Anthony Is Right

1. Buffalo Springfield, “Mr. Soul” (Buffalo Springfield Again, 1967)

Neil reportedly yammered about finally getting a chance to “combine Dylan with the Stones” when he met Crazy Horse, but I think he’d already made a strong crack at it here. Granted, the “Satisfication” rip makes the reference point blatant, but afaict Neil sees the two poles as stand-offish trippy folkie wordplay and stand-offish rockin’ out and if there’s a both-cooler-and-colder outro than “is it strange I should change, I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?” I haven’t heard it and would probably quibble if you suggested it.

The problem with the “Dylan with the Stones” thing is that a) the Stones and Dylan had already combined each other with each other at this point to some degree and b) Neil will never be Dylan or the Stones. For all his lyricism, Neil’s always made the emotional thrust of his music far more coherent than Bob does - even here he’s saying “YEAH, WELL, WHATEVER” outright, without the cloaks and trap doors his hero would throw in. And while Stones may signify the urge to GO WILD to Neil, he’ll never have the same sense of irony that Mick and Keith bring to their efforts. He’s like their little brother, anxious to beat the guys who stand above them at their own game, only his goal is so apparent that he’ll never have a shot at their mystique.

So it’s a good thing that, despite this sunglasses-on-a-rollercoaster tantrum, Neil stayed part vulnerable folkie, part hard rock wildman, and just kept plugging away decade after decade. His inability to truly play cool, unlike fellow “New Dylans” who managed to be become “Old Themselves” like Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed, means he gets to roll with BTO and people who prefer to listen to BTO, while throwing just enough of a heavy vibe to play “profound artist” to power chord addicts. Pays pretty good and you get to play arenas as well as concert halls.

I’m a big fan of contradictions in music, of people who can have disparate influences, impulses and sentiments, and manage to juggle them all the way through an album. Or in Neil’s case, all the way through a career. Increasingly, I tell people that I want to know what they “love” about a musical act, and usually it’s something the artists do that nobody really asked them to do, a choice they made (or regularly make) that flies in the face of the ordinary, of being merely passable. The reason I decided to ramble on about the 40 songs on my ILX ballot is so I could try to get closer to why Neil is the king of this shit for me. I wish I knew if the clip above was just another merry band of psychedelics for the audience, or if anyone had a “holy shit” Beatles-on-Sullivan moment watching Springfield switch songs midstream, and unleash this quivering, conquering eccentric on the world. In hindsight, I always do.

2. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, “Cinnamon Girl” (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 1968)

So would you say a song like this doesn’t have a verse, or doesn’t have a chorus, or maybe has an instrumental chorus between verses? The bridge followed by a one-note guitar solo capped with a “whew!” is easy to remember, but I sometimes forget that the song basically stops after that, except for a bit of fade-out guitar fanfare, possibly to reaffirm the guitarist can play more than one note. Pretty strange for a stupid three minute pop song.

3. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, “Like A Hurricane” (American Stars ‘n’ Bars, 1977)

I’m curious just how many afternoons I spent at the Bloomington Public Library in middle school, wearing headphones in a listening booth, playing this song over and over and marveling at the solo - the first I can remember really losing my mind over (the REM-centered college rock and new wave I owned at the time really didn’t play that game). I can’t remember how I got into Neil Young, but I was a precocious rock magazine reader in the early ’90s so it wouldn’t have taken long to hear he’s swell, so this likely was one of the first 5 or so of his songs I even heard. Unless it started with checking Decade out of the library (don’t think I bought the cassette for Rust Never Sleeps until a little later). Either way, I’m pretty sure this is where he got his hooks in.

4. Neil Young, “Don’t Be Denied” (Time Fades Away, 1973)

An It Gets Better song with a twist ending.

5. Neil Young, “Rockin’ In The Free World” (Freedom, 1989)

Like “Born In The USA,” a boomer hollers a titular mantra that would pass for patriotic if not for harrowing verses that ironically neither scare away politicians in Bruce’s case nor live interpreters from Damn Yankees to Van Halen to Bon Jovi to Maroon 5 in Neil’s (Queensryche and Pearl Jam actually performed their MTV Unplugged versions about a month apart). But where I still can’t believe candidates can wave and smile as Bruce devolves into primal screams after detailing an Average Joe’s disillusionment in the first person, I bet lots of successful rockers can identify with Neil as he gives the boss’ p.o.v. before sharing a stump speech sob story, spitting out a stream of sardonic “we“‘s and sending us off with a solo instead of answers he doesn’t have. All the same, just as a lot of people miss the horror in Bruce’s anthem-in-spite-of-itself, I think a lot of people miss the shame in Neil’s.

6. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, “Cowgirl In The Sand” (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 1969)

That’s what was so great about Crazy Horse in those days - Danny [Whitten] understood my music, and everyone listened to Danny. He understood what we were doing. A really great second guitar player, the perfect counterpoint to everything else that was happening. His style of playing was so adventuresome. So sympathetic. So unthoughtful and just so natural…no one played guitar with me like that - that rhythm. When you listen to “Cowgirl in the Sand,” he keeps changing - plays something one and a half, maybe two, times, and he’s on to the next thing. Billy and Ralph will get into a groove and everything will be goin’ along and all of a sudden Danny’ll start doin’ something else. he just led those guys from one groove to another - all within the same groove. So when I played these long guitar solos, it seemed like they weren’t all that long, that I was making all these changes, when in reality what was changing was not one thing, but the whole band. Danny was the key.

…The very beginning of the first Crazy Horse was great. Great. But there’s no way to get that particular thing back. That’s not gonna happen again. - from “Shakey”

7. Neil Young, “A Man Needs A Maid” (Harvest, 1972)

Worried that long-term mutual emotional commitment is out of his reach, our hero swings from the most pathetic pragmatism to the most pathetic idealism. He knows he needs to be open, giving and forgiving. He’s ready to crawl into a corner and die alone if he can’t. But let him feel his feelings for a second.

8. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, “Powderfinger” (Rust Never Sleeps, 1979)

A number Neil originally wrote for Lynyrd Skynyrd that suggests either he should do this kind of thing more often or that he only does this kind of thing when he’s really, really inspired. There’s been considerable debate over whether the kid gets shot, suffers a misfire or kills himself. I vote suicide - “never stopped to wonder why…the thought that pulled the trigger…one you never figured…” - but I think people naturally lean toward whichever ending they find more disturbing.

9. Neil Young, “Sugar Mountain” (Decade, 1977)

Unless Conor Oberst has a jam about being afraid to vote, 19-year-old Neil’s ode to the horror of nearing 20 may stand as the most premature memorial for youth in singer-songwriter history (for comparison, Taylor Swift was glad she’s not “Fifteen” and Mark Kozelek didn’t announce his panic until “24”). What’s amazing, at least before the ‘68 b-side became something to throw at audiences in exchange for enduring the new album in full, is that Neil really does convey the loss of innocence, even if he hadn’t loss all of it. Young Joni Mitchell was right to respond with “The Circle Game,” but Neil’s parents weren’t going to remarry and cotton candy really isn’t the same after you’ve tried stuff stronger than sugar. Besides, it’s just one song. You can always enjoy your independence in the next.

10. Neil Young, “I’m The Ocean” (Mirror Ball, 1995)

Mirror Ball is pretty slight - a week’s work with Pearl Jam after some high profile gigs together - but “I’m The Ocean” has me wishing he’d experiment with young bucks more often. As the grungies pummel under piano and pump organ with a relentless consistency that would give Billy Talbot a coronary, Neil spends seven minutes driving too fast, floating over the earth, criticizing our culture, watching the game, listening to his life support, clinging to his family and telling off death - a middle-aged man bobbing in and out of the tide, unable to get off a guitar solo, as he screams that he’s the ocean to keep from drowning. A lot of old guys sing about how they’ve still got it, but the drama is in making it sound like a battle.