I'd still like to know how 'Cripple Creek Ferry' fit into the 'screenplay' or story of ATGR Still don't get how they 'lost' the screenplay. Or was it ever really written?
A grand overstatement. Both Barn and Toast (made twenty years apart) are quite good, and obviously from someone capable.
Springsteen And Mellencamp both held out for a bit, but Neil might be the last one standing on that hill. A couple other acts are doing only outdoor shows.
Willie Mays is someone I think about a lot. (See avatar!) Neil's still Willie--just Willie in a Mets uniform. The essence is still there, but the batting average has declined. So I'll grab "Welcome Back" and "They Might Be Lost" off Barn and a number of tracks on Colorado and say that I'm glad those flashes are still happening. Meanwhile, when I spin Noise & Flowers, I am floored by "Helpless," "From Hank to Hendrix," and especially by "****in' Up." That is some strong stuff--renditions that can stand (for me) with any performances of those tunes... If the Age of Live Neil is over, he went out swingin'.
Rarely do singer-songwriters maintain their early creative momentum in the later phases. Paul Simon and Freedy Johnston, Ian Hunter for sure, maybe a few others. Dylan and Neil and McCartney and Van and Springsteen have been at best erratic in the last 40 years imo. In each case, but especially Neil, a little less intuition and a little more care in production and selecting material could have meant fewer but better records. Neil's legacy comes up on a thread like this because it is so overwhelmingly awesome, especially the 60's+ 70's. That's not nostalgia; one could almost argue its an objective fact. I'd never rule him out, but for me its been a long time since he made an essential album. A pile of interesting records with some good songs is, relatively speaking, a disappointment when it comes to him. Frankly, I think each of the above mentioned could benefit from being in a collaboration. Is it anti-muse to explore that? Would it kill him to record during an eclipse or solar flare or even...a rainy day... instead of a full moon?
I think we should we hold off on opinions until we hear what Rick Rubin has brought to this project. Personally, after Barn, I'm very hopeful.
Yeah, this was the part of the link that I took notice of. I'm not sure what I think about it. I greatly prefer vinyl over cd (I don't even own a cd player) but I'm not impressed with what's being said, here.
However the new one turns out, at least we finally got "Toast" which is just one incredible record! But keeping positive vibes here, having Rubin involved might mean the music is going to have a heavier edge to it. At least that's what I'm hoping for. And maybe the vinyl version will be a bit more raw...
Yeah, that’s perfect! Honestly, I almost went with Johnny Bench because I’m a Reds fan, but I thought more people would know Willie Mays whether they had an interest in baseball or not. I’m way too young to have seen either play, and I’m too young to have heard NY’s ‘70s run at the time. On Helpless: It might be my favorite Young song if I had to choose. I feel like any time I hear a performance of it, it just rises to the occasion, whether we are talking Noise & Flowers, Unplugged, or Massey Hall.
My copy of the El Dorado EP showed up today, and it reminded that, after what was a fallow period for Neil during most of the ’80s, he could still come up with something as compelling as the title track of that record. Has he ever made a record as good as After the Gold Rush since the ’70s ended? No, but I enjoy the many bursts of inspiration we’ve gotten since then.
The standard of his 68 to 77 output is insanely great. For my money, 88 to say, 97 isn’t on that level, but it’s remarkable all the same. His records from El Dorado through Broken Arrow alone would have been a great career for most bands.
Nice post! "After The Goldrush" is most likely my all time favorite of his. I still remember getting it the week of release when I was the ripe old age of 13, even then I knew what a masterpiece it was as soon as I listened to it. Holiday weekend and time to get back to the festivities...
Oh my, Bench was so great. I was a very small child during the heyday of "The Big Red Machine," but the reverberations were still felt into the late 1970s and early 1980s--those guys were legends in their time. Would be lovely to see the Reds (and the Pirates) rise again as NL powerhouses. Great franchises that deserve better than we've seen in a long time... If you haven't heard it yet, that nine-minute-plus Rainbow 1973 "Helpless" with Nils on accordion and Ben Keith on dobro is gonna mess with you in the best way. They take the tune out to Neptune. I think the argument could be made that the performance represents the very pinnacle of the whole Tonight's the Night concept. Here's hoping that the official boot release is coming soon...
Oh, so Neil bitches and moans incessantly about how his old stuff was awesome and his new stuff sucks. Guess I missed that.
That's an interesting question: whether the 1990s Neil revival truly approached his 1970s run. I think it's possible that it did, and in a way that's useful to think about now. I tend to think that, rather than echoing his earlier triumphs, that Young was addressing--at full artistic force--the facts of his late forties and fifties: a then-new sense of aging and loss, the hopes and fears of parenthood, the struggle to keep love, and the murky business of coping with one's own heavy historical baggage. All of that is tougher subject matter than the concerns of a young man--even when that young guy is grieving lost friends or the dead girl on the college campus. It just hits harder and heavier for a grown man with more perspective and more at stake in the world. By the time of Sleeps With Angels, Neil understood the true obscenity of Kurt Cobain's loss better than he possibly could have when Danny Whitten went down. I loved Ragged Glory and Broken Arrow when they came out, but boy do they sound deeper than ever now that I'm at the age he was when he made them. I fret a lot about the decline of his songwriting. It often strikes me as simply less imaginative and artful, and I don't think time will redeem songs like "Children of Destiny." But I also wonder whether we all run the risk of overlooking a more fragile, more quirky glory in all the latter-day raggedness. I have way too much respect for every era of Neil to ever offer him a handicap like "this is OK. Whadda ya expect at this point, Tonight's the Night?" And that benchmark is irrelevant now, because Neil has no business making a record as a 27 year-old, even if that were somehow possible. But thanks to him, and to a tiny handful of his peers, I do believe that there's an old man's songwriting and even an old man's rock 'n roll that can say powerful things about decline and mortality. Or, like the itty-bitty "Tumbleweed," say something about a kind of crush he wasn't sure he had left in him. But those statements--even when masterful--are bound to be a little bit tougher to access than the grandeur of days past. We have to lean in, and listen a little harder. And I suspect that will hold true even if Neil can summon and maintain at album length that "full artistic force" that I think was happening in the 1990s. Johnny Cash may be the best model for what a singer-songwriter can achieve when his faculties are departing him. I can't imagine that his achievement is lost on Neil Young, of all people. So perhaps this latest choice of producer is no accident, and perhaps music is coming that will ripen as all our own years advance...
Does it really matter if Neil's new albums aren't as good as say Zuma or Tonights the Night. At least he's still here, still releasing new music. He's never put out a truly awful album as far as I'm concerned - even Landing on Water has Hippie Dream on there. Let's just be glad he's still going, embrace his creativity. You never know when it might be over.
I hope not, Neil had a tour lined up for last winter in some old arenas but it was scratched. Than Willie goes out without him….
it's such a silly thing to say on its face. "he'll never make another after the gold rush". yeah, no ****...he already made one.
In regards to my earlier comments, I want to be clear that I wasn’t saying he never made another album as good as ATGR… I was simply saying that I’m afraid that comparing Barn to ATGR makes it more difficult to appreciate Barn for what it is. I hold ATGR in very high regard. But I’m glad we have Barn now, and my enjoyment of it need not be dampened by how much I liked ATGR, OTB, Ragged Glory, SWA, or whatever our favorite records might be. I’m really enjoying the archival material, often even more than the newer albums. I’m still going back to Rust Bucket often. But I am glad that NY is still an active artist, and I look forward to each new release. I got totally lost in Welcome Back felt as new and vital as any NY song I’ve heard in the last 20 years. I don’t think he’s done making noise worth hearing.
Really cool idea for Neil and Rick to get together. Will be interesting. Rick kinda gives a theme to stuff. Not sure what will come out of this one. Exciting.
