Shakey: Neil Young's Biography. . .

May 16, 2002 9:26 AM

Shakey: Neil Young's Biography. . . Any big Neil Young fan, and I have to admit to being one, also spends a lot of time hating a lot of his artistic output (i. e. the cringe-enducing Let's Roll, as well as his all-over-the-map politics. In the LATimes book review Hal Epsen mentions that the reliably perverse Young has been a staunch Reagan supporter and proponent of the death penalty, as well as a devoted husband and a stalwart parent to three kids, two of whom were born with cerebral palsy. He also asserts that Young appeals almost wholly to male listeners. Young has been discussed here before but not, I believe his biography, which, as has been Neil Young's M. O. from the get-go, is a dictionary-perfect example of a "mixed bag."
posted by Danf (35 comments total)

I still like a lot of the music, but the man kind of disappoints me.
posted by zoopraxiscope at 9:37 AM on May 16, 2002

I still like a lot of the music, but the man kind of disappoints me.
posted by zoopraxiscope at 9:37 AM on May 16, 2002

Yeah, why don't the girls and women I know like Neil Young? Not even "Harvest Moon". Is it his squeaky voice? Or is it that they just can't forgive "Cowgirl in the Sand"?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:38 AM on May 16, 2002

From the Back Cover
“Most people did their best work when they were younger. Neil Young is as good as he ever was, which is quite an accomplishment.... ” — Randy Newman
Only a tone-deaf hack like Randy Newman would think that Neil Young is "as good as he ever was." Young is smart not have dug himself into a rut like most artists. But the main reason he keeps moving and keeps changing is to disguise the fact that he (like all older rockers) burned through all his talent and originality while he was still in his 20s. But that's okay, that's rock and roll.
posted by Faze at 9:42 AM on May 16, 2002

thus spoke mig:

Yeah, why don't the girls and women I know like Neil Young? Not even "Harvest Moon".

tanya donnelly -- one of the most determinedly feminine presences in alt.rock, and certainly among the girliest girls to hold and play an electric guitar well -- lists harvest moon in her top ten favourite albums and has cited neil young as an influence in her work. not that she is representative of all women, but hey.
posted by pxe2000 at 10:03 AM on May 16, 2002

It was a long time before I could enjoy any of his songs because I couldn't get past how whiny he was. It made me cringe.
posted by jojo at 10:11 AM on May 16, 2002

Sometimes, when my wife is out with the girls, I put on Weld or a boot of him playing with The Ducks and rock out.

Welfare mothers
Make better lovers.

But I don't know... I don't think I could get whole hog into Young (even though we share the same birthday). Some of his songs are teeth-grindingly awful.

He has, however, been hugely influential on other favorites of mine like Sparklehorse and Giant Sand, not to mention Nirvana. That fuzzy guitar keeps popping up, doesn't it?

Oh and his music for Dead Man is sublime. That's what made me seek out more of his catalog.
posted by Kafkaesque at 10:13 AM on May 16, 2002

Guys like Neil more than girls because we can sing along with him and not worry about whether or not we sound good. No matter how badly you sing, you won't sound worse than Neil. It's the same principle with Bob Dylan.
posted by yhbc at 10:15 AM on May 16, 2002

Oddly, "Welfare Mothers (Make Better Lovers)" gets most of his female audience on their feet singing along passionately. Coming from the man who also penned "Expecting to Fly," I've long said Neil Young is the only man hanging from a cross in my household (and I'm far from being the biggest fan).
Thanks Danf for a "good morning" post.
posted by G_Ask at 10:20 AM on May 16, 2002

I've been reading this all week, as huge fan of (some of) his music and as someone fascinated by his artistic choices. Impressions:

1. He went through an incredibly trying time in 1980, after the birth of his son Ben. (cerebral palsy, quadriplegic, non-oral) Not only did he and his wife participate for eighteen months in a painful, all-consuming 12-hour a day "patterning" program to help his infant son achieve his potential, but he never told anybody about the problem (other than his closest associates). Thought it was too personal. The genre swerving albums that followed (esp. re-act-or and trans), even the personas he adopted (far right winger, country singer, were dumped on his record company and fans with no context, yet they flowed directly from the fact that this experience completely knocked him off kilter. The world didn't find out the reason until the late eighties.

2. His life story is -- literally -- one of horrible treatment of others, in the name of artistic purity. His biography is littered with employes and band members fired on a whim, even after they had set aside other obligations and re-arranged their lives. Typical was the experience of Crazy Horse's bassist one year; after the band broke for Christmas, he never got a call to come back. Neil decided to go a different way. Also, one comment I hadn't heard that shocked me: a mid-80s musing to the effect that "nobody who doesn't want AIDS would want to shop at a grocery store with some faggot working behind the counter."

3. He is an incredibly insecure as a musician (with good reason, some might say). HIs favorite collaborators, Crazy Horse, can barely play their instruments, and when he's got them cooling their heels, waiting for his call, he's hiring extremely talented sidemen that he demands play as dumb as possible, micromanaging their performances down to the tap of a hi-hat. A favorite recording technique: run through a song one time to learn it, and then to announce that tape was rolling, and that was the take. To be fair, he says he's trying to capture the loosest possible music, but you have to wonder.

4. No surprise here, but his audience is of absolutely no concern to him. It's a little unnerving how adamant he is about this. And it's not like his artistic judgements are unerring, either -- they're often horrible. He just doesn't care. In getting out of his Geffen deal, he had his manager negotiate down by 50%, just so he wouldn't feel so beholden to the record company.

5. Somebody needs to write a book about the decadent L.A. music scene circa mid-70s. One great anecdote has somebody driving off one morning in their hearse (!) and jumping out of their skin at a knocking and scratching from the back. It was Bob Dylan, who had fallen asleep there the night before. He hitchiked back home.

There's lot's more, but I would recommend this book to anybody with a passing interest in any period of Neil's work. You'll like him less, but understand him a bit better.
posted by luser at 10:22 AM on May 16, 2002

Sorry bout the typos, knocked that out quick. I was going more for the feel than the quality. (like neil)
posted by luser at 10:25 AM on May 16, 2002

One of the many times I've seen him was during his "Tonight's the Night" period.

The Roxy on the Strip in LA. . .very hard ticket to get and he came out and played terribly AND (I'm putting no positive or negative spin on this) his then-wife Carrie Snodgrass got up on stage and danced topless for a number or two.
posted by Danf at 10:29 AM on May 16, 2002

Only a tone-deaf hack like Randy Newman

Only someone who's never listened to, say, 12 Songs or Good Old Boys would ever say such a thing. Bad Love earned better reviews than anything Neil Young's done since Ragged Glory. He's great in concert too. So he does hack songs for Hollywood? God help him, he wants to make some dough. He still hasn't sold out one-fourth as much as Moby or three-fourths of today's rockers and countless other, supposedly hepper musicians. And those movie songs aren't unlistenable.
posted by raysmj at 10:36 AM on May 16, 2002

Those movie songs are big black holes, wherever they appear. It's especially embarrassing when they show up in kids' films, and you can imagine these kids wondering why on earth the older generation thinks listening to some man grunting unintelligibly in a phony Negro accent qualifies as entertainment -- especially in the midst of some otherwise superbly craftsmanlike movie like "Toy Story." Say what you want about Neil Young, but that whiny voice is all his -- unlike Randy Newman's Stepin Fetchit mumble.
posted by Faze at 10:47 AM on May 16, 2002

I'd like to make a clarification. His voice is not really whiny... it sounds like somesome whacking on a bag full cats with a wiffleball bat.

"Keep on Whackin-on-a-cat-baaaaag"
posted by tj at 11:01 AM on May 16, 2002

Young has been a staunch Reagan supporter and proponent of the death penalty, as well as a devoted husband and a stalwart parent to three kids

Iis this implying that Reagan supporting pro-death penalty people can't be good parents, because that's what I'm getting out of it?
posted by Mick at 11:10 AM on May 16, 2002

Faze: Actually, I've sat with kids watching "Toy Story" and they didn't seem to care either way.
posted by raysmj at 11:39 AM on May 16, 2002

You are correct, Mick, that is exactly what Hal Epsen is implying, and I resent it, too, for a slightly different reason -- the L.A. Times letting it get into print just puts food on Ann Coulter's table. Liberal journalists are way too sloppy about letting their bias show. Even if it's a bias I share;)
posted by luser at 11:42 AM on May 16, 2002

I caught Crazy Horse live about 5 years ago now .. it was a good show. But I recall wondering why they didn't know how to finish a song. A 3 minute song, then 5 minutes to close it.
posted by Mondo at 11:50 AM on May 16, 2002

Faze: I take it you never heard Neil's attempt at R&B records, including This Note's for You and some of his latest record? He shouldn't really bother, even with Booker T. and the MGs as a backup group.
posted by raysmj at 11:53 AM on May 16, 2002

And then there's the theory that, how do I say it, Neil Young sucks. At everything but making some people believe he doesn't. No small feat, that. But it's just a theory.

I went through 4 years of Photo Club in High School with two albums on the darkroom stereo, Harvest and Workingman's Dead. Thirty years, and I still haven't recovered.
posted by tommasz at 12:17 PM on May 16, 2002

Every Neil Young CD in my house was purchased by my wife. She also has bought us tickets to three of his concerts. Not that I mind, I like his music.

On the flip side of that, I drag my wife along for They Might be Giants shows.
posted by DragonBoy at 12:26 PM on May 16, 2002

grunting unintelligibly in a phony Negro accent

That's probably been said of just about every rock n' roll act since Elvis. Must be some kind of a trend there.

The guy is from Louisiana, and he sounds more southern than "Negro" to me.

I think Newman's voice (and he is mushmouthed, to be sure) goes well with his piano and composition style. More of a ragtime or tin pan alley sound, than the bluesier style of other piano playin' southerners like Dr. John or Mose Allison. Or maybe they're "phony Negoes" too.
posted by groundhog at 12:28 PM on May 16, 2002

his all-over-the-map politics

Geez, that's on of the reasons I like and respect Neil so much, he'd rather bruise a few delicate sensibilities than march in lockstep.

the fact that he (like all older rockers) burned through all his talent and originality while he was still in his 20s.

Now, if we were talking about Messrs. Crosby, Stills and/or Nash, I'd agree, as they all did their best work in their pre-superstardom youth(and before hooking uo with eachother, but that's another thread). Neal has made a few gaffe's but that's only because he's dared to venture afeild rather than stick with formula. I haven't yet read the bio, but it's on my shortlist.

BTW, Neil's best album is Tonight's the Night rivaled only by the Stones' Exile on Main Street as a chronicle of exhaustion and decay.
posted by jonmc at 12:30 PM on May 16, 2002

To summarize:

Some people be liking the Neil Young
Some people not be liking the Neil Young

This phenomenon can be represented in three dimensions by the use of a handy visual aid like salt and pepper shakers. The salt: people who be liking the Neil Young. The pepper: people who not be liking the Neil Young.

The moral? The people who not be liking the Neil Young can irritate your nasal cavities, while the people who be liking the Neil Young can give you heart problems and result in water retention.

Both these people give otherwise bland foods such as scrambled eggs a zesty zing we can all appreciate.
posted by Kafkaesque at 12:35 PM on May 16, 2002

I be liking the kafkaesque
posted by luser at 12:38 PM on May 16, 2002

Groundhog, Newman's speaking accent is distinctly different from his singing accent. Of course, it's not the kind of hilariously wild dichotomy as exists between, say, Mick Jagger's speaking and singing accents.
posted by Faze at 12:48 PM on May 16, 2002

Or Robert Pollard's.
posted by jennyb at 1:15 PM on May 16, 2002

Randy Newman grew up in Bel Air, CA. . .that's where the Beverly Hills people go when they get REALLY rich.
posted by Danf at 1:19 PM on May 16, 2002

danf: Yeah, he grew up in L.A. But he lived in the South during his earliest years, until age seven or so, in cities including New Orleans (most notably), Jackson, Miss. and Mobile, Ala. His mom's from New Orleans too, so there was always that influence and, one can probably safely assume, regular trips to the city.
posted by raysmj at 2:34 PM on May 16, 2002

Yeah, why don't the girls and women I know like Neil Young? Not even "Harvest Moon". Is it his squeaky voice? Or is it that they just can't forgive "Cowgirl in the Sand"?
More like "Down by the River"--"I SHOT my baybee--dead, dead, oohh, shot her dead, yeah."
On the other hand, Harvest in on my top twenty list, and I will listen to Cinnamon Girl anywhere, anytime; and The Needle and the Damage Done is a small, perfect masterpiece. YMMV.
posted by jokeefe at 2:54 PM on May 16, 2002

I dunno jokeefe, shootin' your baby down seems to be a rock tradition that did not originate with Neil...Remember Hendrix(written by Dino Valenti actually)..."Gonna go and shoot my old lady caught 'er messin around with another man" or even the Beatles: "Run for your Life if you can little girl, catch you with another man, that's the end." So Far only Cher has complained; "Bang Bang my baby shot me down."

Perhaps The Donna's can do "Hey Jo" to rectify the situation....or something.
posted by jonmc at 3:09 PM on May 16, 2002

jesus wept. - john 11:35
neil sucketh. - quonsar 23:skid00
posted by quonsar at 5:51 PM on May 16, 2002

jokeefe. . the Indigo Girls cover "Down by the River" and cite it as one of their favorite songs. . and it absolutely works, done by them.

Go figure. . .. .
posted by Danf at 6:16 PM on May 16, 2002

I went through 4 years of Photo Club in High School with two albums on the darkroom stereo, Harvest and Workingman's Dead. Thirty years, and I still haven't recovered

I don't really think that Neil Young or the Grateful Dead is the problem here. It's probably getting your ass kicked daily because you spent 4 years in the photo club.
posted by ttrendel at 12:01 AM on May 17, 2002