Page 31 - the NOISE September 2013

neil Young, photo by Mike Frankel, mikefrankel.com
Neil Young’s next album, the followup to Harvest, could have been huge. Instead, Time Fades Away contained live versions of Neil’s new tunes, all of which were plodding, drunk, and deeply sad. There was no “Heart Of Gold” forthcoming, and the album sold a fraction of its predecessor.
Seven months after Danny Whitten’s death, CSNY roadie Bruce Berry overdosed on heroin. Neil pulled together the remnants of Crazy Horse and made Tonight’s The Night, a woozy tribute to their dead friends that wasn’t re- leased for two years. If Time Fades Away was the sound of a man in pain, Tonight’s The Night was his attempt to work through that pain.
1974’s On The Beach, another artistically rich yet uncommercial album, included “Revolu- tion Blues” in which Young assumes the per- sona of a Manson-like cult leader:
Well I hear that Laurel Canyon
Is filled with famous stars
But I hate them worse than lepers And I’ll kill them in their cars
During the lavish CSNY summer 1974 tour, Crosby refused to sing the song. Most of Neil’s contributions to their set were once again new and unfamiliar. Young’s most famous CSNY composition was not performed.
The four-year journey from the hippie naive- té of “Ohio” to the violent paranoia of “Revolu- tion Blues” was not easy listening but showed significant growth. And Neil wasn’t done yet.
In 1975, Young prepared to release Home- grown, a confessional album harkening back to the mainstream sound of Harvest. At the last minute he convinced Reprise to put out Tonight’s The Night instead. It was critically ac- claimed but didn’t burn up the charts. Neil Young had willingly committed commercial suicide and it suited him well.
A reconstitution of Crazy Horse resulted in the rocking Zuma LP later that year. Young was slowly surfacing from his funk. The lightweight Long May You Run, recorded with Stephen Stills in 1976, was followed by an extremely brief tour (Neil bailed out after nine shows).
American Stars ‘n Bars, released in 1977, fea- tured the truly weird “Will To Love,” sung from the perspective of a spawning salmon. The album cover was designed by old Topanga friend, Dean Stockwell.
It was around this time that Stockwell screwed up his courage and casually men-
tioned he had a tape Neil should listen to.
Unlike most of his peers, Neil Young under- stood punk rock. Neil’s generation had grown up post-World War II, the era of Truman and Eisenhower and JFK, the new frontier, a time of optimism. The upbeat, positive music they made as young men reflected this: The Beatles, The Stones, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Hendrix, The Airplane, The Dead, etc.
The generation currently coming of age had grown up with the murders of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, LBJ, Nixon, Watergate, and of course, Kent State. The brutal, unsentimental music they made reflected this: The Ramones, Rich- ard Hell, Patti Smith, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, etc.
Folks like Crosby hated the punks because they couldn’t own up to the fact that they were growing old and that today’s youth needed a new message. Young saw that the punks were only the result of what his generation had wrought. They were just being themselves and Neil swore to take this cue and stay one step ahead, to never be obsolete.
Dean Stockwell had a feeling Neil Young would “get” DEVO, and he was right. The two went to see the band live and Neil flipped out over DEVO’s stage presentation. They met the group after the show.
Neil Young completely defied DEVO’s as- sumptions. They were expecting a dippy hip- pie, but instead found someone just as dorky and strange and antiestablishment as them. Only with millions of dollars. And he was crazy about their band. Jerry Casale was stunned: the author of “Ohio,” a song that personally of- fended him, turned out to be a pretty cool guy.
Young and Stockwell described a far-out film they were going to make called Human Highway. The band were offered parts as care- less nuclear waste disposal engineers whose ordinary day at work ends with the apoca- lypse. There was a role for Booji Boy too. DEVO couldn’t say no.
This wasn’t Neil Young’s initial foray into the world of cinema. Shakey Pictures’ debut was 1973’s Journey Through The Past, which was critically panned and did zero business. Young pissed away $400,000 on the production but he didn’t care. He had made a film; that was the important part. Neil did not believe in hoarding money and was about to blow a
whole lot more on his latest folly.
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