Neil Young

Like many things Neil Young gets better with age and in many ways we do not appreciate him enough.  I've seen him play live twice I think, once in 1995 at the Reading festival with Pearl Jam and a second time, a year or so later, at the SECC.  As always, my memory of these things is a bit fuzzy.  The Reading Festival show is particularly hazy due to blood loss after breaking my nose and immature scepticism related to my adolescent dislike of Pearl Jam.  I have subsequently forgiven Pearl Jam a bit.

Young has made a lot of music in the last 50 or so years.  He's played with lots of bands and released a lot of albums.  He's also recorded many albums that have not seen the light of day.  Some of these albums only seem to be appearing now, often decades after they were created.

I find that there are Neil Young songs I am familiar with and amazing Neil Young songs that I have never heard or live interpretations of standards that bend exciting new shapes into my ears.  Often, when I have listened to Young I haven't really focused on the lyrics.  This is embarrassing when you think of a song like Ohio.  I've been listening to Ohio for more than 20 years, and while I know it's about the Kent State massacre it seems like I'm hearing the words for the first time.

His words are like stealth bombers, sneaking in with the fury of his music.  He can rearrange his songs and play them live in twisted new shapes.  The version of Tonight's The Night on the Bluenote Cafe set is stunning.

I listened to Chrome Dreams II for the first time last night.  It's a diverse set which pulls together songs from different periods in his career and finally gave a studio release to Ordinary People that was being played live 20 years earlier.  Ordinary People is a great song but it is typical of Young to leave good tracks sitting on the shelf for decades.  In terms of output and reinterpretation he is almost on a level with Dylan.

The original Chrome Dreams remains officially unreleased.

I have tended to focus on the 'classics' in his catalogue but I realise that this approach perhaps overlooks some of his better songs.  Young has followed his own path with his career and released the music he felt was right at the time.  He spent much of the eighties in a very public feud with his record label and I wonder what would have happened if he was given creative control back then.  We may have been given many of these great songs earlier if he had been allowed to do what he wanted.

The world is different now.  Music is no longer controlled by record conglomerates and the internet has levelled the playing field.  Websites like Bandcamp let musicians present as much music to the public as they choose, whenever they want.  Young may have had a very different career if this technology had existed in the eighties and he is embracing this now with the Neil Young archives.

The online archives probably represent a good opportunity for fans to truly explore the 70 or so releases he has put out since the sixties.  There is certainly a lot to explore.

Young has followed his own path for decades.  He has kept moving, innovating and evolving.  He has inspired other interesting artists such as Sonic Youth.  He is an acquired taste but certainly worth exploration.