When it appears at the start of a sentence, don’t is a command - as opposed to its use mid-sentence, where it is more of a negation of a condition. Compare: <Don't love me> as opposed to <You don't love me> or <Don't do that> vs. <You don't do that>.
Of the <don't> songs in the Beatles' repertoire, it was "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" that got me started.
The “White Album” is quirky in a number of ways. Loudersound.com actually lists 50 things you need to know about it. Let me count a few. The minimalist cover was in itself a statement, particularly since it came on the heels of the rather gaudy cover to the Sgt Peppers album. Many of the songs were not recorded with all members of the band playing. Check out the link to loudersound for 48 more trivia about the album (I don’t want to appropriate their work, so click here)
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road (now there’s a title to test your knowledge of the rules of English capitalization!) seems to me to be quite representative of their mindset, again, in a number of ways. It is basically Paul and Ringo. The idea came to Paul in India, as did a number of the inspirations for the album. The “theme” (if said term is appropriate to a single line of lyrics) is as flippant as anything else on the album: Bungalow Bill, Rocky Raccoon, Warm Gun … It is also one of 2 songs on the album that have Don’t in the title. The song is an impressive example of how to expand something simple into something more: there is an argument to make about whether “it” could be more than what Paul saw that gave him the idea; there is the amusement that someone can “get away with” singing about “it”; there is the vocal expression that kinda culminates in the “from-the-soul” screaming line; there is the creative, abrupt ending
Don’t Pass Me By, the other <don’t> song from the White Album is another McCartney/Starr recording without the other two, but with “crazy” violin from Jack Fallon (a one-off?) is apparently a song Ringo wrote back in the early 60s.
Other Beatles’ don’ts include
Don't let me down
Honey Don’t (Carl Perkins)
Don’t Bother Me (Them Beatles)
I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party (Acoustic Beatles Band)
Watching the Trump Party and its propaganda outlets whip themselves into a frenzy over what they are mischaracterizing as “Critical Race Theory,” either due to political calculation or ignorance (or both), when what they are really afraid of is not the actual theory, but the “Truth,” could easily send me spinning off into a discussion, centered around Neil Young’s 1970 song, “Southern Man,” about institutional racism, the Civil War, and the Lost Cause myth, but I’ve writtenabout that before.
Instead, let’s (mostly) talk about the two songs I’ve chosen for the Opposites theme which are basically double opposites—one about a southern man, the other about a northern woman (although, if gender is really a spectrum, are they really opposites?) But there are even more things about the songs that are opposites.
Young’s “Southern Man,” as most readers of this blog probably know, was released in 1970, at the height of the anti-war and civil rights unrest in the country. It is an angry song, about racism and slavery, and features harsh, searing electric guitars. (It also famously inspired, at least in part, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” but there really wasn’t any sort of rivalry between Young and Skynyrd, who were mutual fans of each other. Really.)
Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country,” on the other hand, released in 1963, is a wistful, acoustic love song, maybe about one of Dylan’s actual former girlfriends, or some of them, or all of them, or none of them. While it didn’t inspire a response song, it did inspire Dylan to record a duet version of the song with Johnny Cash, which was released in 1969, about a year before “Southern Man.”
Despite the Opposite features of the songs, there was great mutual respect among Young, Dylan and Cash. They’ve performed together and covered each other’s songs, and Dylan and Young were both on Cash’s TV show (where Cash and Dylan sang “Girl From The North Country” together—you can read more about it, and watch the video here.). The Young performance was part of a a special episode of Cash’s show, shot at Vanderbilt University. It focused on students’ issues, including drugs, and Cash openly discussed his own problems, before introducing Young at the Ryman Auditorium, where he performed “The Needle And The Damage Done” and another song.
I’m guessing that was pretty much the opposite of what many of Cash’s country music fans would have expected.
A small footnote—after the Ryman performance, Young and his guests, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, hit the studio and worked on songs for the forthcoming Harvest album.
Why does the phrase "Guitar Heroes" always have me thinking the wanton destruction of guitars? I guess it’s my age, as the sure fire way to gain that status in the 60s would be, literally, to fire it up. Or to smash it up. OK, let’s disregard the apocrypha that inform us of the dodgy guitar, just off stage and out of audience view, hurriedly sleighted into use and destroyed, night after night, whilst the more precious gear went back into the mink lined crate. And why always guitars? How come the keyboards or drums never took equivalent bashings? (Alright, well nearlynever….)
John Hiatt has famously had words to say about the practice, rightly decrying it. But he has had oodles of previous posts here, so I have to think harder. The good news is that there are actually a lot of songs about guitars, often by guitarists who are no slouches on the instrument either. There are even a slew of songs about guitarists by guitarists. One I have covered here before, but not this one below.
I am not going to blether ever onward about my love and awe of RT. Partly because I could and partly as I, and others, have already. But the song, not, I agree, his strongest composition, does at least give some faithful insight of who he was trying to emulate,in his bedroom all those years ago. But I notice that one of the fellas included in the song always appears in the lists of the favourites of our favourites, that being Hank Marvin, of the Shadows. Those queueing up to pay homage to this mild mannered anti-axe hero are many and varied, including some surprising names: Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore, Neil Young even. (And you thought From Hank to Hendrix was about Mr Williams?!)
I like the video above, if only presenting Hank and the boys in a slightly cooler setting than the usual suits, grins and little dances. Not that they too, in hindsight, don't have their own certain whiff of something unattainable.
There is something slightly thrilling in revisiting these old tunes and these old clips. Remember this is the cusp of the 60s and England. Sure, we had rock and roll over here, but a largely gentler and milder version, nothing too shocking to shift our upper lips. Cliff was as rowdy as it got, the Shadows getting their break as his backing band. The advent of the Beatles so then tilted the universe that Cliff and the Shads seemed forever displaced to light entertainment and TV variety shows. But, listen again: that tone, that tremolo. Magnificent.
He has even had a tribute album created in his honour, Twang!, with an A list of the gurners and shredders, including those mentioned above, along with Mark Knopfler, Brian May and Peter Green, all lining up to play his praises. It’s a good listen, too, in turns surprising, as you realise quite who is on it, as well as realising and remembering quite how good a body or work he produced all those years ago. But who does he rate and who were his inspirations? Here's a pretty good interview and, unsurprisingly, it lists the icons of the golden age of rock and roll, Scotty Moore and James Burton to name but two. He comes over as a decent fella, too, with feet still firmly on the ground.
So you can keep your long hair, your tapping and your pedals, when I want something simple and sublime, gimme some Hank!
If we are talking about questions, I suppose the question word <why> is at the fore of this theme. What better choice then, than a song that asks that self-same question: why?
Without any previous background knowledge, I would have posited that the Beatles' <Why Don't We Do It In The Road?> was a Lennon composition. You know? Free Love ... Push the limits...
To my surprise, I learn that it is a McCartney piece with Starr's assistance and that - to top it off - Lennon is said to have been hurt that he was not included.
By the time the <White Album> came out, the band was all but defunct. As opposed the the relative conformity/sequence/progression of songs on <Revolver>, <Sgt Peppers>, <Magical Mystery Tour>, the <White Album> is disparate, disjointed in terms of theme.
Granted, there is a certain amount of non-sense coming in from time to time starting earlier. Earliest Beatles songs were very muchly boy/girl themed, and then we start getting things like "We all live in a yellow submarine". WTF? I mean, I can kind of see "We're Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" in terms of lyrics, but by this point in time, we've gone a bit off the rail - in terms of what AM radio thrived on.
And then there's "why dont we do it in the road?"
I suppose there's the distant possibility that what we could be doing in the road is scat, but that's not much more sociologically acceptable than the actual, more obvious notion behind the song.
McCartney apparently witnessed 2 monkeys in the act in the streets of India. But as I said, this seems much more the kind of question that Lennon would have raised - delving into and questioning the social stigmas that define our behaviors. You know: if love is so beautiful/the answer to all our troubles, then why don't we do "it" in the road?
Hell, yeah, in the week, near enough, ol' Shakey reveals the forthcoming of his back to the day job with the Horse, what better time to celebrate this most epochal and emblematic of Neil Young's backing crews. You can have your Stray Gators, your Promise of the New, Pearl Jam and Booker T even, it is with the Horse that the ragged glory of his plaid shirt flaps the most. Never quite as celebrated as they should be, even oft denigrated for their supposedly simplistic backing, they are the perfect frame around which their boss can shine brightest. And it they are so dumb, how come that most attempts to emulate fall so short?
Present in one form or another since 1969, a number of musicians have been included under the banner, the band existing as much in it's own right, gigging, albums, rather than merely, as they are often perceived, waiting at home for Young to revive them from their slumbers. Because such waits can be lengthy. Very. And uncertain. The core, essentially, is the rhythm section partnership of Billy Talbot, bass, and Ralph Molina, drums.
Go back further, to 1963, and the vital spark of the band was in, astonishingly, doo-wop, a capella street corner crooning. A mix of West Side Story and what would now be called a boy band. Along with Danny Whitten and a couple of others, they even got as far as recording, first as Danny & the Memories, later as the cooler entitled Psyrcle, the zeitgeist now clearly barber avoidant. (Sadly I can find no clips of the latter, all the more disappointing, the Psyrcle having one Sly Stone, then a local record store owner, as their producer.)
Land of a 1000 Dances/Danny & the Memories
Appreciating the added value of playing some instruments, Whitten, Talbot and Molina picked some up from scratch, Whitten choosing guitar, and morphed into the Rockets, cautiously adding a couple of real musicians to paper over their deficiencies. And, yes, times were changing fast.....
Pill Song/The Rockets
This is where Neil Young came in, chancing on the band in a bar, OK, the bar, the infamous Whisky A Go Go. After jamming with them, suddenly the Rockets were no more, the core trio of the band absorbed immediately as Neil Youngs backing band for his 2nd solo record, 'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.' And what has become his instantly recognisable signature style of melodic chunky scuzz was born. As well as backing Young both in the studio and live, by now christened Crazy Horse, they took off alone, absorbing piano player Jack Nietsche, another Young acolyte, along the way. Boy wonder Nils Lofgren, fresh from his appearance on 'After the Goldrush', also became involved, if not then officially a member. They could have been bigger than they were, Whitten becoming swiftly more accomplished both as a guitarist and a writer. Indeed, the song below was his, and is still, I am sure, a source of royalties, given many successful cover versions. But unfortunately only to his estate, as Whitten was a hardcore junkie. Eventually kicked out both from the band and from Young's circle, he succumbed, living on only in the lyric of 'Needle and the Damage Done'..... (The "another man" was Crazy Horse roadie, Bill Berry.)
I Don't Want To Talk About It/Crazy Horse
So where now for the Horse? After Whitten's demise, and lacklustre responses anyway to their records, the residual duo let the name lie dormant, despite still playing frequently alongside Young, with different musicians and different names for the collective. It was with the recruitment of Frank "Poncho" Sampedro in 1974 that suddenly gave the band a rebirth, his arguably rudimentary rhythm guitar slotting perfectly alongside Neil Young's idiosyncratic lead like a dream, wedged into the loose cement of Molina and Talbot. 'Zuma' is the exemplar and apotheosis of the Crazy Horse sound, and, of course, the song below is that of that record. Equal billing, no less.
Cortez the Killer/Neil Young, Crazy Horse
The last couple of decades of the 20th century saw Young chaotically change style and direction. Sometimes the Horse fitted the requirements, often they didn't, but it always seemed better when they did. When off the pay-roll, they would play occasional shows, with buddies from earlier incarnations, but kept a generally low profile. One exception came in 1994, when arch Young-fan and ex-Icicle Works mainman Ian McNabb hired them for a tour and an album. 'Head Like a Rock' was my album of that year and, yes, I was in the audience for the clip below, with there being little doubt who McNabb was channeling.
Fire Inside My Soul/Ian McNabb, Crazy Horse
It wasn't until the early noughties that I actually caught them with Young, at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre (UK), usually a soulless arena, that night shaken to the pillars by a the intensity of the fragile yet triumphant powerhouse of the collaboration.
Latterly the pairing has been increasingly intermittent, some fans despairing ever of that call ever coming round again, not least as Young was seemingly so entrenched with Promise of the New, the band of and with two of the sons of Willie Nelson. News had also come of Poncho retiring from performance. So it was with some glee that whispers came, late last year, of a 'Horse of a Different Colour', with a series of concerts following. And more this year. And you can stuff different colour, this was Crazy Horse, with the added attraction of the return of Nils Lofgren to replace Sampedro. OK, so the song comes from the wrong band, but, hell, Long May they Run. And for sure an album is coming.....
Growing up, as a good liberal child in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the FBI was the enemy. Under the leadership of director J. Edgar Hoover, and after his death, the FBI was instrumental in trying to suppress the civil rights and anti-war movements, discriminate against gays, and generally act as a tool of the “Establishment.” I personally have no problem with enforcing the law, if done fairly and within the bounds of the law—and so I have no problem with the FBI’s anti organized crime or terrorism work, for example—but with respect to the civil rights and antiwar stuff, they definitely crossed the line. Which may be why, in part, it wasn’t hard to watchThe Americans, and find myself sorta pulling for the Russians, even though watching the show demonstrated that they were also pretty horrible.
It is interesting, though, that now it is the “leader” of the American government himself who is the biggest critic of the FBI, despite the fact that he appointed its director. And let me be clear—former director Comey deserved to be fired by whichever candidate won the 2016 election because of the way he botched the handling of the investigations of both candidates. But to have done so for the explicit reason of impeding the investigation into alleged conspiracy with Russia to influence the election is simply wrong, and probably illegal. So, it is amusing that these days, it seems like it is the liberal Democrats who seem to be bigger fans of the FBI than the Republicans.
I doubt that the FBI is that big a deal in England, much as the band The Shadows was never that big a deal here. (How’s that for a clunky segue?) But in England, they were huge, with multiple hits, and lead guitarist Hank Marvin influenced pretty much every great English/Canadian/Australian guitarist, including RichardThompson, Andy Summers, Brian May, Steve Howe, George Harrison, Neil Young, Tommy Emmanuel, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Mark Knopfler, Peter Frampton, and Jeff Beck. Just to name a few.
Although they started out as the backup band for Cliff Richard, maybe the poster child for “huge in England, mostly unknown in the US,” the Shadows went on to fame in their own right, mostly as an instrumental band. “F.B.I.,” released in 1961, was not their biggest hit, but it did hit #6 on the UK charts (and never charted in the US.)
Ian Hunter opened his 1980 live album, Welcome to the Club, with a cover of the song, featuring his band’s guitarist, Mick Ronson, who has also been quoted as saying that Marvin and The Shadows were influences on him. (Both Ronson and Marvin appeared on Roger Daltrey’s solo album, One of the Boys, for what that’s worth). It is a great way to kick off a great live album that includes a bunch of Hunter’s and Mott the Hoople’s best songs (and some other interesting covers). I remember playing this album more than a few times at WPRB.
The aforementioned Brian May also covered the song on a 1996 tribute album to Marvin and The Shadows, as have others.
If you are talking about coming home, you cannot dismiss this. Granted, I already have a name for posting the obvious, but this one belongs here.
The song was mired in the polemic Neil Young raised about what does the "South" mean - both to Southerners and to those outside, What does it mean to fly the Confederate flag? And then ... in response, Lynard Skynard was trying to send Neil Young (and the world) a message. 40 years down the road, so much has changed (not just in rock), but I do wonder what these guys were thinking when they penned these lines:
Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you
You could not survive that line these days, but we <forgive> it as a classic,
The linked video is relatively amazing for its time ('74): it is pretty close to synced on time as it cuts from scene to scene (No small feat for 1974), and it includes modern features such as focus on the lead guitar during the solo (all recent innovations back in the '70s)
As to the theme ...
There are few things more hurtful than an attack on your home. And I don't know if that is what prompted the song, but it sure seems so, The lyrics say as much: F*&ck you Neil Young, we have our own narrative of our history. Because, after all the "truth" of history left to later generations is in the words that the present generation chooses to write - fake or not...
And what to make of the very discernible female backing vocals that are equally not visible anywhere in the clip. A classic piece, that, like most of its associates, falls far short of today's standards.
One of the best documentaries about musicians was 2013’s 20 Feet From Stardom, which focused on the background singers that we all have heard, but often don’t recognize by name. Not only was it interesting and filled with great music, the film addresses one of my regular writing subjects—why are some incredibly talented musicians not as famous as they probably should be. 20 Feet discusses many of the reasons—bad advice, bad luck, bad decisions, and even a lack of that certain something that allows you to traverse that 20 feet. I’ve mentioned the film before, in my piece about Darlene Love, who is probably the most famous of the singers featured in the film.
But maybe the most famous vocal discussed in 20 Feet, and for me the most memorable segment, was about Merry Clayton’s searing “rape, murder” vocal part in the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” Luckily, I don’t have to describe the scene in detail, because the video above is a clip from the movie, in which Clayton and Mick Jagger discuss the circumstances. But if you can’t watch the video, in short strokes, Clayton was called out of bed to sing for a band that she hadn’t heard of, was whisked to the studio, pregnant and in her pajamas, to add a searing and unforgettable part to what would become a classic song. Not only are the vocals powerful, the way her voice cracks only adds to the emotional impact of the part. In the video above, you can hear the isolated vocal tracks, which is cool.
Here’s Clayton’s cover of “Gimme Shelter,” featuring occasional Stones sideman Billy Preston:
Clayton, born on Christmas Day (which led to her name) in New Orleans, was a veteran singer by the time the Stones roused her from bed. Her powerful vocals were also featured on, among other songs, Neil Young’s “The Old Laughing Lady,” and Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” (reluctantly). While Clayton never covered “Sweet Home,” she did do a great, soulful version of the song that it responded to:
In addition, she has had an acting career, both musically—Clayton was the Acid Queen in the first London stage production of The Who’s Tommy—and in movies and TV. More recently, she contributed vocals to albums by G. Love & Special Sauce and one of my least favorite bands, Coldplay.
Unfortunately, in 2014, Clayton was in a serious car accident that led to her having both legs amputated at the knees. She returned to the public eye in 2015, receiving an award from the Jazz Foundation of America (where Keith Richards performed "Gimme Shelter" in her honor with, among others, fellow 20 Feet star Lisa Fischer, who sang the song for years on tour with the Stones) and supporting Obamacare and the MusicCares charity that installed a chairlift in her home, and reportedly is working on a new album.
purchase [ Old Man] Being of age 60+ (perhaps the fall of my life) and having worked for 40 years or more, it seems natural that I consider what I have sown and what I will reap at the end of the road.
I wasn't going to do a post about Neil Young's Harvest. It seemed so trite - theme: Harvest/Album: \Old Man/Song. However, someone needed to do the post for many reasons: because (more than my previous post about John Barleycorn being the quintessential Harvest song), this is the bottom line. There is nothing more fundamental than the album with the name of the theme, No? What say about an album titled Harvest with the song Harvest? It may be Young's best.
Of the 10 tracks on the album ... 1/2 of them are pantheon classics. Need I list them? No sooner had CSNY hit the top of the charts, than they began to fall apart. And, as part of this process, Neil Young (previously of Buffalo Springfield - along with Stephen Stills) was off on his own - I guess he was the first of the CSNY group to produce his own after the success of the 4-some, and t'was the Harvest album.
From the album, Heart of Gold may be my fave, but ... we need to focus on the harvest/fall aspect: Young's song about what you sow and harvest. (Old Man) may not seem at first to fit the theme. But I would contend that the back story to the lyrics is very much one about harvest - the end of a season, the reaping of what you have sown. I think that - on examination - you would have to agree that the deeper meaning of Young's lyrics are very much about harvesting what you have sown in your life.
Even beyond that - <take at look at> the power of this performance: maybe one of the best indicators of what Neil Young is/is capable of. The lyrics - if you dig - are phenomenal. Low key but powerful. The guitar is simple/basic, but powerfully on target - half way between folk and rock, soft and yet rough. I guess this is why he is at the top of the list of "the best". Sing: "Doesn't mean that much to me to mean that much to you"
I have loved Neil Young ever since I was a child myself, the problem often being as to which Neil I like the best, the melodic acoustic troubadour or the feedback-drenched electric maverick, let alone all the shorter term infatuations he has dabbled in, from brass-heavy blues to wacky contract-breaking electronica. I guess like so many I came in around Heart of Gold, backtracking then to the glory of the After the Goldrush album, destroying many a pair of jeans to evoke the multi-patching of his distressed denim. I was at a single sex boarding school at that time, all short hair and uniforms, with Young, all straw hair, sideboards and the scruffiest wardrobe ever, being the man I most wished to be. Indeed, I fear this version of basse couture has remained the template for me, even now, to the despair of wives and partners to this day. (Hell, if ol' Shakey still dresses like a derelict in the dark, why shouldn't I?)
As stated often here before, I was an odd boy, and one of my eternal quests has always been the whys and the hows of music, with a liking to burrow back into the beginnings. This led me to my hardly original theory that all (white) popular music arose from the 4Bs: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. What about the Stones, I hear you say, to which my response is that they are black music, or the Blues. Jazz? That's Blues too. And I will allow the B of Bluegrass to encompass the whole of Country music, itself morphing into some of the style of the Byrds and the Buffalo, anyway, which is where I began. OK, it's trite and simplistic but I will defend it defiantly and devoutly (until some smartass says so what about Kraftwerk then?) But my point is that I thus obtained a copy of a Buffalo Springfield best-of in about 1973, hearing a whole different Neil. This was how he sang pre-whine, and I here mean whine as a compliment, being unable to think of a less damning description of his style, unless anyone can come up with a better name. Almost angelic, clear and smooth at this stage, as much a shock as it was later to hear his strangely low speaking voice. And, on this song, surprisingly or, probably, intentionally childlike, with only rudimentary guitar. This was a trick he was able to later return to, on Sugar Mountain, similarly faux-infantile and just as fetching.
So, how is the child now? Roll forward from 1968, the Buffalo Springfield recording, a full 46 years to 2014, his annual Bridge School concert, the school he set up for his own, now deceased beloved child. The clothes remain the same, the hair, well, a bit thinner on top, but the voice, less childlike but unmistakeably his, present and correct. And the child, listening in 1973, is still listening now.
There are a dozen or so recordings available over the decades: go buy!!
I held back until the last minute before our new theme comes online because I thought for sure some other SMM poster would surely hit on this: it has the weekly theme in the title and it is a classic.
Heart of Gold is the only one of Neil Young's many songs to reach the #1 spot on the US charts. First released on his 1972 "Harvest" album, he generally plays it on an acoustic guitar with harmonica accompaniment in addition to his vocals (as in the recording here.)
The late 60s and early 70s were Young's most productive years: member of Buffalo Springfield, solo work, and member of CSN&Y. Albums from this era include the eponymous "Neil Young" (1968), Everybody Knows This is Nowhere (1969), After the Gold Rush (1970) and Harvest (1972). The previous list does not reference his "side career" with CSN&Y during the same time frame.
This particular video starts off kind of rambling, but in the process, provides a certain insight into the man's personality, and so, while there are other more direct renditions of the song at YouTube, I chose this for the depth of character it imparts.
"In some movies there's tunes, you know..." Here's Dinosaur Sr. once again, combining two of his gems into a suite thingy of sorts, complete with stoner spoken intro. Recorded live at Massey Hall back in 1971, and found on volume 3 of the hopefully ongoing Archive Performance Series. Collect 'em all I say.
This is a case study in how to make a cover your own. The original was recorded by "The Sad Poet" Don Gibson in the late '50s. Despite its self-pitying lyrics, Don takes it at a fairly sprightly pace, a tactic that no doubt helped make it a country and pop hit. (Having "I Can't Stop Loving You" on the flip side didn't hurt, either.)
In 1962, Ray Charles released two critically acclaimed (and very successful) albums of country songs. The second volume, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol. 2, included a his version of "Oh, Lonesome Me". Ray picks up the tempo and gives it a big-band arrangement and a soulful vocal. And like most of his country recordings, it works surprisingly well.
Fast-forward another eight years. At the dawn of the singer-songwriter era, Neil Young decided to include a rare cover song on his own critically acclaimed and very successful album, After the Gold Rush. Neil's version is agonizingly slow, and in a way is a more appropriate fit for the sad lyrics, which themselves are a very good fit for Neil's style. Indeed, so completely does he inhabit this song, it was years before I realized it was a cover. (And when M. Ward and Lucinda Williams covered the song last year, they used the Young version as their template.)
Despite the disparate arrangements, all three of these versions have one element in common: Nobody could figure out how to end the song properly, so they all fade out, making this a good transition post between last week's theme and this week's.
Because even though this 1992 Neil Young song sounds suspiciously like a whole bunch of other, older Neil Young songs, I just couldn't resist the terse transitional perfection.
It's still good, of course. And to be fair, the allusion to the obvious is deliberate, with quotes in lyric and melody. It's just that it's so derivative, I can't help but imagine this song would be even better if you'd never heard Old Man.
After a disappointing Crazy Horse album, re*ac*tor, Neil switched labels and signed with Geffen Records for most of the '80s. It didn't take long for the two to butt heads. With it's synths, robotic beats and vocoder-heavy vocals, one can only wonder what Geffen thought when he first heard Trans. Many of the songs stem from Neil's attempts to communicate with his son Ben, who has cerebral palsy. There are some beautiful melodies hidden in the album, like this track, which he would recast in an acoustic setting for his turn at MTV Unplugged eleven years later.
While touring is support of Trans, Neil came up with the Shocking Pinks concept. Talk about a 180-degree turn! After a turn at futuristic electro-rock, Neil set the time machine for the 1950s and gave us a 25-minute album of rockabilly. It could have been interesting, but the '80s production values and the dopey backing vocals really sabotaged the album. But live, the band started to stretch out, and set the seeds for the Bluenotes five years later. But first...
Where to go from there? How about a pure country album? Neil had played country-rock on and off for years, most notably on Harvest, his biggest album. The promise of a return to that sound must have made David Geffen smile, but the more Geffen pushed Neil to make it sound like "Neil", the more country Neil went. Here he pretty much took it to the extreme, with the dopey "boing" of the Jew's harp pushing it over the edge. Live, the band once again started to stretch out and really rock. So naturally...
...he went all synth-rock on us. Recorded with studio pros Danny Kortchmar on guitar and synths and Steve Jordan on drums and synths. The music can be brutal, with the drums in particular seemingly in your face. It's not an easy listen.
After that, Neil toured and released an album with his old friends Crazy Horse. But during that tour, he started adding a blues mini-set, and that lead to the Bluenotes. I've written about this before, so I'll just say that this is a very underrated period in Neil's career, and the beginning of Neil getting back on track. (His next album included "Rockin' in the Free World", one of his best songs.)
I've mentioned numerous times here that I used to have an weekly web radio show, FiL With Sound. I played a mix of old and new music, and was fond of themed sets (and sometimes themed shows.) It ran for two years, and somewhere in the middle of it, I discovered Star Maker Machine.
I occasionally played songs on the show that I found on SMM, and it helped give the appearance that I had a bigger, more diverse music collection than I actually had. At some point, I decided I wanted to join in on the fun, but not being a writer, I started playing my own version of Star Maker Machine on the show. I would make a four- or five-track set out of songs that fit the previous week's SMM theme but had not been posted. I did some digging through my playlists, and discovered that the first time I did this was on November 18, 2008. The previous week's theme had been "The Aristocrats", so that's what my first SMM set was about.
The songs I picked to play that day were perhaps not the most adventurous of choices, but this was an important step in the journey that lead me to become a contributor here. And really, if there's a better song than "Sir Duke" out there, I've yet to hear it.
Although "Four Strong Winds" has been covered by dozens of artists, I'm most familiar with this version, recorded by Candaian-born Neil Young for his 1978 Comes a Time album. The song was written by Canadian folkie Ian Tyson (of the folk due Ian & Sylvia), and the song prominantly mentions the province of Alberta. Could it get any more Canadian?
Ian & Sylvia's version was a Canadian hit in 1963/64, and one can imagine it resonated with the young Young as he travelled around Canada shedding band members and girlfriends in pursuit of his musical dreams.
But I've often wondered if, when Neil recorded it in the late '70s, he was also thinking about himself and his erstwhile musical partners, Crosby, Stills, & Nash as those Four Strong Winds. Neil's on-again/off-again relationship with CSN neatly matches the narrator's ambivelance towards reuniting with his long-distance lover.
Neil Young's country album, Old Ways bears only a passing resemblance to his live shows of the time. The album is burdened with over-the-top, slick '80s country production, But his live backing band, the International Harvesters, could rock when called upon. "Grey Riders" is an unreleased song from their late '85 tour. It's one of my favorites from this period. Lyrically, it's little more than a rewrite of "Ghost Riders in the Sky", but it boils over with atmospheric intensity.
I seem to recall that at some point Neil was forced by the International Harvester Company to rename the band, and they became The Grey Riders in late '85, but so far the only confirmation I have of this is my own not-well-documented (and long-abandoned) research from my early days on the Internet and the cover of the ROIO used for this entry's photo (and we know how accurate they can be!), so I've stuck with the "International Harvesters" moniker for this recording.
Despite all the hiss on the recording, I've always been partial to this short, haunting piano ballad. It debuted in 1976 (this version comes from a concert in March of that year in Osaka, Japan). After laying dormant for years, it was revived for his 2007 tour. But like dozens of his songs, it remains officially unreleased.
Neil Young should have been on top of the world in 1973. The previous year's Harvest was a smash, producing the number-one hit "Heart of Gold". But on the tour to promote Harvest, everything started falling apart. Neil assembled a band mostly made up of the studio cats who played on the album, plus Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten. Danny was heavily into a heroin habit at the time, and even before the tour started, Neil had to fire him. He gave Danny money for a plane ticket home, but Whitten used the money to score some smack, ODed, and died. Neil was devastated, but the shows (65 dates) were already booked, so the show went on. Some of the studio musicians had trouble adapting to the grueling live concert schedule. Midway through the tour the drummer was replaced, and at the end of the tour Neil brought on erstwhile friends Crosby & Nash for moral and vocal support.
Neil played a clutch of previously unreleased, dark gems on this tour, and compiled them onto the his first live album, Time Fades Away. The public hated it, but over the years it has acquired a certain mystique among Neil affectionados, perhaps aided by Young's refusal to release it on CD. Many of the songs are solo piano numbers, but "Don't Be Denied" features the whole band. The song traces Neil's early history in Canada and ends with his disillusionment with the record industry. His voice is raw, and the emotion comes through. This is a guy in desperate need of a long rest.
It was the start of a difficult period for Neil that produced two other dark masterpieces, On the Beach and Tonight's the Night. You can pretty much tell how deep someone is into Neil by getting their opinion on the so-called "Ditch Trilogy".
How did fans come up with that moniker? In the liner notes to the Decade compilation, Neil put a maverick spin on this time in his life while discussing "Heart of Gold": "This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."
Star Maker Machine does not accept music submissions from artists or promoters. However, most of the contributors here do accept submissions for our own blogs, listed below. Please visit our blogs, take the time to listen to what we post, and then feel free to contact us if you feel that your music would be a good fit.
