Neil Young: Old Man

Okay, this set-up is my idea of heaven.

I’ve taken to embracing round anniversaries, so I considered pushing this post on Neil Young (b. 1945) off ’til next year. But who knows if any of us will be here then? And it happens to fit in thematically with a lot of the posts I’ve been publishing lately having to do with American culture and the west.

A couple of years ago, I posted my cover version of Young’s song “Pocahontas” here — it wasn’t very good, but I meant well. It was during the pandemic and every so often I felt the need to reach out to people performatively, even if it meant the performance was in my attic. Anyway, I seem to have taken it down subsequently, for equally emotionally reasons (i.e. embarrassment). But it’s a pretty tune, and I love the melancholy mood of it.

Like Loudon Wainwtight III, Young was the son of a prominent print journalist, who, as a teenager got but bit by the folk bug on the wings of Bob Dylan andPhil Ochs. He even taught himself to play harmonica on one of those neck contraptions while he played guitar, in the manner of Dylan. Dylan later accused Young of stealing his act, but harmonica neck racks were around for decades before Dylan. Les Paul claimed to have invented the device in 1936, but one was actually patented in February 1928 by somebody named Leigh Elkington. Dylan adopted the practice of using one from watching Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. So, if Young stole it from Dylan, Dylan stole it from Elliott first.

Also, like Dylan, prior to discovering folk music, Young loved rockabilly, country, and early rock and roll. He started out playing ukeleles and banjos before he eventually got around to guitar. And it must admitted that Young’s plaintive, whiney singing voice is entirely as original as Dylan’s, and in a completely different way. To me, he’s always looked a bit like Jack Elam playing the part of a tall leprechaun. One thing he’s not is like anyone else.

In the early ’60s Young started out playing in rural Canada, where he mostly grew up, especially in the Winnipeg folk scene, where he met Joni Mitchell and Steven Stills (as early as that)! His song “Sugar Mountain” dates to 1964. (Mitchell later wrote an answer song to it, “The Circle Game”, released in 1970). Crazily enough, another famous musical cohort of Young’s from the early days was Rick James (later closely associated with funk) whose Toronto based band The Mynah Birds Young played in.

In 1966, Young traveled to Los Angeles and hooked up with Stills, joining the band Buffalo Springfield. Young’s guitar playing is prominent on their best known song, the hit single “For What It’s Worth”. Around this time, he also did some session work with The Monkees and wrote the tune “Flying on the Ground is Wrong”, which became a top 40 Canadian hit for The Guess Who. He performed with Crosby, Stills and Nash on the 1970 album Deja Vu. His guitar is prominent on the Joni Mitchell penned “Woodstock”; the band released his song “Ohio”, written in reaction to the Kent State Massacre as a single a couple of months later. He also played with Crazy Horse (named after the Sioux war chief) around the same time, turning out tunes like “Cinammon Girl” and “Down by the River”.

While living in L.A., Young started running around with movie types. His 1970 album After the Gold Rush was inspired by an unproduced screenplay of the same name co-writted by his pal Dean Stockwell. He also became romantically involved with actress Carrie Snodgress after seeing her in the Frank and Eleanor Perry film Diary of a Mad Housewife, and writing the song “A Man Needs a Maid” about the experience. (An entire album about their relationship would follow much later). After the Gold Rush yielded several lasting classics including the title track, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, “Tell Me Why”, “When You Dance I Can Really Love”, “Til the Morning Comes”, and the searing “Southern Man”, which provoked the Lynyrd Skynyrd answer song “Sweet Home Alabama”. Harvest (1972) yielded the #1 hit single “Heart of Gold” as well as the top 40 “Old Man”, and the classic “The Needle and the Damage Done”, an early career peak.

From here we only hit a few highlights of Young’s life and career events I find of particular interest; he has been far too prolific for us to cover it all.

1978-79: albums and films Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust, with the twin highlights “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” as well as the aformentioned “Pocahontas”. His praise for The Sex Pistols in some of his lyrics make him among the few of his generation to say anything positive about the Punk movement.

1980: Records soundtrack for the movie Where the Buffalo Roam in which Bill Murray plays Hunter S. Thompson.

1983: reinvents himself by releasing the rockabilly album Everybody’s Rockin‘ with a pick-up band called The Shocking Pinks. He reportedly did it as a stunt when he was asked to make a rock and roll album after his two previous experimental outings had fared poorly. Apparently this one did tank as well, though I owned it, played the hell out of it and loved it. I learned “Betty Lou’s Got a New Pair of Shoes” off this album! But critics hated it and his record label sued him for not making something more commercial. I still find myself bewildered by that stance given the popularity of The Stray Cats and Stevie Ray Vaughn at the very same time.

Also 1983: Young co-writes and co-directs the movie Human Highway featuring himself and pals Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, Sally Kirkland, Charlotte Stewart, and members of Devo.

1985: Co-founds Live Aid with Willie Nelson and John Cougar Mellencamp. Saving family farms from the onslaught of agribusiness was a pretty progressive cause, yet oddly Young seemed to take a bit of a right turn for a minute around this time, praising Ronald Reagan, and making disparaging comments about welfare recipients and gay people (during the AIDS crisis, no less). A little bewildering, given his devotion to environmentalism, Native American rights, peace activism, and spirituality. But he’s also a bit of a wild card and later stuff like “This Notes For You” (1988), “Rockin’ in the Free World” (1989), his track for the movie Philadelphia (1994), and “Let’s Impeach the President” (2006) all served to re-establish his status as a critic of the capitalist right wing.

1992: has a surpise hit with his beautiful, romantic tune “Harvest Moon”.

1994: Kurt Cobain quotes Young’s lyrics in his suicide note. Just about all of the major grunge groups of the Pacific Northwest cited Young as an influence; they had even done a tribute album in his honor.

1995: records the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch western Dead Man.

2001: releases “Let’s Roll”, a patriotic response to September 11 inspired by the rallying cry of the passengers on Flight 93. It blows Paul McCartney’s hackish similar attempt “Freedom” out of the water.

2003: releases the album and film Greendale, pseudonymously directed under the name “Bernard Shakey”

2006-2011: Jonathan Demme directs three concert film/documentaries: Neil Young Heart of Gold (2006), Neil Young Trunk Show (2009), and Neil Young Journeys (2011).

2012: releases his memoir: Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

For the complete picture of ALL of his projects over the past 60+ years visit the Neil Young Archives here.

For more about show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.