What if you were just following your muse and you became a cultural icon?\u00c2\u00a0
What would you do?<\/p>\n
Artists fight for fame and fortune, and when they get it, it fucks them up.\u00c2\u00a0
Or maybe it’s that today’s artists fight for fame and fortune first and
artistic expression second.\u00c2\u00a0 So they’re sold out from the beginning.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve
already tied in with major corporations how can your soul be affected by success?\u00c2\u00a0
You don’t HAVE a soul!\u00c2\u00a0 Neil Young had a soul.\u00c2\u00a0 He even sang about the
concept when he was in Buffalo Springfield.<\/p>\n
But that band didn’t work out.\u00c2\u00a0 So the man went solo.\u00c2\u00a0 And nobody noticed.\u00c2\u00a0
I’d argue strongly that the very first Neil Young solo record is the best.\u00c2\u00a0
There’s really only one other candidate, "After The Gold Rush".\u00c2\u00a0 Cognoscenti will
whisper about "Rust Never Sleeps".\u00c2\u00a0 And "Tonight’s The Night".\u00c2\u00a0 And maybe
even "Ragged Glory".\u00c2\u00a0 And those records all have moments.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re artifacts,
they’re not transcendent, they don’t define the genre.<\/p>\n
All these years later "The Loner" has been elevated to a recurrent.\u00c2\u00a0
Deservedly.\u00c2\u00a0 Occasionally you’ll hear "I’ve Been Waiting For You", almost as magical
and more heartfelt than the follow-up album’s opener, "Cinnamon Girl".\u00c2\u00a0 But
I’ve never heard "Emperor Of Wyoming" on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 And "The Last Trip To Tulsa"
has been forgotten.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the twentysomethings who don’t get Neil would if
they just heard this almost nonsensical album closer.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe they’d understand
1969.\u00c2\u00a0 When optimism died and pessimism set in.<\/p>\n
But only fans seem to know the debut.<\/p>\n
"Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" survives because of the aforementioned
"Cinnamon Girl".\u00c2\u00a0 And "Down By The River".\u00c2\u00a0 And, even "Cowgirl In The Sand" is now
well-known.\u00c2\u00a0 But the big breakthrough was "After The Gold Rush".<\/p>\n
People just started paying attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Having been alerted to Neil as a
result of his addition to Crosby, Stills & Nash.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d grown accustomed to his
high-pitched nasal whine.\u00c2\u00a0 They were ready for him.\u00c2\u00a0 And he delivered.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not
going to put down "Southern Man".\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ll tell you that "Don’t Let It Bring
Me Down" is my favorite.\u00c2\u00a0 That guitar downbeat.\u00c2\u00a0 God does it set a mood.\u00c2\u00a0 And
"When You Dance I Can Really Love"…\u00c2\u00a0 Is that rock and roll abandon or what.\u00c2\u00a0
And next I’ll go to "Cripple Creek Ferry" and "Till The Morning Comes".\u00c2\u00a0 Just
trifles, but their inclusion draws you to the overall record.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t in
your face only.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a three dimensional artist.\u00c2\u00a0 With a sense of humor.<\/p>\n
Music fans noticed Neil.\u00c2\u00a0 He was part of the firmament.<\/p>\n
And then he released "Harvest".\u00c2\u00a0 Was it luck?\u00c2\u00a0 Or did he know it would turn
him into a superstar.\u00c2\u00a0 That it would break through from hard core fans to
casual fans.\u00c2\u00a0 It all started with "Heart Of Gold".<\/p>\n
You heard "Heart Of Gold" on the radio so much you hated it.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re not
going to find a hard core Neil Young fan who says "Harvest" is his favorite album.
\u00c2\u00a0That’s the opinion of those not in the know.\u00c2\u00a0 But all these years later, you
hear tracks from that record and they feel so right.\u00c2\u00a0 What are we to make of
an album that wasn’t commercial that turned out to be?\u00c2\u00a0 It was a moment in
time.\u00c2\u00a0 When the left field was embraced.\u00c2\u00a0 Something like "Harvest" couldn’t
dominate the chart today.<\/p>\n
The laconical "Out On The Weekend" draws you in.\u00c2\u00a0 With those lyrics you want
to disown, because they’re you.<\/p>\n
See the lonely boy out on the weekend College is one of the loneliest experiences of one’s life.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve left your Turns out you can, but you’re not sure of that.<\/p>\n All you know is you’re hot for love, sex and highs.\u00c2\u00a0 In whatever order.\u00c2\u00a0 You Can’t relate to joy, he tries to speak and Maybe the true loneliness kicks in during the latter half of your sophomore And that’s why "Out On The Weekend" struck such a chord.\u00c2\u00a0 It was tired.\u00c2\u00a0 Just How Neil got away with "A Man Needs A Maid" at the height of feminism I’ll "Alabama" has a tiredness lacking in "Southern Man", but it seems a sequel.\u00c2\u00a0 "Needle And The Damage Done" is almost too heavy.<\/p>\n "Are You Ready For The Country" is the "Cripple Creek Ferry" and "Till The "Words" works.\u00c2\u00a0 The same way the opener, the aforementioned "Out On The But all these years later the reason you can’t dismiss "Harvest" is that song It seemed poignant then.\u00c2\u00a0 A conversation between us and our elders.<\/p>\n But, suddenly, WE’RE the elders.<\/p>\n "When I’m Sixty-Four" is a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody keeps concentrating on that as Old man look at my life You’ve got to understand.\u00c2\u00a0 We’d just lived through the generation gap.\u00c2\u00a0 The Old man look at my life Can it be a paradise if you’re there alone?<\/p>\n Why don’t we ask those old buddies of ours.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, the ones who lost We were bred for achievement.\u00c2\u00a0 Women didn’t get married, for fear of fucking Now we know life never changes.\u00c2\u00a0 Our kids get married young.\u00c2\u00a0 Women want to Still, what is shocking is the age of the protagonist.\u00c2\u00a0 Twenty four sounds "Old Man" is laden with reflection and truth.\u00c2\u00a0 Aphorisms like "Give me things Old man take a look at my life I’m a lot like you It’s sung not with resignation, but a low key ELATION!\u00c2\u00a0 Like the singer has All these years later, Neil Young seems to have found this.<\/p>\n As for us, I’m not so sure.\u00c2\u00a0 So, every time we hear this song, we’re reminded Great music sounds good.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the defining criterion.\u00c2\u00a0 "Old Man" scores You don’t find truth in entertainment today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a commodity.\u00c2\u00a0 Made to be Neil Young still plays by these rules.\u00c2\u00a0 "Harvest" was made when Neil was at Disillusioned with its success, Neil went on a tour where he played almost If "Harvest" had not broken through, it would eclipse all the alt.country We don’t need a thirty fifth anniversary celebration.\u00c2\u00a0 "Harvest" needs no new <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What if you were just following your muse and you became a cultural icon?\u00c2\u00a0 What would you do? Artists fight for fame and fortune, and when they get it, it fucks them up.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it’s that today’s artists fight for fame and fortune first and artistic expression second.\u00c2\u00a0 So they’re sold out from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-3g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Trying to make it pay<\/em><\/p>\n
cocoon behind.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re still discovering who you are.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got all new
friends, but can you truly COUNT ON THEM?<\/p>\n
go to the bar.\u00c2\u00a0 Take a pull from your beer as you hold up the wall.\u00c2\u00a0 You drink
with your buddies while eyeing the woman across the room you can never get up
the nerve to talk to.<\/p>\n
Can’t begin to say<\/em><\/p>\n
year.\u00c2\u00a0 When you realize this is it.\u00c2\u00a0 This is life.\u00c2\u00a0 It may not get better than
this.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can’t tell your parents, because they’re paying.\u00c2\u00a0 And nobody
else cares.\u00c2\u00a0 Because life sucks.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody would rather just get fucked-up and
ignore it.<\/p>\n
like we were in 1972.\u00c2\u00a0 The sixties were over.\u00c2\u00a0 We were no longer in it
together, we were individuals.\u00c2\u00a0 Could we find our way?<\/p>\n
never know.\u00c2\u00a0 There wasn’t a shred of backlash.<\/p>\n
And we always respect the original more.<\/p>\n
Morning Comes" of "Harvest".\u00c2\u00a0 A trifle.\u00c2\u00a0 But longer than the snippet length of
the preceding two.<\/p>\n
Weekend", does.\u00c2\u00a0 That exasperation, that represented our state of mind.<\/p>\n
right in the middle, "Old Man".<\/p>\n
evidence of our aging.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing "Old Man" creeps us out more.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s
life.\u00c2\u00a0 OUR life.<\/p>\n
I’m a lot like you were<\/em><\/p>\n
generations couldn’t have been more different.\u00c2\u00a0 To have a cultural icon say we
were similar was heretical.\u00c2\u00a0 And you could not ignore the lyric, the music
wasn’t loud enough.\u00c2\u00a0 You caught every word.\u00c2\u00a0 And debated.\u00c2\u00a0 Was it true?<\/p>\n
Twenty four and there’s so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two<\/em><\/p>\n
their loves and couldn’t handle being alone and ended their lives.\u00c2\u00a0 They couldn’t
see going on.<\/p>\n
up their careers.\u00c2\u00a0 What if it was all bullshit.\u00c2\u00a0 And life never changed.<\/p>\n
take time off to have babies.<\/p>\n
like a baby.\u00c2\u00a0 Shocking as it seems, you were once twenty four, and you thought
it was OLD!\u00c2\u00a0 You were sophisticated, you knew EVERYTHING!\u00c2\u00a0 Only as you got
older did you realize you didn’t know shit.<\/p>\n
that won’t get lost".\u00c2\u00a0 But what eats us alive is that one couplet:<\/p>\n
I need someone to love me the whole day through<\/em><\/p>\n
finally discovered his goal, and is on a mission to find companionship and love.<\/p>\n
of who we were and must take stock of who we now are.\u00c2\u00a0 Did we follow the path
delineated by our parents or forge our own.\u00c2\u00a0 Did we waste decades pursuing
worthless goals.\u00c2\u00a0 Is this really all there is, you live, love and die?<\/p>\n
on this basis.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s the way the words are sung, world-weary, with recent
discovery providing enlightenment, that infects us.\u00c2\u00a0 You see we’re looking for
truth.<\/p>\n
consumed and discarded.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not made to stick with you, it’s fodder for
corporations to sell their wares.\u00c2\u00a0 Truth sells purely on its merits.\u00c2\u00a0 To think that
you’d have to sell a record solely on the music, not the image, not the
marketing campaign, that’s too scary.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s the way it used to be.<\/p>\n
the peak of his powers.\u00c2\u00a0 It was so good that despite it being inherently left
field, it was mainstream.<\/p>\n
only new music.\u00c2\u00a0 And put out a live album of these raucous rock tunes as his
follow-up to "Harvest".\u00c2\u00a0 We love this.\u00c2\u00a0 That he could reject success, get close
to the flame and steer away.\u00c2\u00a0 But, in the process "Harvest" itself has become
tarnished.\u00c2\u00a0 By its success.<\/p>\n
icons.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be the lost album that everybody talked about.\u00c2\u00a0 The Gram Parsons
and Son Volt of its day.\u00c2\u00a0 But, neither of those acts, as good as they were,
were as good as Neil Young.\u00c2\u00a0 And the public recognized this.\u00c2\u00a0 And turned him
into a star.<\/p>\n
accolades.\u00c2\u00a0 But, go back and play it.\u00c2\u00a0 Although not Neil’s best work, it was
great.\u00c2\u00a0 Its mix of disillusionment and optimism was emblematic of our
generation.<\/p>\n