His music may be frequently peevish and outwardly rebellious, but at heart, Neil’s a moralist. This is why even his most seemingly impersonal, comically overambitious leaps of faith contain, at their core, an honesty - a humanity. Whether his imagination leads him to Greendale or to goldrush, it’s all the same to Neil Young. It could be argued that Neil’s shape-shifting is motivated by the exact opposite reasons: trends, expectations, and market forces be damned, he doesn’t feel like making another country-rock record right now. The genre experiments of other artists often indicate an identity crisis, or an attempt to recreate oneself in the hopes of appealing to increasingly fickle market forces. It is equally tempting to define him alongside similarly protean artists from Bowie to Gaga, but this, too, is specious. It is easy to view Neil as a cranky contrarian who takes his gifts and fortunes for granted, but this is an oversimplification. His peers may have been enjoying the nectar of flower power, but Neil’s acute perception allowed him to see the darkness just below the surface. This, at least, is consistent: As early as 1966, the reluctant star penned “Out Of My Mind” for Buffalo Springfield’s debut album, a song containing the lyrics “ All I hear are screams/ from outside the limousines/ that are taking me out of my mind.” He introduced himself to the world with songs about epileptic seizures, tormented small-town girls, and the rent that always seems to be due. His autobiography depicts a man more interested in model trains, vintage cars, and cutting-edge technology than his legacy as a rock star, which seems to bore and trouble him. He vainly made movies that made Cocksucker Blues look like Double Indemnity. He was the Canadian hippie that publicly supported Reagan (despite the fact that he was not eligible to vote), only to record an entire album arguing for the impeachment of George W. Neil Young has never lent his music to a commercial. Of course, it works both ways: Neil Young’s decision to release 1991’s Arc, a 35-minute collage of feedback and noise, seems directly inspired by his run-ins with Sonic Youth, while the Pearl Jam-assisted Mirror Ball would find the newly-sired Godfather Of Grunge an awestruck but reluctant don of the alternative rock revolution. Alt country? “Harvest.” I could do this all day.
#Neil young discography kat cracked#
Wanna hear ground zero for Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs? See “Journey Through The Past.” The raw-nerve humanity in the songs of Jason Molina? Check out “On The Beach.” The primary influence on J Mascis’s wild, feedback-laden guitar playing, or his reedy, cracked vocal style? That’d be “Cortez The Killer” and “Mellow My Mind,” respectively. Even more than Dylan, Neil Young has made a career of being consistently inconsistent.Īs an architect of what we now consider ‘underground music’ there is no peer: For every Great Indie Moment of the past thirty years, there is a Neil Young song correlative. His unpredictability and star-chamber business practices have often made him a pariah his impulsive spirit and mood swings would frequently estrange his fellow musicians and most ardent supporters. This iron-willed devotion to the Muse has not come without a price, however: While Neil’s successes have mostly flown in the face of prevailing music biz wisdom, his uncompromising nature has earned him almost as many failures, failures that should have sunk him several times over. From his humble beginnings as a surf rocker in the Squires to his tenure in Hall Of Fame acts Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, to his most recent blitzkrieg Psychedelic Pill, Neil has spent a career as the embodiment of artistry despite fierce resistance. This is no hyperbole Neil Young is the personification of rock and roll in human form. “ Which Neil Young album do I play them first?” Still, there is really only one question you need to ask yourself:
“ What is rock and roll?” they demand, rayguns drawn. Through some curious coincidence, they find you. They’ve traveled from some distant planet with a specific mission: to find out what this ‘rock and roll’ stuff is all about.
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