's your horse! You're supposed to name it!"

^^Dave Barry, iirc

I went through the desert on a mystery horse
if it was raining, it'd surely be worse

oh shit, i've gone my whole life thinking "you can do magic" was alan parson's project

glad i have an appointment w/my therapist next week

"I mean, it really really sounds just like the Alan Parsons Project! Isn't it obvious?"

"Mmm-hmm. Who are you trying to convince, ums; me...or you?"

i feel like these songs are about as good as you can expect from a band that called themselves "america." i mean, "america"? really?

and yeah i guess "horse with no name" splits the difference between CSNY and "Harvest"

you know what song is awesome is ventura highway

that one is good!
oddly enough, lucinda williams sings about neil young in her song "ventura"

I don't rate "Heart of Gold" any higher than "A Horse with No Name," although it was cool when Janet Jackson interpolated "Ventura Highway" in 2001.

just saw this, looks cool, though I think i've heard it all before: http://www.willardswormholes.com/archives/31498

!!!

That looks amazing.

yea despite its many terrible qualities i do really enjoy "horse with no name"

i do not turn it off when it comes on the radio.
the "born to run" on that deluxe ragged glory is one of neil's better lost songs ... and it is not a springsteen cover.

Man "A Horse With No Name" is weaker, weaker than the weaker Neil song. "Heart of Gold" may be overplayed but it has more poetry and meaning in one line than "AHWNN" does in the entire song. Just stupid lyrics. Stupid stupid stupid.

The lyrics have all the weight and meaning of an astrology chart.

on some level, yeah, "horse" is weaker than "gold." but if I want "poetry and meaning" I can name 50+ neil songs i'd rather go to - relative to the rest of his career, "Heart Of Gold" is a coffee jingle. when i want to hear a jingle, i'd prefer "horse"'s cosmic inanity.

randy newman said something like "it sounds like a kid who thinks he's taken lsd" which is farrr more novel on top 40 than a country-pop song about looking for love in all the wrong places

Man "A Horse With No Name" is weaker, weaker than the weaker Neil song. "Heart of Gold" may be overplayed but it has more poetry and meaning in one line than "AHWNN" does in the entire song. Just stupid lyrics. Stupid stupid stupid.

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), F

the Young song is pretty dumb though. Nice harmonica and "and I'm gettin' old" though.

gold has nice slide from ben keith too

yeah "heart of gold," lyrically anyway, is lite neil, bu it's a beautiful little shuffle of a song.

It was a huge hit that paid for his next few albums, for which I'm grateful.