We've discussed many times before that Neil Young is a "time traveler".
Numerous examples abound from "After The Goldrush" to TRANS and "Like An Inca" to "Hitchhiker" to "The Visitor". We even have a resident "time traveler" expert here at TW who drops by from time to time to comment. Hello Jim.?!
From Zuma: Sequoia Anderson on time traveling through Neil Young’s Zuma, featuring photographs by Kat Bawden | Doctor Dr:
In 1975, when Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe asked Neil Young about his forthcoming album, Young said “I think I’ll call it My Old Neighborhood. Either that or Ride My Llama.” That album would be released as Zuma in November of that same year, and as Young says in the interview, “It’s weird. I’ve got all these songs about Peru, the Aztecs, and the Incas. Time travel stuff.”More on Zuma: Sequoia Anderson on time traveling through Neil Young’s Zuma, featuring photographs by Kat Bawden | Doctor Dr.
The album came fresh off the death of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, and a period of general interpersonal turmoil for Young, who fled his ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains to escape the people he had surrounded himself with there.
Mojave Kat Bawden
None of that context meant anything to me, of course, the first time I heard Cortez the Killer pooling out of the studio monitors at 88.9 KUSP, a now defunct public bandwidth originally housed just a handful of miles from Young’s Broken Arrow ranch. My godfather helmed a late night program there, which my father, my uncle, and I would cohost on occasion. The facilities at KUSP, and the nights spent digging through the stacks, were my halcyon days of musical firsts and explorations, and as such Cortez may have been my first experience of music as something totally vast. The song clocks in at seven-and-a-half minutes, which is an eternity when you are young, and is an eternity for radio programming. It’s a song you could live inside, and to some extent all the songs on Zuma are.
Elizabeth Cook & Mr. Jeremy Dylan
My Favorite Album #227 - Elizabeth Cook on Neil Young's ‘Zuma’ (1975) | MrJeremyDylan
- LYRICS ANALYSIS: "After The Goldrush"
- The Story of Neil Young’s Heavily Computerized, Utterly Bewildering ‘Trans’
- "TRANSCRIPT: Neil Young's Track by Track Commentary on New Album 'Hitchhiker' .
- TRANS: A Little Bit of Essential Neil Young | Rocket 88
- ZUMA Payload for SpaceX Rocket: Is There A Connection to "The Visitor" in November?
- NEW ALBUM: ‘The Visitor’ by Neil Young + Promise of the Real
- Time Travel Comments on Stills-Young Band by Jim M.
- Time Travel Comments on Hitchhiker by Jim M.
Zuma Beach is Burning: We Are NOT Helpless
Zuma Beach, CA - November 9, 2018
Evacuated llamas tied to an LA County lifeguard stand
Neil Young's Bus: ZUMA
Florida License Registration + Linc-Volt Plate
Florida License Registration + Linc-Volt Plate
one giant heart attack for the rust community."
Astronaut Neil Young
Born on November 12, 1945, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
(See Relax Everyone ... Neil Young is NOT dead | NBC News Mistakenly Reports the Death of 'Astronaut Neil Young' - National - The Atlantic Wire.)
Neil & POTR playing a pre-Farm Aid show in Indianapolis on September 19th. Tickets on sale tomorrow with NYA subscribers getting first crack at tickets
ReplyDeleteA welcomed announcement. Particularly for those who can make the show in Indianapolis.
ReplyDeleteWish someone had asked about what inspired the "time travel" songs for Neil Young all those years ago and curious if anyone has a list of the unreleased ones?
ReplyDeleteAs I've said elsewhere here am wondering if he had some past life readings, past life regression or a series of dreams that inspire them? However, that is purely speculation on my part.
They certainly had an influence on me and my studies into such matters. It seems to me this is all stuff you need to discover from within.
For me the investigation of time travel happened when a car load of friends stalled on a railroad track and will killed instantly when I was 19 years old in 1974. Dear friends here with me one minute and gone the next sort of hit me in the face to ask deeper questions of life at an early age.
"And I know she's living there
ReplyDeleteAnd she loves me to this day
I still can't remember when
Or how I lost my way."
Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer"
Thanks guys in Indy news. posted
ReplyDelete@ Jim - Glad you dropped by. Just saw your email lots there and let's see what we can do. 1974 was a pretty heavy time.
If you have streaming Netflix I would strongly encourage fans of Neil Young's "time travel" songs to visit Joseph Campbell (1904 to 1987) and Bill Moyers' "Power Of Myth." It first aired from George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch back in the late 1980's but is more relevant today and right now then ever given the "news of the day now."
ReplyDeleteIf you watched the "Power Of Myth" when it aired I would say to go directly to episode three. There is a fascinating aspect to this that holds you complete attention so don't have any distractions when watching this, none.
This is pretty heavy stuff and this series really explains in a profound manner what Neil Young means when he uses the term, "weld."
This might be the greatest interview ever done by two human beings on any topic but especially on the subject of transcendence both verbally in the interview and visually in the artwork.
@ Jim - thanks for suggestion. Will definitely add "Power Of Myth" to our watchlist.
ReplyDeletesee you on the other side...
Pardon this intrusion, as as usual I don' know what I'm doin'. I take corrections and directions in a good spirit.
ReplyDeleteI got here by researching "After the Gold Rush," and read some old posts from 1993.
About "understanding" art: The real stuff is not amenable to demand or will, it really does just come out of nowhere--but not without meaning, yea, it is pregnant with meaning--beyond, possibly or probably, "definition." It is to be absorbed and accepted, but not "understood" in the sense of converting it to mere language. It's like a "peak experience." It is fleeting, like, if I may reduce the meta-language to words, a shooting star. Those who know that shooting stars are not really stars but dust and other pieces from the firmament may not yet (or ever?) experience the experience transformative. “The stuff that dreams are made of.” This is a feeble effort to scrawly on the wall, signifying everything beyond our transitory existence . . . yeah, ‘like’ those shooting stars. I accept that-- “but oh what a lovely light!” (from either Edna St. Vincent Millay or Dorthy Parker—I forget which)