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An unofficial news blog for Neil Young fans from Thrasher's Wheat with concert and album updates, reviews, analysis, and other Rock & Roll ramblings. Separating the wheat from the chaff since 1996.
Comment of the Moment: TRANS: A Little Bit of Essential Neil Young
"Transformer Man"
Neil Young w/ TRANS Band - In Berlin, 1982
Recently here on Thrasher's Wheat, we have been re-visiting and reassessing some of Neil Young's 1980's releases on Geffen Records, such as, TRANS: A Little Bit of Essential Neil Young.
"I thought it was really good shit. The only thing wrong with it is that I tried to hide it a bit by putting the things from Hawaii in there...I coulda put out the Trans EP with only the vocoder shit, and that would have been a cooler thing. But I wasn't really thinking clearly. Geffen wouldn't give the money to put out a video for Trans because videos were just starting....Would (that) have made a difference? Oh, yeah, definitely. I wanted to do a video album to go with Trans".
And:
"To me, Trans is one of my highest moments. Forget the acoustic things on it, get rid of those, get those OUT. Disregard EVERYTHING except that computer thing".
I generally agree with Neil's comments on this record. It's obviously something he has put a lot of consideration into, what "might have been". At the time, no one knew about his young son Ben's disability, or the challenges this presented in communication. And so the audience really had nothing to relate to, nothing to connect with. With some complex albums like this one, some context is necessary.
And I too think it would have worked better as an edgier EP. The end result is something that is trying to go in too many directions and not really getting anywhere. Jack of all trades, master of none. An EP would have made more of a statement and got noticed more.
I think some of you need to remind yourselves what a GREAT Neil Young record actually is. To be clear, a great IDEA that ends up getting scrambled by inconsistent songwriting, flat production, unremarkable performances, and record company interference is NOT a great album (though of course it may still be something worthy of admiration). That's an insult to an artist who created something like On The Beach, for instance, which did not allow itself to submerged by any of these problems and achieves greatness on pretty much every level (even down to the cover artwork).
There's a lot to admire on Trans, but I think the finished product (as a complete album) is very flawed. Perhaps with the changes Neil proposed it would have been a piece with a lot more impact.
Producer David Briggs on the Transband:
"It was a loadful working with those guys. They had to be so f**king drunk and stoned just to walk out onstage....I thought their performances sucked. It was always awful. Only Nils played great every night".
And:
"Can you imagine: Ralph and a bongo player? How would you like to play with a f**king bongo player? Neil knows nothing about chemistry or producing - he knows how to play and sing and write. Anytime he tries to do anything else, that band is how it turns out".
Jimmy McDonough adds an anecdote to this: in the nineties, Joel Bernstein listened to the soundboard tapes of the tour and didn't find a single performance fit for inclusion on the Archives.
I think in some ways the disaster of the tour rubbed off onto associated memories of the studio album, which despite it's defiencies, was more successful. The McDonough book is a good read on the Trans period (in the studio). He presents quite a sympathetic and balanced view of what could have easily been quickly and unfairly written off. Rogan's book is also good.
Scotsman.
Thanks Scotsman for all of the research as always. You are a true Neil scholar!
TRANS: A Little Bit of Essential Neil Young | Rocket 88
Neil Young - TRANS (1982)
Cropped Album Cover
Well, we had such a splendid reaction to running a review of a Neil Young album that came out 30 years ago, that we decided to dredge another review from the TW archives.
Here is an extract on a track titled ‘Sample And Hold’, from the much derided Neil Young album, Trans, which was released almost exactly 30 years ago.
‘Dinosaurs in the computer age.’ Thus spake Neil Young for his Transband at the end of several concerts on the European tour of 1982, the first live concert journey that Young had undertaken since Rust Never Sleeps four years earlier. The decision to choose Europe could be explained thus: Young’s European fans had missed out then and Europe in general, and Germany in particular, where the tour climaxed, was the home of the computerized sound that was to dominate his creativity during this Trans-sitional time.
The musical influence of the visionary Dusseldorf outfit Kraftwerk cannot be underestimated here. The band formed by Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider and three cohorts in Dusseldorf in 1969 had dented the US album charts in May of 1981 with Computer World, a clear homage to which was to appear on Trans, Young’s first album for his new label Geffen, in his song Computer Age. Kraftwerk’s status in pop history is substantial: between Autobahn in 1974 and The Mix in 1991, Hutter and Schneider developed a method where music wasn’t so much created as constructed. By the late 1990s their influence on modern music encompassed everything from electro and techno to house and ambient, and the output of everyone from Portishead, Orbital, Inner City, Leftfield and Prodigy, to LFO and Underworld.
Kraftwerk’s influence is at the musical heart of Trans, which is dominated by five tracks all employing computerized effects and the vocal distortions of the vocoder, a small machine attached to a microphone wire which could feed the human voice into a computer and allow it both the freedom of a four-octave range and the perfection and elongation of machine-made sound. In August 1981, Young bought himself a vocoder and started to record a group of songs that were to eventually appear on Trans, initially in his own upgraded studio, improved to take into account the restrictions in his professional life imposed by his son Ben’s learning disabilities. Here, then, we have another and more poignant link to Young’s thinking at the time: unsatisfied with some of the tracks he was laying down for the eventually discarded Islands In The Sun album, clearly nervous about being left behind as a 1970s rock dinosaur, looking for a new musical direction, what was more natural than to follow one integral to his early attempts to communicate with his son?
Young has said that the vocoder, with its ethereal, inhuman distortions reminiscent of Sparky’s Magic Piano, had allowed him to communicate with Ben, hence the hidden meanings behind a track like Transformer Man, where the computer literally electrifies the listener. If you have any doubts, try playing Transformer Man to a group of small children and watch their faces light up. Amazingly, Like A Hurricane doesn’t have the same effect.
The 1980s did mark a massive advance in computer technology in all fields, from air travel and home entertainment (VCRs, video games) to movies and medicine; and Trans, with its own take on an alien yet familiar computer-robot world, is surely influenced by Young’s experiences in hospital where so many doctors and paramedics were walking around just so ‘this kid could push a button’. As well as the statement of intent that is Computer Age, and the distinctive and personal Transformer Man, Young recorded three other vocoderized tracks for Trans, plus a halfway house retake on Mr Soul in which he sings a synthesized duet with his own natural voice. We R In Control is very much a homage to his old pals from Akron, Ohio, Devo, with its repeated slogans and jerky, rather threatening tempo, by far the least benign take on the invasion of machines. Computer Cowboy (aka Skycrusher) is an oddball, amusing retread of Frankie Laine country and western terrain, reminiscent not only of Young’s efforts on the soundtrack of the moribund film, Where The Buffalo Roams (1980), but of the 1973 mega-hit flick, Westworld, with its powerful image of Yul Brynner’s animatronic gunslinger on his own route to murderous mayhem. It has one of the funniest moments in the Young canon in its eery, synthesized cowboy chant: ‘Come a ky ky yippee yi yippee yi ay’.
But the highlight of this album, which is fatally diluted by some of the remaining tracks, is Sample And Hold, a very fine pop song in its own right, released as a disco 12-inch single with Mr Soul on the reverse, the disco version much heavier on drum machine and bass but with a nice trickle of churning, gruff guitar midway through. Sample And Hold has a superb, instantly catchy riff, heralded by Young’s one-string guitar invocation and features some splendidly theatrical vocal interplay on vocoders between Young and Nils Lofgren. Most splendidly, Sample And Hold is a very funny song, dealing with computer dating, not the kind where humans feed names and details into a machine but where the machines are the obscure objects of desire themselves. ‘I need a unit to sample and hold,’ Young demands in a dramatically deepened voice, thus showing why the computer sound of Trans is as much about distortion as about clarity, about language as a barrier as much as an avenue of communication.
Young has admitted in interview that at this time he was as interested in hiding his true state of mind behind his music as in revealing it to his fans. In four different versions of this song that I’ve heard, two recorded, two live, the words change subtly: Young doesn’t want an ‘angry’, ‘lonely’, lovely’, or could it be ‘hungry’ model; in concert in West Berlin he added ‘jealous’ to the range of adjectives. And is it a model which ‘you desire’, ‘you designed’, or simply ‘a new design’? This is a deceptively clever song which reminds me both of Paul Verhoeven’s classic film Robocop (admittedly not to be released for another five years!) and Bryan Forbes’ 1974 The Stepford Wives. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed in every detail,’ promises Lofgren’s dehumanized, angelic voice. ‘We know you’ll be happy,’ the manufacturers promise, unconvincingly but sincerely.
There’s a paradox here: computerized sound as a perfect musical method, love as a perfect state, but despite the good intentions of all concerned, happiness is unattainable merely through the consumer’s specifications. In Robocop (1987), Peter Weller’s robot law enforcer breaks down when he realizes he has known love and happiness in an earlier human form, and Sample And Hold shows the unbreachable gap between the slick world of technological precision and the complex reality of human relations. That isn’t to again say its awesome, but it is still has a potent appeal as an easily addictive piece of early 1980s pop funk.
So. TRANS. "Easily addictive piece of early 1980s pop funk." Or not?
Neil Young w/ TRANS Band, "Sample And Hold" - In Berlin, 1982
But, believe me when I say that Landing on Water is a good to very good to great album. I loved it when it initially came out, and it has only grown on me over the years.
I've always considered it the key central album in Neil's 80s work. It delineated and defined a significant turning point in Neil's mindset and recorded output. With it, we find Neil writing and singing catchy hook based melodic tunes while seeking public acceptance. Following the albums that came immediately before it, LOW was a solid effort finding Neil getting his feet firmly beneath him again while his head was still spinning with doubts. He was slowly escaping from his personal and professional musical mind chamber with introspective thought provoking lyrics of the time, augmented and at times dominated by overtly commercial studio synth pop production.
To me, it's the one album in Neil's career where he was truly trying to be commercial (be it seriously or as a statement of sorts). Jordan and Kootch were at the top of the 80s commercial rock/pop spectrum in '86 and they offered up the "standard" pop sound of the time, backing up and at times dominating Neil's lead.
Every song on the album has redeeming value. There are melodies, lyrics, vocals, and effects throughout that are catchy, thought provoking and curiously and endlessly interesting.
I'll never understand why people think the album is bad. It's a diverse yet cohesive work. Yes, it has a definite "dated" 80s sound to it, but again, that was largely Neil trying to be commercial, relevant and provocative, not ornery or defiant. The accompanying videos find him to be in a more sarcastic character based tone, but the album in its entirety is remarkably consistent.
Hippie Dream is an absolutely terrific song lyrically, and musically it has a boiling punch to it. But "the wooden ships--were a hippie dream, capsized in excess, if you know what I mean"...
Touch the Night combines angry screeching guitars, with a nice accompanying innocent chorus with very good vocals and matching catchy lyrics.
People on the Street, Weight of the World, Violent Side, I Got a Problem, Pressure, etc...are all engaging, fun, pleasant, thought provoking songs touching on fear, anxiety, internal and external doubt competing with an overriding humanity through some despair. The synth pop keyboard drumming dominance of the 80s is in full force, and it has always drawn me in, not away from the music.
Overall, I understand that we as fans all have our version(s) of Neil and his music that we are most closely drawn to. Clearly his 70s output is the "traditional" sound that elevated him to fame and has for the most part kept him there. His 80s work has largely been criticized and ignored, but there's value throughout, and Landing on Water is central to his "lost" decade. Neil was reaching out and finding his way back towards the mainstream, and quite successfully in my opinion.
"Take my advice
Don't listen to me"
and always remember, it's
"a victory for the heart every time the music starts
so please don't kill the machine, don't kill the machine..."
Thanks for the thoughts TopangaDaze! As you say, LOW is: "engaging, fun, pleasant, thought provoking songs touching on fear, anxiety, internal and external doubt competing with an overriding humanity through some despair." What more could you ask for in a Neil Young album?
CANNON BALL, NORTH DAKOTA — With snow falling near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, estimates ranged from 75 to 150 water protectors who remained at the Oceti Sakowin encampment just prior to the 2:00 p.m.- Central Time evacuation deadline on Wednesday, February 22, 2017.
Some people are refusing to leave the encampment. Tipis, yurt and temporary wooden structures still remain. Law enforcement have stated that people who refuse to leave will be arrested and items left behind will be bulldozed.
As the deadline came and went, police huddled on Highway 1806 to discuss strategies how to evacuate the encampment.
“They chased me. I heard them say that only North Dakota journalists could be in the pool they chose,” said Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo), an independent journalists who has been embedded at Standing Rock for several months. “I told them there was a man from New York in their pool, and then one of the police starting chasing me down the road.”
Several Facebook livestreams, including one by Monet, have been on Facebook on Wednesday afternoon. As the afternoon progressed, police began to arrests some journalists. Monet was arrested on February 1, 2017 and said she doesn’t want to get arrested today. However, Monet simply wants to do her job as a journalist.
Prior to the evacuation 2pm deadline, some scattered controlled fires were set to burn down wooden structures that were erected to shield water protectors from the bitter cold North Dakota winds. The smoke from the fires rose to the cloud covered skies.
The site of the largest gathering on American Indians in recent history, the Oceti Sakowin swelled to over 10,000 people at some times during the past several months. American Indians from over 350 tribal nations and allies from several points of the globe came to Standing Rock to show solidarity in their opposition of the Dakota Access pipeline.
A strongly militarized police force is dressed in riot gear and touting weapons are standing outside the main entrance to Oceti Sakowin.
I used to generally accept the common belief that “Landing on Water” by Neil Young was a lackluster album and thus didn’t give it enough of my attention for a good portion of my life.
Then, one day about 10 years ago, I figured I’d better take the time and listen to it again to make sure the album was really as poor as I’d been lead to believe. Since the time of my reevaluation, I have found myself reaching for Landing on Water more and more. And why not? I can’t just spend the rest of my days playing “After The Goldrush”. That would become rather dull after a while. As the wise scholar Robbie Krieger sang, “Variety is the Spice of Life”. See, that’s the beauty of Neil’s body of work; when you get too tired of the popular stuff you can swim in the muddy waters of his more eccentric works, and strangely his commercial successes and critical failures are often equally enjoyable, if one were to put aside all preconceptions of right and wrong.
“Landing on Water” is no different. It has its strengths and weaknesses like all the others. But after allowing myself to let my guard down and accept the unacceptable, I can safely say that I no longer feel that “Landing on Water” is a good Neil Young album.
“Landing on Water” is a GREAT Neil Young album.
Following two albums of genre extremism (the old-school rockabilly of “Everybody’s Rockin’” and the 100% pure, unfiltered country of “Old Ways”) Geffen records were fed up with Neil and his games. They wanted more of the same, more “Rust Never Sleeps”, more “Harvest”, not this new, bizarre experimentation. They threatened to sue Neil unless he coughed up something “Neil Young-ish”. Neil threatened to counter sue and after a lot of pushing and shoving all the suits were dropped. All this ugly business took its toll on Neil. His albums weren’t selling, his fans were turning their backs on him, the record label wouldn’t give him any money to record with, Sally Kirkland was suing him over some bogus injury she sustained on the set of “Human Highway”, and, to top it all off, his son Ben had severe cerebral palsy and Neil could do nothing about it. “Landing on Water”, his 1986 release, was Neil Young’s emotional response to the mountain of troubles that was finally starting to drag him down. It's as close to a musical nervous breakdown as he'd ever get.
"Landing on Water" is a return to modern rock, and Neil’s trademark electric guitar work is found all over the album, but sometimes you have to look for it, because Neil decided he wanted the beat up front, which I suppose was the hip thing to do at the time. This decision isn’t all bad, especially when you’ve got someone like Steve Jordan absolutely tearing it up. His playing is relentless and exciting, certainly the most ferocious drummer to ever appear on a Neil Young album. While I obviously enjoy Neil when he’s playing with the Horse, they tend to have only two gears – slow and slower. The albums that really give you a kick in the *** are the ones where Neil hooks up with a high-octane drummer who sends things into overdrive. Would songs like “I’m the Ocean” or “The Restless Consumer” have as much firepower if the Horse were chugging along? Look how the Horse took the wind out of the sails of “Rockin’ in the Free World” on “Weld”. Sometimes he needs more horsepower (no pun intended) under the hood, and Steve Jordan delivers big time. But at the same time the unbalanced mix does become frustrating. You have to strain at times to hear some really good stuff that’s going on in the background. Whereas most Neil Young albums feature songs with a lot of band interaction, this time there isn’t really a band. The trio of players didn’t really interact, giving the music a very cold, isolated vibe, which I think ideally illustrates the lyrical themes of the album.
I suppose one could look down on this album because maybe Neil is compromising and trying to make something commercial to get the record company off his back, no longer pursuing his whims into country music or rockabilly. Then again, is this really what the record label wanted? Isn’t he STILL flipping them the bird?
I don’t think Neil could be accused of not taking an album seriously. Just look at these songs. They are too good to dismiss. You might not like the style or the production but you have to appreciate the substance. He obviously believed in these songs at the time, just as he believed the emphasis on drums was the correct choice.
If the production scares you off, I suggest tracking down some live recording of the “Landing on Water” songs, which puts a little more of the human element back into them. A couple of songs were played ever so briefly in early 1984 and then they enjoyed a brief run on the 1986 tour following the album’s release. The “Landing on Water” material wouldn’t be revisited again until 1997 when “Hard Luck Stories” and “Hippie Dream” were dusted off at a Crazy Horse tour warm-up show in San Francisco. The synth-less version of “Hippie Dream” is a must hear for any true Neil Young fan. It’s the kind of hard rocking performance that can make smoke rise up out of your stereo speakers.The main riff is a chugging monstrosity, sounding like pile of rusted scrap metal being dragged across the cracked pavement of a garbage strewn tennis court in some post-apocalyptic world gone mad. It’s a mother of a song, and if you can’t appreciate it in it’s original form, maybe this more recent live rendition will make you a believer. If that doesn’t work, seek medical attention. There’s something wrong with you.
So here we have an album of strong, catchy songs, with a consistent production and reoccurring themes of anger, paranoia, self-loathing and depression running through it. It’s a total package, it documents an incredibly turbulent period in Neil Young’s life, and it’s probably sitting in the cut-out bin at your local music store.
1. Weight Of The World - A terrific synthesized beat drives this strong lead off cut. Maybe it sounds cheesy now but I don't care. I’m sure some will have trouble accepting a song like this coming from Neil. I’m sure many picked the needle off the record within the first 10 seconds. But you have to see beyond the dated style. Whether it’s Neil Young or The Thomson Twins, it doesn’t matter. It’s simply a great, catchy song. The herky-jerky beat sends me into violent convulsions. I wish Neil would revisit more songs from this album on his current tours, but I suppose a song like this is next to impossible to play live, unless he goes on tour with a wall of synths or a horde of robotic percussionists.
2. Violent Side - Pure 80’s. A sampled choir of children’s voices (like something out of a ‘Mike & The Mechanics’ song) disrupts an otherwise decent composition. A very dated production, but not completely unlikable. A far superior live rendition of this was performed by The Horse in early ’84. You’d be better off looking for that version. Every single time I hear the opening line, “Here comes the night…” I expect him to follow it with a Harrisonesque “doo-doo-doo-doo”, but of course he doesn’t (that would be madness). It may be a little too formulaic to be considered a career highpoint, but the lyrics are an essential chapter in this album’s dark tale.
3. Hippie Dream - If you only need one reason to buy this album, this is it. This is Exhibit A. You wouldn’t be out of line placing this song high on the list of Neil Young’s all-time best. It might even make the top 10. If Neil had spent the past few years playing characters and hiding his own true feelings in different genres, he finally kicks open the door for this powerful, angry and disgusted dissection of the decline of the oh, so great “Peace and Love” generation. They thought they were going to change the world, but instead they got wasted and either died along the way or turned to rust.
David Crosby had fallen victim to drug addiction. Neil had tried to help him but David didn’t get the message. He was too busy being coked up and toting an arsenal of guns on his drug-filled boat in Sausalito before finally finding his crack-head *** in jail, where he somehow managed to kick both cocaine and heroin cold turkey. And he wasn’t the only 60’s superstar in decline. Many of Neil’s contemporaries had turned into sad parodies of themselves by the 80’s, spinning their wheels, touring the oldies circuit, or sinking into sick debauchery until their royalty checks dried up. They got fat and slow while Neil stayed lean and mean and continued to explore new musical frontiers instead of getting embalmed. He never took the highroad. That is why he’s still going strong today.
Leave it to Neil to cut through all the bullsh** and tell it like it is. Even the 80’s style synthetic bass driven production that hampers much of this album cannot stop this wrecking ball from picking up steam as Neil throws his anger down in a frenzy of feedback drenched guitar psychosis. And it’s a goose bump moment when Neil hauntingly repeats “Don’t Kill The Machine” over and over and over again. One of his all-time best. Definitely.
4. Bad News Beat – Neil wears his sunglasses at night, or at least it sounds that way in this Corey Hart-ish piece of lightweight pop. “Bad News Beat” is often referred to as one of Neil’s all time worst, and it’s hard to disagree. The main riff is totally unoriginal and uninspired, but the verses are salvaged by a strong vocal performance from Neil who is in great voice throughout this album. His vocal is so strong and so full of energy that you almost have to believe that there is something more to this song that meets the eye. There is a sweet spot somewhere in the middle where snarling guitars bubble to the top of the pot and show you what might have been before sinking back down behind the onslaught of percussion and synths. Neil’s strange lyric seems to attack the media and lament the loss of his girl at the same time. Not one of his best.
5. Touch The Night - another standout on the album, with a cool music video to accompany it (check Youtube). In a way, this is the “Like a Hurricane” of the 80’s. It’s all there; a relentless, hammering beat, an epic guitar solo, a dramatic chorus. The choir of voices on the chorus is reminiscent of what Neil did with the recent “Living with War” album. If only the guitars were mixed up front to add some bottom end to it, then there would be no question of this album’s greatness. But people are afraid to give it a chance. I find this to be an arresting cut. I’d love to hear Neil play it live today and see what he does with it. The version from the ‘86 tour shows the Horse breathing new life into it, with Neil’s chaotic guitar shredding being brought onto the frontline where it belongs. Cross your fingers for an appearance on the Archive set.
6. People On The Street - An almost hip-hop beat starts off this song, followed by a vomit-inducing keyboard solo. But once that passes you find yourself in another catchy-as-all-heck song on what is supposed to be a bad album. How can an album loaded with such passion be a disappointment? A scale-climbing riff in the chorus is the real treat here, worth sitting though the somewhat unimaginative verses for, even if your pleasure is taken right back from you with the arrival of a weirdly soulful bridge that sounds like it came from an entirely different album. Lyrically, again, not his best, but they can’t all be “Powderfinger”, now can they?
7. Hard Luck Stories - The dated 80’s sound and synthetic bass really weighs this song down. And it’s too bad. There’s a good upbeat pop melody here. I think as a song it’s quite pleasant, but I can understand the disappointment with long-time Neil fans. It barely resembles any of his older work. This is what the popular production standards were at the time, though.
Why was he following the crowd? To satisfy the record label? Or was he truly inspired by this new style? You can’t blame Neil. A lot of good music got lost during this period, smothered by a technology-crazed recording industry. This was the “Invisible Touch” era, when records sounded like they were made by a Commodore 64 and the humans just stood by and watched it all unfold before their eyes. This song was played in 1997 in San Francisco in a more modern and satisfying (albeit typically sluggish) style by Crazy Horse.
8. I Got A Problem - Heavy duty riffing like only Neil can play it. This is the most Neil Young sounding of all the songs. It wouldn’t be out of place on the “Eldorado” E.P. Just an angry song, full of funky hellfire. In fact, this whole album is one big meditation on anger and negative feelings. What is the problem Neil is referring to? Well, for one, Neil was backed into a corner by Geffen Records and he didn’t like it. He came out swinging. “Every time we talk about it I break out in a cold sweat”. The music illustrates the pain he’s singing about perfectly. You can really feel his anxiety and tension. Maybe his anger was affecting his home life too. It seems like he’s doing some soul searching on this album, as if he feels guilty for being angry about his situation and the pressure he’s under. Speaking of pressure….
9. Pressure - A new wave techno seizure. It’s definitely interesting to hear Neil attempt something like this, but this cut may be a little too much of a shift in style for the “Sugar Mountain” fans to handle. This song is pure cyborg. A sharp, spastic Rolling Stones-style riff slashes your ears with a rusty scalpel before the schizophrenic chorus goes Mr. Roboto all over you’re a$$. A sampled primal scream is used for a keyboard solo. Another highlight of the album, and another example of Neil Young taking risks that few of his contemporaries would ever dare.
This album is pretty unique in Neil’s catalog, not only musically but lyrically as well. I can’t think of any other album of his where Neil expresses his vulnerability or bares his naked emotions so plainly, assuming that he’s being honest with us. He’s in trouble and he knows it and he thinks he’s cracking up and he’s looking for a way out. Powerful stuff. Don’t ever take this album lightly. Neil is in a bad way on it and while it sounds like it was a painful experience to go through, we the listener can reap the rewards by savoring this incredible piece of art that was born from Neil’s terror.
10. Drifter - The chord changes and tempo are very much in the traditional Neil Young style, but the repetitive, droid-like bleating guitar riff gets on my nerves after awhile. This is another song that could be a monster if he played it live. The lyric continues to let us know what’s really going on it Neil’s world. “Don’t try to fence me in/Don’t try to slow me down….I’ll stay until you try to tie me down….Don’t try to rescue me/I like to feel the wheel….”. He’s laying it all down on the line here. It almost plays like a concept album. It’s the story of what happens when the corporate thugs try to pull the reigns on an artist who thrives on creative freedom, and watching the results of this power struggle is fascinating. It’s good versus evil, both internally and external. He’s fighting the record company suits and fighting himself at the same time to regain control of his mind and soul.
When the music’s over I’m left with a slight feeling of sadness. The whole record sounds like a desperate cry for help. I always tend to think of Neil as a tough son of a gun who does what he wants when he wants and absolutely never compromises his art or takes any crap from “The Man”. He’s like an invincible super hero who never succumbs to the forces that are going against him. To listen to him here, with his back to the wall, faced with a future of uncertainty and insecurity, is a whole new experience for the listener. This record serves as a detailed journal of Neil Young’s physical and mental anguish during a terribly difficult period of his life. How can anyone dismiss an album like this? He tries to exercise some of his personal demons and manages to do it within the confines of infectiously catchy tunes. Those who have dismissed it, ignored it, or are befuddled by it, I advise you to take another look and try to hear what Neil is trying to tell you.
The Zodiac
Thanks Zodiac! Some mighty fine writing their with some real gems like your take on "Hippie Dream”: "It’s the kind of hard rocking performance that can make smoke rise up out of your stereo speakers. The main riff is a chugging monstrosity, sounding like pile of rusted scrap metal being dragged across the cracked pavement of a garbage strewn tennis court in some post-apocalyptic world gone mad."
After all, aren't we all just trying to land on water anyway?
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Human Highway
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This Land is My Land
FREEDOM In A New Year
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