#537 - neil young - dead man theme (1996)
i’m getting a little bit worried about alice in wonderland. i wonder if it’s too late for tim burton to scrap all that cgi and just reuse johnny depp’s performance in jim jarmusch’s mid-90s western dead man? or at the very least avril lavigne’s alice (“when the world’s crashing down/ when i fall and hit the ground/ i will turn myself around/ don’t you try to stop me”) can be replaced by an entire soundtrack of neil young’s noodling.
#522: willie nelson - mr. record man (1965)
the fact that all five of last night’s grammy rock nominees are older than 50, and that their average age, according to my calculations, is 61.4 years, would lead a reasonable viewer to conclude that young people were not interested in (or good at) making superlative rock music last year. that is wrong.
so in january 2011, instead of nominating bob dylan, john fogerty, bruce springsteen, eric clapton, steve winwood, jeff beck, stevie wonder, booker t. jones, david byrne, elvis costello, levon helm, rambin’ jack elliott, loudon wainwright iii, willie nelson and (of course) neil young for grammys again, the academy should spend some of the ceremony showing clips of these glorious veterans in their prime (see above), take a few minutes to bring everyone up to speed on what they’ve been up to lately, and then dedicate the rest of the broadcast to serious quality time with the gloriously gaga and grizzly youth of today.
i’m as happy as anyone that neil young won his first-ever grammy tonight, but i hope everyone across the globe can set aside their differences and agree that awarding the 64-year-old his first grammy for a boxed set makes as much sense as giving salinger a long-awaited pulitzer for the grocery list he penned last spring. maybe a few years ago the national academy of recording arts and sciences could have given a grammy to any of his seven absurdly perfect first albums? not to mention csny’s déjà vu. or songs like don’t let it bring you down, only love can break your heart, cortez the killer, down by the river, helpless and harvest moon. please see here for a list of neil young’s career highlights expressed as inequalities, if you’re into that kind of thing.
the cover for the original release of only love can break your heart breaks hearts.
#484: neil young - harvest moon (1992)
it doesn’t matter that the video takes place somewhere called the mountain house bar & grill, or that it has the plot line and production values of poorly financed soft core pornography (the red shoe diaries debuted in 1992, too!), or even that the drummer is wearing a wig, because harvest moon is just terrifyingly pretty. it sounds like blankets. the harmonies and pedal steel guitar make intervertebral discs spin.
#469: crosby, stills, nash & young - only love can break your heart (1970)
david crosby’s early-70s mustache ≥ neil young at the bbc in 1971 ≥ being able to play the stand-up bass while smoking ≥ csny’s harmonies ≥ crazy horse ≥ neil young’s torn jeans ≥ down by the river ≥ being able to sing with joni mitchell and the band while drugs are on your face ≥ the “i have a friend” verses in only love can break your heart. see here for proof.
#406: pavement - father to a sister of thought (1995)
every slightly-mustached, acne-plagued, voice-cracked adolescent with relatively good taste in music and relatively bad self esteem should be gifted copies of pavement’s mid-90s albums, which proved that gangly awkwardness isn’t always uncool. even though father to a sister of thought has a second-rate mall rat’s voice singing third-rate barfly lyrics (“i’m just a man/ you see who i am”), the pimply song’s as pretty as after the gold rush and american as american beauty.
#376: crosby, stills, nash and young - our house (1974, wembley stadium)
it’s hard to tell if this slowed, spacey, dejected version of the once-jolly our house is a total trainwreck or just beautifully hazy. either way, watching it is like seeing your second grade teacher stumble quietly out of a bar alone.
the original our house was a lovable ode to domestic bliss—and it was about joni mitchell! “the first night we spent together, i felt very warm and felt like i’d really found a home,” graham nash once said. “i had never been with a woman like joan.” but at wembley stadium, years after the two broke-up, even the band’s harmonized la-la-las sound like guilty pleas. the faint glimpse of neil young’s mutton chops toward the end of the song slightly makes up for the sadness, but still.
#263: neil young (and crazy horse) - cortez the killer (1978)
you’d think that a man who can sing the high notes of immensely perfect four-part harmonies (our house is the sissiest song of the 60s) wouldn’t be able to sludge his way through muddy, creaky, nine-minute odes to conquistadors (or through entire albums about heroin overdoses), but neil young is cool like that.
npr, bless its public little heart, is streaming a just-released neil young solo acoustic show from 1969, back when he was 22 and hadn’t released his debut album.
it’s genuinely heartbreakingly good, the kind of genuine heartbreaking goodness that happens when a 22-year-old is coaxed out of his hotel room bed (where he’s huddled scared) to play songs that mostly haven’t been released yet, and turn out to be the second-best songs written in north america in the 1960s (behind bob dylan’s).
#53: the band (with neil young) - helpless (1976)
wouldn’t you know it, martin scorsese made this film while handling a serious cocaine addiction. and was the band using with him? actually, backstage there was a room painted white, decorated with noses from plastic masks. an audio tape of sniffing sounds played on a tape. seriously. really. truly.
when neil young came out to sing helpless, he had the most famous glob of cocaine in rock history hanging from his nostrils (which was erased by scorsese in post-production). that didn’t stop mr. young from being as gorgeously delicate as always, singing a velvet canadian harmony with joni mitchell, who has hidden off-stage behind a curtain.
legend has it that the band kept her hidden because her complex romantic dalliances with the musicians were bumming everyone out. but the band has since claimed that it was only so that her later appearance in the show, singing three songs solo, would be more exciting. all things considered, it’s probably because she was a wildwoman.
#22: crosby, stills, nash & young - down by the river (1969)
one neil young song deserves another, even if a group of white men doing four-part harmonies isn’t my cup of tea.
but isn’t neil and stephen stills’ face-to-face guitar playing charming? doesn’t mustachioed david crosby look more stoned than a boulder?
and isn’t “she could drag me over the rainbow, send me away” the most romantic line? never mind that this is a song about shooting your baby dead near a body of water.
#21: neil young - don’t let it bring you down (1971)
it’s primary day, so i’ve been trying to find a super appropriate get-out-the-vote, times-they-are-a-changin’ song. radiohead’s electioneering has the right idea, but it isn’t exactly the best track on “ok computer.” besides, it’s tuesday, which means i need something from the 70s—too early for public enemy, too late for pete seeger.
but high-voiced, long-haired neil young makes good songs for election day. and even though he has more activist-y songs then don’t let it bring you down, somehow this tune’s picture of burning castles, dead men, sinking moons, red sirens, scraped skies, cold winds and morning papers feels more political than whining about impeachment.
his after the goldrush-era performance here on the bbc is enough to make you want to change the world. and another thing! he likes obama.
