neil young

As much as I'd hate to be without "Ambulance Blues," I'd also take Harvest over On the Beach if I could only have one. I think Harvest is underrated to about the same degree that On the Beach is overrated--in part because of Neil's own putdown of the album in Decade's liner notes.

I waded through Christgau's thing...mind wandered, but I agree with him about how good Time Fades Away is.

I'm supplying in a kindergarten class today--I'll ask them what they think about On the Beach, bring some closure to this.

I entered junior kindergarten in 1976, when Mrs. Grasser put on side two of On the Beach it always meant naptime.

Only kindergarten class that ever had "dune buggy" as one of their 'd' words in their alphabet books.

start 'em Young

I'm always astonished to hear people bag on "See the Sky About to Rain", Jimmy McDonough even circles back to it more than once in Shakey to dismiss it, one of Neil's perfect songs imo. Especially when the only & obvious clunker on that record is sitting there in plain sight at the end of side 1:

https://i.imgur.com/j8cDEP0.jpg

His only experiment with 12-bar blues, right? Meh.

vampire is my least favorite on the album as well. it's not bad by any means, and i do like the "good times are coming, i hear it everywhere i go, but they sure are coming" refrain - i missed living in the 70s (so that I could instead focus more time on living through this hell-saga), but that line instantly brings me to the mood of post-60s hippy dream dead recession oil crisis

"good times are coming, i hear it everywhere i go, but they sure are coming

...slow."

This Note's for You must have some 12-bar blues on it? And "Cry, Cry, Cry" from Everybody's Rockin'?

...and "We Don't Smoke It No More"?

"birds" and all of after the gold rush really are such a great example of how sharp neil used to be as a lyricist. for such a loud rock kind of guy he was so insightful when it came to love and relationships. a little bit of chauvinism lurking around the corners, more as a fact of things and less as an aggressive stance, but you can't have it all.

Young strikes me as a songwriter for whom the self comes first. He keeps an eye on his moods, cultivating a state of interiority that has made him just generous enough to accept women without aggression ("Stupid Girl" an exception, and the same album has "Lookin' for a Love," which suggests the former as a bro's drunken frustration gotten out of his system).

"stupid girl" is a little tricky but ultimately i think it's more generous than it seems to be because it's calling someone out for their behavior and the gender is descriptive. whether or not that behavior is an accurate read, maybe there's something a little deeper going on and less "relating to me, neil, and how i feel about women and relationships" is another question.

i think there's some truth to him being self-centered. at his best though he gestures toward what's mysterious and unknowable about love and life. like, for all of his inability to see past himself, he knows what love is, or at least used to. as the decades wore on he lost that impulse i think. now it's all just nostalgia and second-hand political boomer cliches afaict.

maybe ultimately he just transferred all his love to guitars since that's the only convincing thing going on in his recent work from my pov lol

at least his love for guitars is of the platonic kind, rather than what roger taylor does to the car of "i'm in love with my car"

Roger Taylor didn't write a whole album about his car, though.

he gestures toward what's mysterious and unknowable about love and life.

i generally cringe at the whole "i'm just channelling these songs from the cosmos" stuff about songwriting, but there's a quality to neil's best songs that i do wonder if he even knows what they are about

"It's all the same song!"

I love the line “I saw you at Mercedes Benz practicing self defense” for some reason

like where does...cortez the killer come from? who sits down and writes that? dylan you can always see his mind at work, neil comes up with this imagery that is very dreamlike

Or those careening narratives on RNS?

XP Neil's claimed it came from eating too many hamburgers one night in high school.

“They came dancing across the water” is straight up bone chilling

"they carried them to the flatlands/but they died along the way"

that song is much more about what people in modern times long for when they think about the past, rather than any serious look into pre-conquistador aztec culture, or the conquering of it. it's a paean for meaning and unity that's been lost, vanquished by the man in the form of the conquistador. a distinctly peaceful version of it, true, but still kinda fascistic imo. i prefer "pocahontas" because it's more fun, more honest and self-conscious about being a fantasy. of course instrumentally cortez is peak neil.

i think "powderfinger" is one of the most powerful depictions of a young life cut short i've ever encountered. the combination of happenstance details of the events, the kid and his little corner of the world, along with the glimpse into his character and his will to live, driving to the flash in the sky, and then the dedication, and all of it being so ragged and raw - like, as an artistically rendered experience of being affected directly by someone's death i can't think of anything i've run across that hits me so hard. but maybe there's an element to it that's also a little sentimental, idk.

“and they built up with their bare hands/what we still can’t do today”

questioned much of what I’ve accomplished in my lifetime just from those lines, tbh.

and "Thrasher" has some of the best lyrics I've heard in a pop song: evocative and mysterious yet scalpel-sharp.

xp yeah I love that line too

“Powderfinger” really gets to me too - the vagueness of the setting, the feeling that there’s not enough time left in his life to tell everything that he needs to explain, the sense that his doing the brave and noble thing is somehow the wrong choice, even though he’s clearly doomed from the moment the song begins.

I think I said this on another thread but it’s hilarious to me how on “Thrasher” the line “how I lost my friends I still don’t understand” is followed by a couple verses absolutely going in on Crosby Stills & Nash.

I think there is something about "Cortez," as written and performed, that can be self-revealing: the killer man, "dancing across the water," bad man, but then I lean in for thee killer guitar---how aware was he of this possible effect---? Maybe it doesn't matter, but, in any case, well-played, sir.

"Cortez" has always felt to me like daydreaming about something and falling fully into the dream, a very visceral recreation of that feeling. i heard randy newman once explain his song "yellow man" as "a pinhead's view of china", and I kind experience "Cortez" as a version of that, like a stoner's fantasy about aztecs, and some of what he imagines is wrong bc hes not an expert, and also as he drifts deeper into the reverie the dream-logic takes over and it starts to become its own weird fantasy.

The slightly inferior sequel is after all titled "Like an Inca."

I like that One Eye Open, also you could say he "wakes up" on the final verse and is once again back to the personal, love lost

i heard randy newman once explain his song "yellow man" as "a pinhead's view of china", and I kind experience "Cortez" as a version of that, like a stoner's fantasy about aztecs Also true of "Sail Away," and imagine Young covering that.

I consider myself a casual fan but even I'm pretty sure Neil has a ton of songs that utilize 12 bar blues form, including several on On the Beach. I mean there are three songs on that record with "blues' in the title

xpost His American grandfather or great-grandfather left Virginia because of Civil War etc. illin', though got mad at blacks boarding streetcar he was on in Canada: something along those lines in Shakey (but I'm sure Neil was more interested in Aztecs, Incas)

His only experiment with 12-bar blues, right? Meh.

From the Bluenotes live album (better than This Note's for You, though this one's very SNL/VH-1):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUdyucphO8I

Blue Note Cafe is much better than the studio album overall, though still has some moves that were dated, ironically or not, even before it was recorded, way before---people were talking about blooze vs. blues even in the 60s.

(Rolling Stone reviewer said the latest Canned Heat album should have been titled Yassuh Boss.)

I consider myself a casual fan but even I'm pretty sure Neil has a ton of songs that utilize 12 bar blues form, including several on On the Beach. I mean there are three songs on that record with "blues' in the title

― Paul Ponzi,

I probably singled out "Vampire Blues" b/c it bores me (it doesn't follow through on the title), but, yeah, "Ambulance Blues" counts.

xxxp The VH-1/SNL vibe actually works great with a satirical track like "This Note's For You" because it completes the fake-beer commercial vibe needed to deliver the joke with accuracy.

This one from This Note's For You always felt like a good blend of the blues concept and his typical songwriting. And this band also led to "Ordinary People" and "Crime in the City", even though they didn't came out on later albums.

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

xxp Come to think of it, re SNL, he might have been having a little fun with the Blues Brothers shtick too. Which reminds me of this Hal Willmer quote, via Milton Parker on Hal Willner
(and re beer commerical, Night Music was sponsored by Michelob, who got their name in the title eventually):
...one day Lorne Michaels (Executive Producer Night Music, Saturday Night Live) came to the studio while we were taping Night Music because his buddy Eric Clapton was on the show. When he walked in we were filming Clara Rockmore, the legendary theramin player. So Lorne walks in and looks at the monitor and there’s a 92-year-old woman playing “Kaddish” on the theramin and I can just see stacks of dollars with little wings flying out of his head.

LOL. Michelob, didn't Clapton (by then a recovering alcoholic) make a commercial for them around that time? Ugh, it never ends with that guy.

A reminder that "Powderfinger"/"Cortez" finished 1-2 in the Neil Young poll from 10 years ago--a big surprise to me, I thought "Cortez" would win going away.

A World of Constant Strangers: The Neil Young Results Thread

Freddie Gibbs not a fan, don't think I would have predicted him taking Rogan's side:

https://pitchfork.com/news/freddie-gibbs-says-fuck-neil-young-on-the-joe-rogan-experience/

"birds" and all of after the gold rush really are such a great example of how sharp neil used to be as a lyricist. for such a loud rock kind of guy he was so insightful when it came to love and relationships.

When you see me fly away without you
Shadow on the things you know
Feathers fall around you
And show you the way to go

is one of my favorite images of a breakup. You can't make a home in the shadow of the other person, you have to move away from this space. But they leave you with a gift, a part of themself you can use to enrich your life, a connection to something higher that you didn't have before.

think there's some truth to him being self-centered. at his best though he gestures toward what's mysterious and unknowable about love and life. like, for all of his inability to see past himself, he knows what love is, or at least used to.

Anything in particular you're thinking of?