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Though I never really considered myself a Neil Young fan, over the past few weeks I've been realizing that I like quite a few of his songs.

Cowgirl In the Sand, Heart of Gold, Harvest Moon, Ohio, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Down By The River, et cetera

And recently found out he was in Buffalo Springfield, too; however, I'm pretty sure the only BS song I've heard was written by Stephen Stills.

He's one of those artists whom I really want to get into and love, but his music just doesn't move me that much. A few songs I can think of, but not many. I won't dare say he's overrated because the whole world loves him for his music and innovation.

I just bought Decade, so I'm beginning to get into his stuff too. I really like it, but I love the Byrds and Moby Grape so Buffalo Springfield and CSNY would be another link in the chain. Right now I'm listening to Cowgirl In The Sand.

If I had the old 30-page thread which had detailed analyses of every album, I'd repost it here. But I don't.
Suffice it to say that Neil is, besides Bob Dylan, the finest singer/songwriter to walk the planet.
But you have to go past the damn hits.
Buy Tonight's The Night and On The Beach. Now.

Neil Young is on the cover of the current issue of Rolling Stone. Good article also...

The more Neil Young stuff you play, the more you'll get into him. It happens on all sorts of levels: the guitar - expressive, primitive, percussive, but steeped in emotional engagement; the voice - plaintive, complaining, passionate, compassionate; the songs - intense, incisive, inclusive... And most of all, the guy himself: he's made it to sixty through a cussedness inherited from his late father, a successful sports writer. The magnet with Young is his integrity - though he may change his mind now and again, he'll always do it for the right reasons. The more you listen, the better the picture you get of a shy guy who doesn't shy away from life... and he becomes inspirational.

I like a lot of Neil stuff,  am indifferent to a fair amount too. He's awfully prolific (a huge amount on disc; as much completed that he's suppressed or still tinkering with endlesslly: assembling his tracks seems of a piece with his obsession with Lionel Train sets), and all over the map stylistically, signs of an unfettered and brave rock and roll explorer, a Cortez eager to travel as well as conquer...BUT that means lots of unevenness as well as eclecticism(imo)  and attendant vast patches of 'self-indulgence', I haven't even mentioned his occasional penchant for "pure commercial product", great, awful and bizarrely perverse by turns. Which parts of the whole are genius and which crap is very much in the ear of the listener, each era and individual disc having its partisans, much as is the case with Dylan and Bowie, kindred souls.

I want to put in a small word for a record that's kind of slipped through the cracks, the modest, immaculately made,1978 folk-country offering Comes a Time.  It got pegged by some as a  commercially safe "run for cover" move when it was released, a pale Harvest carbon copy. It didn't even turn the trick of being a hit.

It has aged very well I think. Though very acoustic and gently melodic and Nicolette Larson-enhanced. make no mistake, this is as off beat and individual as anything of his. It's the Neil of "Sugar Mountain" and "I am a Child" and "Expecting to Fly", heavily marked by a root Canadian folkie coffee house sound (the moving cover of Ian & Sylvia's "Four Strong Winds" gives us his basic inherited coordinates as an acoustic musician: a brand of folk aqquired in the 50's, shared by Ian, Neil, Joni and Gordon Lightfoot too, as indebted to Don Gibson country stuff and  local (deeply depressing and fatalistic) sea shanties as to what the Village crowd was playing). If it were just that sort of music, this record would be merely worthy and ultimately dull. Luckily there was a large dose of something mildly mind altering in his system (it may be constitutional) that makes this record seem (to one receptive as I am) like Neil's opium dream shadow play of his life and works to date, a shimmering head trip mirage always on the verge of vanishing, very evanescent.  It's subtly but very thoughtfully programmed as a set list overall, and the opening number is perfectly chosen to  set this mood and pose an open ended concept.  "Goin' Back" itself goes back stylistically to that whole Tim Buckleyesque 'how to hold onto a dream' aesthetic of Neil's early soft stuff: a rapturously visionary number, beautifully arranged, evoking that Ur-Young lyric (of "I am a Child"): "Like a smoke ring day when the wind blows". This one's lyrics are equally trippy


Not your average easy listening top 40 singer songwriter schlock whatsoever. The songs that follow may have listener friendliness exuding from every pore, but if you slow down to their lulling tempo you may find that a siren's song, danger behind the sweetness, has been seducing you. Tunes like "Look out for My Love"  are as scary-real as anything on Tonight's the Night or On the Beach. But I can't peg the LP as an unplugged Crazy Horse cocaine-paranoid screed  either, there's just too much damn variety, Neil's career long eclecticism gathered together (and perfectly curated) in miniature.

The real deal. Genuine.  Stubbornly independent.   Defies categorization.  Waltzed in and out of CSN..didn't need em.  Prefers a waitress to a movie star.  Into old cars, not as a motorhead, but because of their personalities.  Can rock as good as anybody and write a beautiful ballad at the drop of a hat.

My favorite stuff after all these years?  Zuma.  Tonights the Night.  Freedom.  This Notes for You.

If you're  indecisive or have a hard time making choices, dont ever try to make a personal compilation mix of this guy.  It would drive you nuts!

This Note's For You? Wow!
You're the only booster of that album that I've kown, which automatically makes you cool.

I recommend This Notes For You.  Its really good and shows yet another facet of Neil.

Its sort of like being fond of late 70's BB stuff.  You have to develop a taste for it and forget about what other BB albums sound like or are supposed to sound like.

Neil meets the Blues Brothers!

*puts gun to own head*

Does that mean Are You Passionate is Neil meets the Commitments?

This Notes For You and Freedom, but no Ragged Glory?

Sleeps With Angels kills all those puppies.

Nothing beats "Zuma."

If it didn't have that crap CSNY cut at the end, that spoils the whole thing. I love Zuma but it's country rock lite in comparison to Tonight's The Night.

Yeah, but you can't listen to "Tonight's the Night" all the time. "Zuma" is a little more versatile.

Love "Time Fades Away" , because a) it's live,  b) it took a lot of guts to play those songs to a bunch of kids expecting  "Gold Rush" and "Harvest" tunes, and c) it rocks ferociously.

Well, I do, but I'm fodain' batmerda.

Time Fades is incredible too, for all those reasons you mentioned, Doo.

All his damn albums are great up to Old Ways. Deal with it.

Can I hear the love for American Stars? His most underrated album, even more than Trans.

Stars and Bars is the sound of Neil letting go, sod the neuroses, damn the torpedoes, lets get ripped and sing some dirty songs. Then on side two he throws in 'Will to Love', my current favourite Neil Young song. Oh, and Like A Hurricane. ANd people were disappointed with it back then, fools....

Tonights the Night is THE Neil Young LP. Tired Eyes, Albuquerque (that looks more like it...)...but Zuma has Cortez and Pardon My Heart and Barstool Blues...

They were all 5 star albums up to and including Rust. The man at his best.

Well, you know we completely disagree about his later outpt, but what about Side 1 of Hawks And Doves? That may be my favorite Neil album side.

Side 1 of Hawks and Doves is great, no arguement there. The slide started with side 2. It was the beginning of his 'what the hell. I'll do this next' phase. Fair enough, he'd been the pop star, sensitive singer songwriter, crazed doom trilogy man, Rock God - it was time to break the audience perceptions. It didn't always work. Side one is a 5 star side, side two is a one. Reactor was a contractual obligation and sounds like it. Southern Pacific is great, (got a nifty red triangular single of that!), a couple of others are OK, T-Bone is Neil taking the piss. Trans makes sense when you read the recent biography, as do the other 80's albums - his attention was on his son, the music was secondary. And it shows, but in retrospect he did the right thing, his son comes first. Even if the music wasn't always great it always made me smile, and I've always stuck with him - despite Are You Passionate, after which any sane person would've abandoned him to the old rock stars home. Is till treasure seeing him for the first time on the Trans tour though, with him and Nils wandering around the stage with their vocoders sounding like they'd completely lost the plot! I prefer those songs to the average piffle the album is filled out with (Little thing called love, like an Inca etc).

I totally agree on Doves.
Re-Ac-Tor is just 40 minutes of mutant sludge, not remotely trying to match any standard of anything he'd done before. Surfer Joe And Moe The Sleaze is one of Neil's best and most underrated songs, nearly demonic. And Shots is purely riveting in the extreme, Neil's Taxi Driver. The rest is garage-barn damage, no more, no less.
On Trans, Little Thing Called Love sucks, but in the live Berlin video, it makes sense as a more uptempo rocker. Like An Inca is indeed horrible, and Hold On To Your Love is mediocre. But the REAL Trans material, as it should be listened to (and Neil wishes he would have released it as), a longish EP, is some of, possibly the most, visionary material he's ever made. Transformer Man is heartbreaking and one of his most personal songs, Computer Age, We R In Control and Sample And Hold are mind-warping computer-metal, and the whole concept holds up perfectly, if not more so, today. It wasn't Neil who'd lost the plot, but his audience. Look at em in the Berlin video, blind and wanting a sound from Neil that had no place in that time. He may be pissing on them, but they deserved it.
Rockin' was just Neil's reaction to Geffen because they wouldn't put out the superior original version of Old Ways. It's a love letter (in the Frank Booth sense) to Geffen, "Straight from my heart, fodaer!". A concept LP about the decline and fall of the record business, Neil's Day Of The Locust. A half hour of vitriol, with one of Neil's best songs, "Wonderin'", and a worrying signpost in the title track's calling out of the evil White House couple.
When he decided to "go Nashville" and ignore all his own formidable country-songwriting skills in favor of a wrongheaded and patronising faux-country-syrup heartland-warrior persona on Old Ways, he lost the plot. 2 years of State Fairs and Enormodome Barndances put him completely out of the picture, mentally, and 2 horrid attempts at getting back to the rock, Landing On Water and Life, just put him further out to sea, even in the eyes of his diehard fans.
And the incredibly plastic and phony white-man-blooze This Note's For You made him almost completely irrelevant, if it were not for the middle-finger video that earned him another 15 minutes of hip cachet. We even missed out on his psychotic feedback ballet 88 tour with The Restless and the Jap Eldorado EP, because we JUST DIDN'T CARE ANY MORE! He'd let us down too many times.
Positive reports of the acoustic 89 tour and a new song, something about rocking in the new world or something, were read, then filed in the "maybe I'll check that out" file.
Then, one Saturday night in the late months of 1989, Neil strode on the stage of Saturday Night Live, and shredded the minds of his old fans and made a whole lotta new ones, tearing into his new material with all the raw violence of the creature bursting out of John Hurt's stomach in Alien. Ending his first song, he pulled the whammy bar on his trusty guitar (sonic eardrum destroyer) Old Black all the way back and snapped all his strings simultaneously.
That's how it went down on this continent. Can you dig it?

I agree with Ian that Neil is one of the greatest songwriters ever.

Fave of the moment: Tired Eyes. One of the most heartbreaking songs ever by anybody. The imagery in the lyrics stand as half-reality, half-metaphor: "what do you mean he had bullet-holes in his mirrors?!" A nightmare - though not pure horror, but with a very human sense of beauty; always with sympathy for the outsider. And the vocal is PERFECT.

I think “Sleeps with Angels” might be my favorite Neil album. I bought it the day I got my driver’s license. But it’s really heavy. Not something to listen to if you want to stomp your foot and smile. If that is the case I head for Zuma or Mirrorball.

“Wonderin’” is a great song. I can’t get enough of it. If not for that cut, I’d probably never listen to Everybody’s Rockin’ at all (although Payola Blues is great too!).

I’m still really enjoying “Prairie Wind”. I have heard people love it or hate it. I love it. I think the songs are really strong. Especially “The Painter”. It’s a solid album from start to finish.

Everyone seems to really like “Ragged Glory” but I have never really been that fond of it. It has a great sound and a great vibe, but none of the cuts really do it for me. I hope this doesn’t alienate me.   :-[

Trans is overlooked unfairly. Most of the songs on it are really great. I turn to that record often. Listen to the great melodic harmony work in “Computer Age”. Really great stuff. And of course “Sample and Hold” rocks. 

One of my favorite Neil songs has never been officially released. “No One Seems to Know” is a piece of beauty, and I hope it appears on the Archives sets, assuming they ever materialize.

(How d'you do quotes?)

"I’m still really enjoying “Prairie Wind”. I have heard people love it or hate it. I love it. I think the songs are really strong. Especially “The Painter”. It’s a solid album from start to finish. "

I second that. Both points.

And while we're on overlooked gems, "Silver & Gold" is a true, hermetically sealed classic.

BTW the latest Neil buzz is his solo gig at the Massey Hall, Toronto, on January 19th 1971. The soundboard recording is getting rave reviews - both for sound and performance - but it seems this is a leaked item due for release in the Archives (first instalment due in a few months). Ever vigilant, Dimeadozen pulled the torrent today...

While you're waiting, go see the Jonathan Demme film "Heart Of Gold"

Eldorado was also released in Australia (as well as Japan)  and I managed to get a vinyl copy when it came out on import. THAT was when I knew he was back. As I've mentioned before, the Eldorado stuff is much better on the EP than on Freedom as they mixed the noise down quite a bit, and they sound flatter.

Apart from Landing On Water I did like all of his 80's albums when they came out, it was just a while later that you can put them into proper context and realise that he was in a dip. Even Life had some good songs.

Last I heard the Archives were being mooted for an 'autumn' release -so they've gone back again! Let's see if they make it out this year.

To do quotes just find the post you want to quote from and pres the 'quote' button on the top right. You can then edit the text inside the start and end brackets.

Thanks, Alan. And hold on to Eldorado. They're getting rarer than i'vebeenaminerforaheartofgold dust!

One of my best posts and no response. That's why I only post bullshit here and do all my serious writing at the SmiLE Shop.

Seriously, I'm sorry you feel that way, I don't know much about 80s Neil, if I did I would have answered. It was a great post.

Can't speak for the USA but I only just got back from work and am having a quick trawl before I get called downstairs! I won't have time to do more of a response till later! - Its 7.15 pm here and I often don't get time to post much until my wife falls asleep later!

Dunno - I look at both and this board seems to have more activity at the moment than the SMiLE shop, but I love both equally!

Greendale does IMHO, I used to think nothing beat Zuma.

and Ian I am catching up here but I do know that your Neil Young reviews and your Bob Dylan article are certainly one the best things I ever read about music.

I couldn’t stand Greendale.

I tried.

You're so hurtful.

I know you did ;-)

Me too. I like Bandits. After that ...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......I still try thinking it will get better, so far, nothing!

What Dylan article?????? Ian???

It should be still posted at the Smile Shop.

I love “Life”. The album, I mean. Well, I do love life too. Most of the time. Okay, part of the time. Okay, never. I hate life. Satisified?

I bought "Life" at Caldors for $7.99 on LP. Wasn’t expecting much, but got a pretty good record. You could tell that Neil was on the verge of something big(Freedom). Mideast Vacation has one of Neil’s best lyrics. Pretty funny, too. Long Walk Home could have come from any of his 70’s efforts, if you take away the synths and the sound effects.  Around The World  has a great chorus. It sounds dated now, but it pretty catchy. Prisoners Of Rock 'N' Roll is another classic cut. Unfortunately when it appeared on the live “Year of the Horse” it was overlong and sluggish, just like the rest of that album. The songs are good, its just the 80’s production style that weakens this record.
 

Not as hurtful as you and others have been to righteous guys like Jon and John.

I’ve never said a bad thing about either of them in my life.

But you have made repeated statements about this being the REAL Smile Shop and the other board being garbage, when the musical analysis there is about a million streets ahead of this board, and you should be most welcome there. And you know that. I can't see the reason for the harshness from you regarding that. I could only read it as hostility towards those guys, in a passive-aggressive manner.

Well, I mostly agree with you about Neil's 80s stuff, except that I think Life is actually half-decent, and that Everybody's Rockin' is, and always will be, a complete embarrassment to both Neil Young and, well, music in general.  If archaeologists from the distant future find copies of that record in an effort to understand our culture better, it's not gonna make us look too good.

That aside, you're right; Neil started the 80s in fine and characteristically eccentric form.  All three of his first 80s albums have stretches of greatness and stretches of mediocrity-to-suckiness, but he'd never been immune to that.  The first half of Hawks and the electronic parts of Trans are indeed among Young's best work ever.  Then, to my ears, it gets damn scary for a while.  Neil's next three albums sucked so hard that Life, which only really has an ep's worth of good stuff on it, and even that is poorly produced, sounds almost like a comeback album to me.  Nobody has ever provided me with a convincing reason to go out of my way to hear This Note's For You, so I still haven't (I've seen the video, and it is admittedly pretty hilarious, though). 

Ian's right.  The real public unveiling of Neil's artistic rebirth was the SNL performance where he did "Rockin' in the Free World" with Poncho and the bass player with the freakin' hilarious Sideshow Bob hair.  That moment at the end, where Neil bent his Bigsby back so far that all of his strings snapped, is probably the second-greatest live television rock and roll moment ever (behind only Keith Moon's drumset explosion on the Smothers Brothers show.  Of course.).  I was only 8 years old, and it would be several more years before I became interested in rock and roll at all, let alone Neil Young, so I didn't care yet.  But I can imagine that for a fan who had suffered through the wilderness of Neil's mid-late 80s work, that TV performance must have looked like the second coming of Christ.

Shakey rocks.  Just when you've got him pinned down, he does the unexpected.   Seems like a very caring person with balls big as churchbells.   

I figure people like him know the real deal of good hearted people versus people who act nice for the sake of social harmony.   

His music isn't ALWAYS real interesting, but him always being unpredictable adds to his charm, intensity and integrity. 

He also stands up for what he believes in and has no reservations about putting cockswinging swagger cowboy wannabes in their rightful places. 

Right on, brother. I would say 3rd greatest TV rock moment, after The Who and a certain dude from Memphis playing some bloody rockabilly in a Burbank TV studio in 1968.

Neil Young has put himself in a unique position of being to release music which is not systematically excellent. A rare position for an artist to be in, in a commercial environment. When Neil releases an average record, people just know this is not a sign of lack of inspiration or whatever, quite the opposite, it is rather a sign that Neil is on a new trail, looking for new sounds, always within the boundaries of his own sound. The fact that he is so inlov with his own sound is also a characteristic of his work and gives his music a huge scope for expansion and exploration. To my me, Greendale is certainly an example of this, as a new exploration of the musical themes from within (Zuma) and from without (Greendale is an effort to pear down somes of the most powerful rock riffs). Prairie Wind is an album which I dont care much for for, but I do recognize its importance in Neil's work, nothing is superfluous ever, and of course there is that last song "When God Made Me"......

My,my, Hey Hey
Rock and Roll is here to stay

I don't think I said "garbage". But I've checked it out and just don't find anything that I feel that strong about to respond to. Also, a lot of the time the same topic is over here, and I don’t see the point of posting the same thing on two sites. Besides, I'm mostly interested in The Beach Boys, and that board is all over the place, topically. I just took a look and still don't see anything to respond to. I'm not putting down the site; I'm just saying it isn't for me. I like this one better, and that is my opinion and my right. I said what I said about this site being the "real" Smile Shop because this site has maintained the vibe of the original "Smile Shop" while the "Smile Shop" has mutated into something a bit different. I don’t feel it’s as focused on Brian Wilson and Smile as this one is, and that’s my interest. I have no aggression against the Smile Shop. I don’t go there and badmouth the contributors because they don't respond fast enough to me, or saying that one is intellectually superior to the other, like what you just did.

Let's get back to talking about Neil, eh?

I think you did.

Except that you said that it was "cold" and "sterile." It looked "commercial", whatever that means. Well-programmed? Well-designed? Beats me.

Let's. I'm through with this nonsense now.

Wow, you guys are really keeping tabs on me. How do you remember this stuff?

I’m sorry if I offended anyone with my comments at the time.
I respect what they have done over there and will not put down people’s hard work.