ESSAY: Young Shakespeare by Neil Young | Bob Lefsetz

_#7    #6- "Young Shakespeare" - Neil Young

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As Neil Young's astonishing surge in productivity continues to amaze folks half his age -- or even a third or quarter his age, for that matter -- rusties continue to revel in the fact that "The focus was the gift".

As an "avalanche of an embarrassment of riches" cascades down the mountains -- or as we characterized previously -- Expecting to Calculate Neil Young 2021: Numbers Add Up To Nothin' ... or "A Rusties Holy Grail" -- we bring you a rather personal essay by the inimitably irreverent music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz and his thoughts on Neil Young's newest archival release "Young Shakespeare", recorded in 1971. 

Young Shakespeare by Neil Young 

 

From Bob Lefsetz's newsletter on Young Shakespeare Neil Young: 

So “Young Shakespeare” starts off with…

Applause.

And then picking, it’s “Tell Me Why,” but it’s solo acoustic, the notes are still there, but Neil’s vocal dominates, and the sound is pure, assuming you’re listening on a good system you’re jetted right back to the era, when a good system was everything, when we needed to get closer to the music. It’s fifty years later, but Neil is right there in the speakers, as if not a day has gone by.

But it’s the second song, a left turn, a new one, that makes you realize this project is different, memorable. Neil gives an intro, an explanation, in an era before you could excavate the meaning of all these songs, but if you were in the hall… “Old Man” is intimate, in all iterations, but especially here, sans the penumbra, stripped down to just the core elements, A YEAR BEFORE IT WAS COMMERCIALLY RELEASED! You’re listening, wondering what it was like being in the venue. Sure, most people see new music as anathema, but there’s a thin layer of artists, a very thin layer, who can pull it off, draw your attention and keep it. And one of those is Neil Young. Here “Old Man” is a song, not a statement. Long before it emanated from everybody’s speakers throughout campus.

But the real surprise is “Ohio,” which we always saw as a record, not a song, something that was of a time and place, the spring of 1970, not 1971, when this version was performed. And I’m listening and I’m thinking how much worse things are today, how we never could have predicted this, how back then if you were a music fan, if you listened to Neil Young, if you were a boomer, you shared a mind-set. The thought of rednecks, conservatives loving this music? IMPOSSIBLE! We had an army, and we all belonged. And it wasn’t so much Woodstock itself, but the movie and the triple album set nearly a year later, in April 1970, that made us realize we were more than a tribe, that we were the dominant force.

And if you bought “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,” you knew the concomitant track to “Down by the River” on the second side, “Cowgirl in the Sand,” with a memorable melody and lyrics, but it was the instrumental interludes that made it stick out, don’t forget, this was when the Allman Brothers were starting to stretch out.

Even more interesting than “Old Man” is the medley of “A Man Needs a Maid and “Heart of Gold,” once again a year before they were released commercially. I’m sitting here thinking how you can’t say that anymore, that a man needs a maid, whatever your intention might be, it just sounds bad. And “A Man Needs a Maid” is the opposite of today’s music, it’s heavy and meaningful, that’s one of the main reasons you listened to “Harvest,” to marinate in not only the sound, but the words, this was a personal statement and it was clear that not only did we need to listen to it, we had to embrace it. AM music was disposable, FM music was not. And the funny thing is sans the strings, all that production, “A Man Needs a Maid” is just as heavy, just as meaningful, but more direct, there’s no scrim between the performer and the listener, it’s all up front and personal.

...

Hard to think that music was once scarce, where if you didn’t own it you couldn’t hear it. They sold live albums back then, usually as doubles, a career retrospective, a cheap dash for cash. But unreleased live recordings? Those were gold! Maybe you snuck your cassette deck into the gig, but there was no trading online, to have a recording of what once was…was nearly unfathomable. And “Young Shakespeare” is like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the past come to life. Not only was this show recorded, unlike with the scrolls, the sound is pristine, better than most records today! It’s not squashed, the bandwidth is not filled up with detritus to the point it’s impenetrable, “Young Shakespeare” is naked! Despite all the social media platforms, that’s what we’re looking for today, the stripped-down version, the raw truth, not for cash, but because it must be told. We don’t want endless memoirs in search of notoriety, we don’t want people online testifying to how bad they have it, what we’re looking for is someone not so dissimilar to ourselves laying out their truth, and we can listen or not, it’s our choice. That’s how music was back then, you were either in the know or you weren’t. Then again, albums like “Harvest” changed that paradigm.

But “Young Shakespeare” was recorded before “Harvest.”

How can something so old be so new? I guess that’s what happens when you lose your way, see the goal as being a brand as opposed to an artist.

But if you were around back then…

Pull up “Young Shakespeare.” Even cherry-pick the tracks. You’ll be stunned they’re all there, in faithful renditions.

And we listened to these songs so much back then we knew them by heart, not only the hits, but the album tracks, listen for the applause of recognition on these cuts. There are few things better than when you’re at the show and the act plays your favorite, you think they’re doing it just for you, you beam, you glow, you want the experience to last, but it does not.

But this show we were unaware occurred has been unearthed and it’s just like being there way back when.

And this album ain’t going to the top of the chart, nothing is gonna happen with it, it’s just for you, you either care or you don’t.

And if you do…

You yearn for the experience of yore, when it was just you and the music, that was all you needed, and when you push play, that’s where you’ll go, back to that seventies cocoon, when music drove the culture, when it was everything. Don’t let it bring you down, as long as these recordings are hiding in plain sight there’s a chance young people will be inspired and go down the road less taken, deliver ubiquity through the personal, satiate us, make life worth living.

 

Full review and analysis on Bob Lefsetz's newsletter on Young Shakespeare Neil Young:.

Also, see Notes on Neil Young Album "Young Shakespeare" - A Telegram from the Scotsman.

Young Shakespeare Deluxe (CD, LP & DVD) 

Neil Young's new release  "Young Shakespeare" is now available.

Order here

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