Top 5/Bottom 5: Neil Young

If you’re anything like me, you love to listen to, talk about, and even argue about music. In that spirit I’ve decided to embark on a little project. Each week I’ll be listing my top 5 and bottom 5 songs from an artist or band that I love, or at least like. Disagree? Let me know, that’s half the fun.

Neil Young is one of the great singer/songwriters to emerge from the ‘60s LA scene, and an artist whose music I constantly return to as a source of comfort and inspiration. His prolific output has included gorgeous country rock, solo folk songs, raging electric guitar rock, and genre experiments of all kinds. His 50 year plus catalog includes plenty of high points and low points, which were a lot of fun to explore here.

Top 5:

·      “Crime in the City (Sixty to Zero Part 1)”: This song and two others from the Freedom album were put on a cassette for me by my uncle when I was 9 or 10 years old, and provided my introduction to Neil Young. I remember being slightly baffled by Neil’s vaguely Uncle Sam appearance on the cover of the album–at least that’s how it appeared to me at the time, I now realize the single star on his hat could have been taken a lot of other ways given the Cold War context of those days. “Crime in the City” is a long narrative song that deals in a loose way with various forms of urban crime and unrest, as did several other songs on the album. Many of Neil’s topical songs over the years have been fairly blunt, occasionally unsubtle to the point of being hard to take seriously, but I find that many of the songs on this album achieve the balance of anger, sorrow, and compassion that can make topical songs really successful. “Crime in the City” is essentially a series of vignettes, each vivid enough to paint a picture, but leaving enough space for the listener’s imagination to fill in the details. It almost feels like one of those dark ‘80s urban action movies, in the best way possible. The music uses some classic Neil Young elements, particularly the “All Along the Watchtower”-inspired chord progression (given a subtle nod in the line, “They couldn’t get no relief’), with pedal steel, saxophones and a couple of nice rhythmic changes that really keep the song moving. There are a couple of earlier live versions that have come out recently in archival releases; they’re interesting in that they feature some different lyrics and a more classic Neil Young rock arrangement, but in this case the subtler and more carefully arranged studio version is where it’s at.

·      “Hey Hey, My My”: Is there a more fabulously menacing guitar sound ever recorded than this song’s fuzzed out opening riff and the crashing chords that answer it on the electric version of this song? I challenge you to find it. That main riff is one of the greatest Neil ever composed, maybe the single greatest, working equally well on acoustic or electric guitar. For years when I was younger I didn’t know if I had imagined hearing this song in both electric and acoustic versions, or if they really existed. Eventually I discovered that both versions had been released on the same album (albeit under slightly different titles) as opening and closing tracks. That’s a move that takes some confidence, something that Neil has never seemed to lack, whatever else we might say about him. Of course it’s impossible to consider this song without noting its place in rock history, both as a commentary on changing musical times with the rise of Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols and the death of Elvis in the ‘70s, and as the song quoted by another great rock frontman in his suicide note in the ‘90s. For me this is one of the greatest rock songs on rock, much truer in its dangerous sound and ambivalent lyrics to the spirit of rock and roll than Don McLean’s saccharine paean to the good old days down by the levy.

·      “Campaigner”: “Even Richard Nixon has got soul” might have been a surprising sentiment coming from the author of “Ohio” and countless other songs of political unrest, but Neil Young has always been full of surprises. A great solo acoustic recording that I first heard on Decade, this song has always stuck with me. Its lyrics touch on the vastness and variety of American experience, from “test tube genes and slot machines” to “roads stretch[ing] out like healthy veins.” This is the folkie Neil at his best, not so much telling a direct story or offering political opinions but musing on what politics is and offering an empathetic look at a strange country.

·      “After the Gold Rush”: Is this the best ever dystopian ecological piano ballad? Probably. Neil’s voice is at its best on this song, with evocative lyrics that sit perfectly on the edge of fantasy and reality. What was it his friend had said that he hoped was a lie? I don’t know, but I can imagine. And here’s Mother Nature, still on the run in the 2020s.

·      “Love and Only Love”: When I saw Neil Young and Crazy Horse at Barclays Center in Brooklyn several years ago, they opened with this song, a classic Crazy Horse blast of hippie sentiment rolled up in raging rock. Truthfully, I could put any number of Crazy Horse jams in this slot, but this one has been a favorite ever since that show. It struck me as an audacious but inspired choice to open with, a mid-tempo rocker that was never a hit but perfectly encompasses the jam side of the Horse. The studio version is over ten minutes long, with lyrics that maybe don’t matter that much but express an aging hippie’s core belief in love above all, a groove that hardly varies, and a whole lot of glorious guitar noise. It may not be for every fan of “Heart of Gold,” but it’s fantastic. This side of Neil and Crazy Horse reminds me of the Ramones in that everything kind of sounds the same and it’s almost stupidly repetitive, and you wouldn’t want it any other way. Where Neil and the Horse achieve sonic nirvana through endless jams and guitar solos, the Ramones get there via blitzed-up pop rock, but it’s all rock and roll, baby.

Bottom 5:

·      “The Needle and the Damage Done”: As everyone who has followed his career with even a little interest knows, Neil Young has seen his share of friends go through addiction and even death at the hands of drugs; Neil himself has had his ups and downs with substances, including the famous Last Waltz incident when cocaine had to be airbrushed from his nostrils in the final film. “The Needle and the Damage Done” is one of his most direct songs, addressing a junkie who just can’t get enough. Here’s my problem with the song: It is on seemingly every Neil Young live recording ever released, and every version is exactly the same. Versions appear on: Harvest, Live at Massey Hall 1971, Live Rust, MTV Unplugged, Songs For Judy, and probably some others I’m forgetting. My introduction to it was the Unplugged album, and yes, at the time I liked it and eventually learned how to play the classic intro on acoustic guitar. But something about this song just fatigues me now. I get the message and musically the song is a little more interesting than a lot of solo singer-songwriter chord strummy songs, but it’s just not enough to keep me from skipping it most times.

·      “Last Trip to Tulsa”: Neil Young’s first, self-titled album is the sound of a newly solo artist trying to figure out what he can do on his own. It has a few great moments, but it also suffers from a lack of definite direction at times. This song is a plodding piece of pseudo-Dylan solo acoustic guitar and surrealistic rambling. Neil was hardly alone in taking inspiration from Dylan, and he can’t be faulted for trying to stretch the boundaries of popular song in both lyrical content and length; he occasionally did so successfully, and lord knows many lesser artists than Neil Young attempted the same. But this song is just awful. The lyrics are a jumble of pseudo-profound psychedelic folk nonsense (“So I unlocked your mind you know/to see what I could see/If you guarantee the postage/I’ll mail you back the key.”) and the acoustic guitar plays a rudimentary chord progression with no rhythmic drive or melodic interest. It’s possible this song would at least be passable if the tempo were upped significantly–at least its nonsense lyrics wouldn’t stand out so painfully. But as it is, the song feels even longer than its nine and a half minutes. “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” this is not.

·      “Don’t Be Denied”: This autobiographical song first appeared on Time Fades Away in a live version that felt a bit half-baked. Last year’s archival live album Tuscaloosa includes an even longer, equally half-baked version, marring an otherwise very good live release from Neil’s golden period. The song mostly consists of Neil and backing vocalists singing, “Don’t be denied/don’t be denied/don’t be denied/don’t be denied” over and over, alternating with some boring recollections of moving as a child, fantasizing about stardom, and playing “songs for the highest bid” on the Sunset Strip, all over an incredibly dull slow groove that never goes anywhere. This song is the worst side of Neil Young, a piece of work that feels unfinished and isn’t very interesting that was put out anyway because Neil just has to keep moving forward and doing the next thing, blah blah blah. Listening to this song for eight minutes is a minor form of torture.

·      “Such a Woman”: This song is a low point on what is otherwise one of my favorite later Neil Young albums, “Harvest Moon.” It is a piano ballad with strings that finds Neil crooning, “You are such a woman to me/And I love you.” Oh, Neil also informs us that “love is a healer.” That’s about all there is to it. There is a lot of romantic sentiment in the songs on “Harvest Moon,” but this one lacks any of the specific elements that bring the other songs to life and make them feel real. It could have been written by any middling middle-aged singer/songwriter who loves his wife, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

·      That Song He Played at That Show I Saw: About midway through a raucous electric set of music with Crazy Horse at Barclays Center, it was time for the acoustic set. The band took a brief break as Neil played a couple songs by himself on acoustic guitar and piano. Well, not quite by himself–as he played one of the corniest songs I have ever heard, some vapid rags-to-riches stuff about a star-struck girl moving west to seek her dreams or something, an actress wandered onto the stage carrying a guitar case. She looked up to the left, she looked up to the right, presumably dazzled by the lights of the big city. She was like a bizarre version of The Sound of Music’s Maria, dropped inexplicably into the middle of a rock and roll show. It was stupefying, and made as big a lasting impression on me as the bold, full-throttle rock opening of “Love and Only Love.” I still don’t know what song it was, but it was a perfect example of what many people find so frustrating about Neil Young, the very high highs followed by the extreme lows. But hey, I guess that’s what comes of following the muse. And refusing to edit. Long may he run.