November 1 - 7, 2007
buzz@boulderweekly.com

Last Man Standing
Neil Young has made a career out of being misunderstood
by Ben Corbett

Music industry moguls are desperately seeking some way to give Neil Young a Grammy, but until he gets with the program and signs exclusives with Starbucks, he’ll likely be denied. Not that this matters much to the Canadian-born rocker with a career spanning more than four decades, and who was comfortable enough with his achievements and immigration status to record the subtly titled “Let’s Impeach the President” for his 2006 release, Living With War. No doubt Young checked with his lawyers before doing something so foolish. And it’s hard to say whether the president lost any sleep over the affair, but it’s possible. After all, doesn’t Bush seem like someone who might hammer down the Texas highway singing “Heart of Gold” word-for-word along with the radio and actually feeling it? Can you see the goose pimples exploding on Bush’s arms like feather pores on chicken skin as he croons “...and I’m getting old”?

The visual doesn’t require a big stretch of the imagination, any more than the idea that Young actually installed “boo-o-meters” on the 2006 CSNY Living With War tour, later citing Irvine, Fresno, Atlanta and St. Louis as winners for the most fan walkouts. “I was encouraged and rejuvenated by the reaction,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. That’s Neil Young. Does whatever he wants. Loved for it. Last man standing for the anti-war version of the Hippie Dream in a nation of growingly insufferable stupidity. And in the end, all those seats vacated by the exodus of shocked and outraged were quickly filled by people stuck back on the lawn who scrambled down with shit-eating grins to reposition themselves. Beautiful stuff.

Since early 2005, Young has been writing and releasing a flurry of new material amounting to an album a year, beginning with Prairie Wind (along with the film version titled Heart of Gold) which was quickly recorded when doctors diagnosed a brain aneurysm in the then-60-year-old singer-songwriter. After recovering from surgery, Young went on to record Living With War, an album inspired by the lack of younger musicians coming out musically against the war in Iraq. Released last month, Chrome Dreams II is an album concept echoing back to the original Chrome Dreams album project that, along with another album called Homegrown, Young abandoned back in 1976. The original unreleased Chrome Dreams included rare takes of the songs “Pocahontas,” “Like A Hurricane,” “Powderfinger,” “Look Out for My Love,” and “Too Far Gone,” among others. Essentially scrapped, these rough-hewn versions eventually found their way onto a bootleg while the officially published versions were slowly dropped into a string of albums cut between 1977 (American Stars ‘N Bars) and 1989 (Freedom).

Chrome Dreams II doesn’t contain any of these classic morsels. And teaming up with longtime musical conspirators Ben Keith from the Harvest years, as well as Ralph Molina from Crazyhorse, and bassist Rick Rosas, Young doesn’t try to aspire to that epoch or sound. Aside from the grinding 18-minute workingman’s ballad “Ordinary People” (originally written for the Bluenotes album in 1988) and the opening track “Beautiful Bluebird,” Chrome Dreams II, much like Living With War, is brand new Neil Young on new terms. And from severe attacks to dreamy gush to apologist meanderings, the critics are picking it apart.

Said Young recently to the New York Times about the media attacks on Living With War, and this genre of music he jokingly called metal-folk: “The hits that I took on that were multi-level, mostly based on political beliefs. If somebody didn’t believe in what the record was saying, they hated the record and everything about the record and me and the way I didn’t care about my music anymore. ‘There’s not a creative drop left in this mother,’ ya know? ‘He’s got nothing to add.’ And I’m going, ‘I got through to him, I got through to those people, I definitely touched a nerve.’ If they have to turn around and attack you, then you know you got to them.”

Obviously bad criticism doesn’t rest well with Young, but he addresses the issue in Chrome Dreams II in the closing track, “The Way,” backed by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City:

“When faceless and anonymous/Come to beat down your door/And say you’re all washed up and done/ You can just say they have nothing in store/ To touch this soul/Because they just don’t know/They just don’t know/The way.”

If the critics are being harsh with Young lately, they’ll no doubt really savor the companion DVD that comes in the special edition of Chrome Dreams II, consisting of a 66-minute montage of still photos of peeling paint and rust on Young’s new car restoration project: a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV whose motor he’s converting to electric and biofuels. Young intends to drive the Lincoln to Detroit, offering a working alternative to the current fossil fuel addiction and war associated with it.

The problem with critics and Young’s art has always been one of expectation and disappointment, as much as gleam-eyed fans trotting off (“Oh, honey, let’s go see Neil Young!”) to the concert expecting to hear hits like “Heart of Gold” and “Unknown Legend,” and instead Young gives them 20 minutes of head-ripping “Cinnamon Girl” feedback, grinning his ass off while breaking all the strings on his guitar because that’s what excites him at the moment. In the same way, critics who nail Young as being washed-up probably never knew that this particular musician is such a perfectionist that in the late ’70s he held up the release of his three-album retrospective Decade for more than a year because he simply couldn’t find the right cover art. As for what we might call “poetic depth,” on his recent 2003 album/film/play Greendale, Young scripts a cheerleader in the cast to chant: “Attention shoppers: Buy with a conscience and save!” which can be taken at its literal meaning, as consumer parody, or self-parody, take your pick. As H.L. Mencken once wrote: the only job of the critic is to try to understand what the artist wanted to do, and then to decide whether or not he pulled it off. If anything, Young can be accused of not revising enough. But the elder Neil Young doesn’t try to be the 30 year-old that he once was, penning overworked, clever tunes that bewilder and amaze and baffle and impress. Since the 1992 release of Harvest Moon, Young’s new means of expression seems to be country simplicity vs. cerebral complexity in a way that rivals even Hank Williams. This is the new Neil Young, still vital whether you get it or not, take him or leave him. There will always be another fan to fill that seat.

“I’m still writing the same song over and over again, and I know that,” Young said recently and unapologetically. “I’ve got 45 albums. What do you expect?”

Certainly not a Grammy. But who wants one anyway?

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com

On the Bill
Neil Young will perform at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 5, at the Wells Fargo Theater at the Colorado Convention Center, 700 14th St., Denver, 303-228-8000.

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