Opinion of Neil Young

[anvi]

Someone recently told me that Nell Young has never had and still doesn't have much a a fan base.  I'm not objective, so I don't know, and thought I'd run this poll here just to see.  He has had some controversial political shifts in his career and is generally outspoken, but does lots of good charity work.  Over a 50-year career, he has experimented with a lot of musical genres, but is probably only really good at two or three.  Of course, there is the "shaky voice" too. Vote and/or tell me what you think.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Godawful.

[anvi]

Godawful.

Why, Grumps?

[dead0man]

Godawful.

communist

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Godawful.

Why, Grumps?

His voice sounds like a needle scratching an album, anvi.  You, me and deadman, understand what an album is. 

[anvi]

Yeah, he definitely has a "unique" voice.  I think the guy who recorded his first single told him he would never make it as a singer--maybe he worded it wrong--maybe he should have told Neil he shouldn't be a singer.    And he wrote several pieces for Buffalo Springfield that the band wouldn't let him sing lead on for their albums, selecting Richie Furay to sing them instead.  I sure can't hit those notes, not without a pole vault, anyway.  But I think it sounds like the voice of a vulnerable teenager, and bringing that out was part of his early routine.

[Hatman 🍁]

Godawful.

Why, Grumps?

Because he is Canadian, duh.

Not sure about the US, but Neil Young has a fan base here. Due to CanCon regulations he is overplayed on Classic Rock stations.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Godawful.

Why, Grumps?

Because he is Canadian, duh.

That would typically be good enough, but I like Rush and Triumph so neh, not today.

[anvi]

Because he is Canadian...

Yeah, but given the general track record, this fact tends in my case to increase the likelihood that I'll like a musician. 

[WalterMitty]

i am a fan.

but he has such a large body of work that some of it is just crap.

always one of my favorite performers to see live, though.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Freedom Musician, especially after this:

http://www.imore.com/neil-young-claims-steve-jobs-preferred-listening-music-vinyl

[anvi]

I completely agree, WalterMitty.  He has tried so many things that a lot of the experimental stuff he did was atrociously horrible.  And I also agree about the live performances.  Neil has done some great arrangements on albums with various artists and bands, but for my money, Neil is by far at his best on a stage by himself with a Martin and one amp.  If there are better live solo recordings than the Live at Massey Hall concert album of 1971, I haven't heard them yet.

And yeah, Oldiesfreak, Neil had a weirdly cordial relationship with Steve Jobs.  The fact that Jobs made a fortune off if digitizing music while knowing damn well that vinyl sounds infinitely better tells one something.    

[Eraserhead]

He's basically a god. Positive.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I think he is excellent. Arguably one of the few people who rivals Dylan, and of those few, Young actually comes very, very close. I would love to see him in concert.

[angus]

twangy.  hard to listen to.  not my cup of tea.

I'll go with neutral.  (Mostly because no Neil Young music is actually playing just now.  If it were, I'd be thinking "please make it stop" and I'd have to vote horrible, but at the moment my head is Neil Young is free.  Thankfully.)

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow

Nor does a Northern man.

[anvi]

Yeah, but there was a pretty interesting reconciliation between Young and Van Zant over both the songs "Souther Man" and "Sweet Home Alabama."  Too bad when the artists can get over a musical argument easily, but the fans can't. 

Young can be twangy on some albums on purpose--he sings some country-folk.  But I don't hear much twang in songs like "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Rockin' in the Free World."

But it's all good-people have different tastes, and I'm glad to hear what everyone thinks.
 

 

[Хahar 🤔]

Raylan Givens called Neil Young a national hero.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Powderfinger and Thrasher are such awesome songs. And I love Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young too. I almost went and saw Crosby, Stills, and Nash in May, but I didn't buy tickets in time. Thank God I did not go, because my grandma died the morning of the concert, and it would have ruined my good time.

My Uncle encountered them at a Grateful Dead show where he was working security. He took advantage of his security staff status and explored backstage before the show (CSN was opening for the Dead) and came across them smoking a few joints. He didn't speak with them, but they nodded at him. Kinda cool experience.

[anvi]

Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I really like "Powderfinger" and "Thrasher" too.  It's interesting that you bring up "Thrasher" because it's presumably about why Young left CSNY after 1974, and its lyrics portray Stills particularly in a bad light.  But the song is so coded--to me the lyrics always sounded like the story of a guy who had to get out of a small farm town and head for the city--that it's hard to tell. 

I must admit that it took me a long time to get into CSNY, but once I did, I really liked them a lot.  They were quite a combustible group, with their competing musical ideas and personalities, and the amount of drugs they all did were probably enough to kill the army of a small country.  But each one of them individually was a great musician, and Stills, Crosby and Nash were all masterful songwriters and much better singers (here I agree with Grumps) than Young; their harmonies were incredible.  When Young sang lead with the group on songs like "On the Way Home," you could really tell how much better singers the other three guys were.  Crosby's song "The Lee Shore" and Nash's rendition of "Black Queen" are among my favorites.  And Nash was incredibly gracious when his song "Teach Your Children Well" that was done by the band was climbing the charts, but then the Kent State shootings happened, and he supported the immediate release of the band's performance of Young's song "Ohio" in the aftermath, not caring how it would effect his own song on the charts.

[angus]

Young can be twangy on some albums on purpose
 

One assumes that all twangy singers are twangy on purpose. 

I never even heard of him till I made a reference to Crosby, Stills, and Nash to an old pothead when I was in junior high school.  He quickly said, "...and Young" and I just thought he was saying some stoner thing about how when he was young he was into that sort of music.  Later, I learned that he was talking about the forgotten one. 

Only Neil Young song that I knew about for a long time was a really twangy one about being to Redwood and to Hollywood.  Really awful music.  I did know about that Lynyrd Skynyrd song when I was young.  Lynyrd Skynyrd has lots of catchy tunes and that particular song was a college anthem in the 70s when I was a small child and it remained popular all my life.  The opening 16 measures (in cut time) was one of the first guitar riffs I ever learned.  The song became part of my preparation music.  In grad school I created a file with about 20 of my favorite songs--RUSH "Limelight", Gloria Gaynor "I will Survive", Luciano Pavarotti "Mama!", Domenico Scarlatti "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba", Lynyrd Skynyrd "Sweet Home Alabama", ABBA "Dancing Queen", Elvis Presley "Suspicious Minds", Tchaikovsky "1812 Overture", etc.--that I always listened to loudly before any oral exam such as my second-year graduate exam and my dissertation defense.  That was before write-able CDs so it was just a a bunch of songs downloaded (illegally) onto one of our lab's desktop computers with speakers.  The music therapy always helped, and it was less stressful than studying, especially since oral exams aren't really the sorts of things you can effectively study for.  One day a colleague made reference to the Neil Young song that was referenced by Lynyrd Skynyrd.  I eventually listened to that one.  It was as lame as the Redwood song.    I did appreciate the irony in the fact that Lynyrd Skynyrd apparently immortalized an otherwise obscure song by an otherwise obscure singer that they didn't particularly like by placing a reference to that singer and song in what would become one of the most popular classic rock songs of all time.

I guess those are the only two Neil Young songs that I can think of off the top of my head.  They're both grating and twangy and hard to listen to.  Still, ever since I figured out what that old stoner was saying to me in junior high school I have thought that there must be more to Neil Young than the Redwood song.  I won't pass judgement on those pieces with which I'm not familiar.  Like I said, I voted neutral.  Still, I certainly can't imagine choosing a Neil Young on a jukebox, whether it's a familiar one or not.

[anvi]

Well, if my only exposure to Neil Young's music was listening to "Heart of Gold" (the Hollywood and Redwood lyrics you mentioned are in "Heart of Gold") and "Southern Man," I wouldn't like him either.  Ironically, "Heart of Gold" was Neil Young's only solo #1 single, and Young himself didn't care for the song--he went many years afterword without ever playing it onstage because he was embarrassed by it.  He purposely turned away from that whole genre immediately after the "Harvest" album, on which "Heart of Gold" was recorded, to his own so-called "Ditch Trilogy" of three records with bluesy and hard rock stuff.  To further the irony, Bob Dylan loved "Heart of Gold:" he gave an interview once in which he said that, during the long series of weeks when "Heart of Gold" was the #1 single, every time he heard it on the radio, he was pissed because he thought he should have written it.  But, in addition to not liking his own most "popular" song, Young has long ago more or less disowned "Southern Man" too; he probably wrote it half because it allowed him to just jam out on guitar for a long time, which was a long phase he went through in the '70's.  Anyway, the thing is that the two songs you're claiming you don't like here have long since been sort of disowned by the artist himself.    Young is quite critical of some of the work he has done himself.  Some of Young's best songs, in my book, never made it very high on the charts--but that doesn't bother me, because songs that make it high on the charts aren't necessarily good--in fact, quite often, to me, they suck.  And in my own listening to Young, I purposefully seek out live concert recordings instead of the studio recordings, as he is a much better live performer, I think.

Assessing the work of a musician who has been performing for 50 years on the basis of two songs probably isn't entirely fair, but I think you concede that by having voted "neutral," so that's fine.  But I gather from what you write, angus, that you just don't like a certain genre of music that Young happens to have been drawn to, particularly in the early '70's and early '90's.  And that's fair enough in my book; like I said, people have different musical tastes, and I'm cool with that.  One of the reasons I conducted this little experiment was to confirm or disconfirm something I heard about Neil Young not having a big fan base, especially in the U.S.  And the fact that lots of people have viewed this thread but so few have voted tends for me to confirm that suspicion.  Still, the majority of obviously avid music listeners who have registered votes on this poll seem to like him, so I take some comfort in that.  

[anvi]

So, I'm spending so much time defending Young against criticism here that I haven't said much about why I like him. 

--Style and genre:  I grew up listening to two of my older brothers playing acoustic guitars and traditional folk in my living room--they played for some clubs and weddings in my hometown--so part of my inclination for his music just has to do with the kind of stuff i've always listened to.
--Acoustic techniques: Like many other folk and rock musicians, Young's acoustic guitar compositions are not that complicated, but they're often just subtle enough to be interesting.  Besides the fact that he sometimes uses irregular chords in progressions and does lots of his bluesy stuff in double-dropped D tuning, he throws in hammer-ons, walk-downs and walk-ups, little runs and percussive muting in most of his songs that just makes them fun to play.  Just learning about three-dozen or so if his songs would, in my mind, make someone a fairly able guitarist.  A lot of his electric songs have simple but cool riffs in them too, but I think he is at his best with the axe when it's an acoustic.
--He makes for an interesting contrast to Dylan in the sense that, while lots of Dylan songs are about exteriors (social and political problems, strangely revealing circumstances and relationships), Young's songs are mostly about interior struggles, angst, uncertainty, self-doubt, inexplicable change, cynicism, struggles with the deaths of loved ones, and that makes them emotionally gritty.  His voice, as uncomfortable as it sometimes is to listen to (it's gotten much lower since his 30's and 40's than it was on his early albums) is part of communicating all that vulnerability.  His lyrics aren't cliche, at least most of the time; they are honest in the sense that they're not processed--they're not deliberated over very much.  And there is something I like in the fact that he doesn't really care whether people like what he is doing--he just lets the songs come out of him and leaves them alone, no matter what the results.  In that sense, again, there is very little contrivance in his music.

Anyway, that's just me.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Old man, look at my life, I'm a lot like you were....

[anvi]

Old man, look at my life, I'm a lot like you were....

Yeah, as good an example as any...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=221mohEolWc