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Decade of-sX-;Vr?AllliMtivryBy JOHN ROCKWELL New York Timesiti-EIL YOUNG S Decade is a ease of a compilation that quickly transcends the commercial cynicism behind most “greatest hits collections. It’s really a carefully chosen retrospective, including a number of previously unreleased songs. More crucially, it’s designed to stake Young’s claim as one of the most moving and important artists in the history of rock — and, along with Bob Dylan, perhaps the most important rock composer and performer North America has produced.As it happens, much of Young’s finest work hasn’t really made for “hits in the commercial sense. Indeed, one of the most fascinating things about him was his revulsion five years ago frorn what could have easily turned into a massively successful pop-music career. As he puts it in his notes for Decade, “traveling in the middle of the road soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.Young seems to be emerging from the ditch nowin a way that will allow him to reach a lot of peopleand still remain true to himself.He never was an outright commercial failure; far from it. But. his last album, American Stars 'n' Bars, offered enough upbeat material to place it high on the sales charts. And the new songs he's been recording in Nashville recently seem to blend his own best inspiration with accessability in a way that he hasn’t attained since his Harvest album of 1972.'Che trouble with Young's descent into the ditch was not that he didn’t produce superb work there. The excerpts from the period 1972-78 on Decade attest to that, and he never lost his critical and cult followings even at his darkest and most obscure.But the ditch he headed for was that of the doped-out hippie low-lifer. Young wasn’t himself incapacitated by drugs, or anything so lurid. But the songs and the sensibility behind them amounted to a 1960s retreat into reclusiveness in the midst of the bland 1970s.What has been so frustrating for those who admire Young’s work is that such a retreat cut him off not only from the middle of the road of commercial success, but from critical consideration by the principal organs of American culture. Upper-middle-brow American cultural taste-makers may still dimly recognize Bob Dylan's existence, and even grant him a grudging nod of recognition.But Neil Young is a lost soul for them, which seems a sad fate for an artist of his stature. More sad for the country than for him. In ny case, Decade is designed to invite a critical re-evaluation. ‘This could be the record that defines my influence on the music world for the past 10 years. It lends itself to be written about.”Already, in reviewing American Stars V Bars for Rolling Stone, Paul Nelson began by saying that “at this point, it would be impossible to overrate Neil Young. “Neil Young makes Albert Einstein look like an incompetent fraud. “Neil Young is more important than Jesus Girist and John Lennon, combined.”But one needn’t resort to hyperbole of this sort tomake a case for Young’s importance.Not all of his songs are of equal value (although a quite remarkable number of the ones on Decade are superior; for ail his ups and downs, it would be hard to think of a rock song-writer who has turned out more consistently fine work over this long a period, Dylan very much included).Some people will be inherently unwilling to concede artistic validity to a rock song, however good. Some of the poetry is awkward and unfinished, even if the initial inspiration is strong. There are some well-meaning souls who simply have trouble accepting the quavering, reedy sound of Young’s tenor, or the out-of-tune playing of some of his bands (especially Crazy Horse).And there can be no doubt that he has his self-indulgent side, best represented by his feature-lengthfilm from 1972, Journey Through the Past — a critical and commercial failure because of its sillier parts, but still full of beautiful moments.The past the film refers to is Young’s own —* he is nothing if not self-concerned. Young was bom on Nov. 12, 1945 in. Toronto, and raised in Winnipeg after his parents’ divorce. His father, Scott Young, was and is a well-known Canadian journalist and novelist from whom, his son says, the singer learned much in matters of independence and self-reliance.By his late-teens Young had gravitated to Los Angeles, where he became a member of that pioneering country-rock band, Buffalo Springfield, along with Stephen Stills. By the late 1960s he was out on his own again, where he has remained ever since, not counting a shifting series of alliances with other musicians.The best-known of those alliances was with Stills, David Crosby and Graham Nash; others included Crazy Horse, a northern California bar band named Ducks in 1975 and a shifting assortment of Los Angeles and Nashville musicians who appear and re-appear on his various records.Throughout all of this Young has retained the forceful, haunting individuality of his musical style and hisjpoetie concerns. The music has always been a stark and simple blend of country and rock, tougher and stronger than the mellow blend of most Los Angeles country rockers.“I learned about production from the Beatles and pure rock soul from the Rolling Stones, and the influences were universal after a certain age,” he says. “But the heart of my music is North American rock-and-roll, and country music.Poetically, Young has his jolly side — the chorus of one of his best new songs, about being single again, goes “in the field of opportunity,/it’s plowing time again. But the essence of his music has always been the painful, the lonely and the romantic. “I think that romance itself is a quest. When I sing about that, people see themselves as heading somewhere. They’re not there, they’re thinking about going there — they’re on their way. They’re looking for something. The music is about the frustration of not being able to attain what you want. I know my music seems to reflect that I’m depressed all the time. I’m not really that down. When I'm really cruising, I get out of myself. Right now, I’m high. I’m going out and I’m enjoying things more and I’m seeing more happening around me, so my new songs are reflecting what I’m seeing, rather than my looking inside myself.N FACT Young did indeed seems “high” — in the sense of emotional mood, rather than chemical stimulation — during his stay in Nashville.The recording sessions have gone smoothly, with some erf Nashville’s best players, a nice string section and Nic-olette Larson, the backup singer who’s now embarking on a most promising solo career.The new songs blend searching self-exploration and rousing good times in an even more convincing manner than on American Stars ,n’ Bars. Rehearsals were about to begin for a benefit concert in Miami on Young’s birthday, designed as a tryout for a possible tour in February and March. Above all, Young himself was in rollicking good mood — or as rollicking as essentially brooding, introspective people ever get.The brooding reached its apogee — or nadir, if Harvest is your touchstone of Neil Young’s achievement — with an album called Tonight’s the Night in 1975.A defiantly sloppy, bleary and despairing look at drugsinspired by the death of two friends, the disc is the culmination of a period of withdrawal that marked Young’s career in the early-mid-1970s.It was triggered by a variety of factors. The commer-111'V.ia$§§* WNeil Young, emerging again: Whenciai success of Harvest appalled him, confront in with a vision of himself as a formula rock supers devoted himself to his film work for two full ye began a long and intense involvement with actress Snodgress — a union that never resulted in marri which remains amicable; right now Young has cus their five-year-old son, Zeke.In addition, he was troubled with two critical problems — a back ailment that kept him in bed f months in 1971 and made it impossible for him to p electric guitar, and a throat operation in 1975 for moval of nodes on his vocal chords.The result of all of this was a retreat from-public eye somewhat akin to Dylan’s disappear; between his motorcycle accident in 1966 and his| tional tour in 1974.But unlike Dylan, Young kept producing songs tently, songs that in some ways were his most de; and adventuresome.“I did radical work in that period. I conscious! an effort to use the commercial power I had to dqj thing different. And I sacrificed a lot of commei tential by doing that — like putting out a live all new songs (Time Fades Away) after the biggest my career (Harvest). And then Tonight's the Nig.years, if you want to get an idea of the drug cultui 60s and 70s, it's all in that record. It makes you thj almost dead, that they’ve almost killed me, am might not be another record.In the late 1980s and early 1970s Young had cords as polished as the technology then would aliipeculiarities aren’t tamed in those songs, to be si the records are still slick in a mostly good sense.But as the mellow 1970s began to Infuse all a: of pop Young , went through a violent reactij favor of a kind of mystical primitivism.His attitude was similar to that of Dylan, always preferred to make immediate, technical; lished recordings. And his primitivism and dlt; simplicity anticipated the renewal of angry ene. characterizes today’s American and English pi ers; it’s no accident, for all their vast differentTHE STARS AND 5TR1PESWednesdayOne of the most moving and important artists in the history of rock?i re-Netl Young is one of Johnny Rotten’s favorite musicians.“I’m a maniac about certain things, and some people say that would make me an artist, Young admits grudgingly. “I’m not disagreeing with them — it’s just that I don’t know how to define the term. For four or five years, after Harvest, I became obsessed with capturing and recording the moment, rather than trying to ‘make a record,’ At that time, everybody I knew was doing more and more in the studio. I have a mania about not making polished records. I considered it a form of suicide to do that. The cleaner other records were, the more angry I got about it. What I learned from the Rolling Stones was that nothing is as important as the groove and the feeling. I had been making polished records, but the records that had turned me on to music in the first place were Hank Williams, early Elvis Presley, Fats Domino — live records where everybody just sat down and played. You could see the pictures when you heard the music.“I don’t want to be impressed when I hear something, and I don't want to be psychologically confused by it — all I want is to feel it. Ttiat’s the only thing that really is important. I don’t want to get it ‘right’; I just want to do it. After Harvest and ‘Horse With No Name’ (a massively popular single by the group, America, that came out 'Traveling in the middle of the road soon becamea bore so I headedmnfor the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw moreinteresting people there.'firight after Harvest and sounded exactly like Young), I went right in the other direction. I could have been John Denver if I’d worked at it. I was standing on the cliff, there. I coulda gone. He laughs gleefully. “Everything's great, everybody!If all of that sounded as if Young is a complete hippie mystic, a classic example of a 1960s romantic, that would indeed seem to be the case.When pressed only slightly, he will admit to a quasi-religious conception of his creative process, in which inspiration comes to him through “avenues” that open up to the other side.“Sometimes it comes through and sometimes it doesn’t,” he says affably. “As long as you stay open to it, it keeps happening. As long as you don’t judge yourself. If you’re truly into it, you don’t have time to judge what you’re doing until it’s finished. If it doesn’t come for a couple of months, that means you’re supposed to take a rest. You don’t have to do it all the time. The music would be contrived if you tried to force it. It would be futile. I stay there as long as I can, when I’m writing a song, and then the avenue will simply close up. Sometimes 111 wait a year and a half before the rest of the song conies through. I really do believe the songs are an expression of higher forces. I mean, it’s my expression, too — there’s definitely my ego involved in it. But it’s not preconceived. It’s like the force in Star Wars. I believe that that’s about the cleanest religious statement I've ever seen.”To keep his avenues open, Young freely admits the use of both mystical insight and softer drugs.“There are certain times to record. Dylan knows when to do it, and so do I. For the longest time, I only recorded on a full moon. It didn’t make any difference what sign it was, or any astrological thing. But there was a time the full moon would come out, and everybody would get crazy. Nobody else would be recording — almost every time there was a full moon, the studios would be empty and I could work with anybody I wanted to, and it always had the same intensity.“I’m connected with hard drugs the same way HowardCosell is connected with sports. I’m sure Howard Cosell throws a ball once in a while, and I get into drugs But it’s not my life, that’s for sure. But when I do get into it, as in Tonight's the Night I get really into it. And I like to be there — it’s like being on the street. That's where I’m the most at home, among those people. But I’m a survivor.“When you're mixing your record or writing a song, to smoke a joint or take a drink or do a line of cocaine will produce some sort of avenue. Now, the avenue may be there anyway, and maybe someone else could go down that avenue without that, and maybe I could if I had to. But I know if I do a little cocaine, I'm more apt to go on some sort of reincarnate trip. If I let myself go and I don’t judge where I’m going, if I just let myself slide out, I'm liable to find myself in some other world — as a soul, carrying on within a civilization, having experiences. And if I write it down, it can come out like ‘Cortez the Killer’ (one of his greatest songs, on the Zumoalbum), or ‘Poca-hantis' (an unreleased song that may be on the nextrecord).”LI HOUGH he owns a house in Maiibu, Young, who did an unpublicized tour of northern California bars two years ago. remains deeply suspicious of the Us Angeles rock scene. Everybody there is a huge superstar and out of work. They could play anywhere they wanted to, but they think there's something wrong with it. Something stops'them from gigging, and their energy gets spent in drugs and fast cars and socializing. You see a band like the Who — Keith Moon is one of the greatest drummers in rock-and-roll history, and he’s not doing anything. These bands get so big, and their managers and agents tell them there's a time to go out and a time not to go out, and they kill the band. I can’t believe it.“Moon is just an example. I love those people, but they need the reassurance that they are who they think they are. I go down there, and everything seems real nervous, and then I start feeling like I’m doing it to them, and they’re nervous because I’m there. So everybody does a lot of drugs, and all of a sudden it’s just madness. I don't want my kid seeing me living like that. I’d rather be out on the road, seeing different people and moving. 1 want to drop off that California stigma. I’m much more proud of being a Canadian than I am of being a Californian.Young hopes to release his new Nashville album in February, while Decade is still on the charts. “I’d like to wipe out the end of Decade with something really strong. If it’s successful, I think I’ll be ready for it this time. But being ready for it doesn’t mean it’s not going to freak me out. If it is successful it’s going to be very comforting to me, in that the kind of music I’m playing will be accepted by a lot of people and it still won’t be pop.In the meantime, however, Young plans to keep traveling restlessly— he says in the last three years he’s never spent more than eight weeks in any one place. Besides the house in Maiibu he retains a ranch south of San Francisco that he calls “the heart of the whole operation,” but which he rarely visits. He’s toying with getting a home in Nashville — “or finding a place to park my bus.” And he is nearly finished outfitting a 75-foot schooner in Fort Lauderdale, which will have a complete 16-track recording studio and be suitable for sailing around the world manned by a “small community.”“Sometimes I feel I’m just running around in circles. I’m sure there will be a huge letdown after I finish this Nashville project. It’s like everything else — when you get high, you get a low. Sometimes I see people really hint by what I do — by the fact that some people have gotta go and some people have gotta stay, and 1 have to choose one person when I know three want to do something.“You just keep on going. Now, when 1 play with Crazy Horse or the Ducks, if I get into something, I say, ‘You know, I’m just on my own course here. I’m liable to be gone at any time.1 So whatever we do, every moment is it, forever. There’s no warm-up; we’re already at thetop.”cember 7,1977THE STARS AND STRIPES
Newspaper Details
European Stars and Stripes
Darmstadt, Hesse, DE
Wed, Dec 07, 1977
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Olav S.
NO 29 Jul 2019
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Allgemeine Kirchen Zeitung
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