Neil Young Part II: The Train Wrecks
Posted on February 25, 2008
by: Big Jar
Risk is an inextricable part of any creative expression. It is impossible for an artist to distinguish their work if they do not attempt to break or reshape the mold of their art in some fashion. What would the world of visual art look like if Picasso had never broken the barriers between his subjects and their surroundings? What would music sound like without the 1965 Newport Folk Festival or Bitches Brew?
But, these are only examples of risks that resulted in successful outcomes. Just as risk is essential to creativity, failure is an inherent and inevitable outcome of risk. This is obvious when considered in an abstract sense, but the idea becomes more perplexing when we see it take shape in the real world. Stevie Wonder reached his artistic zenith in 1976 and followed it up three short years later with Journey into the Secret Lives of Plants. Sting released some of the best music of the early 1980s with The Police before recording a duet with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart.
Even though these artistic developments may be difficult and sometimes even painful to hear, it’s important to embrace the bad with the good, because it helps to form a complete picture of the subject. If a society can be judged by entering its prisons, an artist can be judged by the albums s/he released in the 80s.
Trans, 1983.
This album is actually kind of cool. Not cool in the traditional sense, but in the way that maybe you would call Kurt Russell or Rick Astley cool. In other words, this is not cool at all.
Young’s first foray into the world of electronic music wasn’t his last, but it certainly was his best effort in that realm. Using synthesizers, beat boxes, and voice vocoders, we embark upon a futuristic joy ride through some completely ridiculous topics with Young as our robo-pilot. There’s “Sample and Hold”, which is about a robot dating service, and “Computer Cowboy”, which is about a…computer cowboy. Then there’s “Computer Age”, “We R in Control”, and “Transformer Man”–songs which all continue this futuristic theme of the world set in the distant year of 1997.
This is an album worth hearing if you approach it with incredulity and a lighthearted sense of fun. Do not expect a high level of craftsmanship from this music, but it’s still very entertaining, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons.
Everybody’s Rockin’, 1983.
OK, OK, OK, hear me out on this one. The world would be a drearier place without Everybody’s Rockin’. I’m really glad that Young decided to release this material (I can’t say the same for some of the other stuff on this list) and I really like it in the same way that I like Dylan’s “Jesus” albums. But, like Dylan’s born-again phase, this is an artistic disaster. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an intrinsic value to failed attempts at music, nor does it mean that Young fans should avoid this album; indeed, we should embrace it. But, it’s important to distinguish between albums that one likes, and albums that are objectively good. I wholeheartedly admit the former, but I could not in good conscience argue for the latter in this case.
Neil Young & The Shocking Pinks released this rockabilly set only seven months after Trans. At less than twenty five minutes, Everybody’s Rockin’ may seem a bit abbreviated for a full length album, but it makes sense once you give it a full listen. Rockabilly songs tend to be quite short, and they all employ similar melodic structures and lyric patterns with little room for deviation, so there’s only so much a musician can do with this kind of music before one runs out of fresh ideas. In fact, Young only wrote half of the songs on this album, filling out the other tracks with rockabilly standards like “Betty Lou’s Got a New Pair of Shoes” and “Mystery Train”. The songs that he does write are completely ridiculous: “Kinda Fonda Wanda” says it all in the title, and the lyric about Ronnie and Nancy rockin’ in the White House within the eponymous track is outrageous, especially if you stop to consider what that might look like. The album has a very clear jocular tone, and while that’s a big part of its charm, it also works to the music’s detriment. If Young isn’t taking this seriously, than how are we the listeners supposed to approach it?
This album is worth the investment because it’s an interesting concept, and it’s a great example of Young’s apathy for what his fan base or the general public wants or expects of him. Everybody’s Rockin’ and its predecessor are fascinating, but in both cases the engine is clearly vaulting far and away from the rails.
Re-Ac-Tor, 1981.
This was the first hiccup in Young’s remarkable string of recording successes. Later, he would look back on this phase in his career and claim that his music suffered due to familial distractions. Young’s son suffers from cerebral palsy, and Young has said that the time it took to invest in his son’s care overwhelmed him. This may explain part of the dissatisfaction with his Geffen recording contract, which stipulated the release of one album a year. But, I think Young was also grappling with the concerns over his age that he first addressed in Rust Never Sleeps. During this low period in the eighties, Young tried to sell his cultural relevance by incorporating recent trends and fads into his music. He has since receded from this approach to his music–thankfully, he didn’t release any boy band albums in the 90s, or hip-hop albums this decade–but things were different back then.
Re-Ac-Tor is a sort of mix between punk rock and new wave. Unfortunately, it fails to grasp the interesting aspects of either genre. Young sounds like an out of touch geezer, screaming at the top of his lung capacity with no regard for rhythm or his musical accompaniment. The lyrics are particularly bad on this release, especially during the nine minute long “T-Bone”, in which Young just sings, over and over and over and over again, “Got mashed potatoes…got no t-bone!” This album is noisy and abrasive and it grates on your ears, as if Young is grinding his guitar strings against a concrete surface.
Avoid this at all costs. I would be really surprised if anyone has been able to sit through this more than once.
Landing on Water, 1986.
This is probably my least favorite Neil Young album of all time. This is just a really really bad album with no redeeming qualities. It’s not like listening to Celine Dion or watching Freddie Got Fingered, where you can marvel at the stupidity of the human race and laugh at the awfulness of it all. No, hearing this album is more like being strapped to that torture machine in The Princess Bride, where a pasty robe wearing mother fucker just sucks the years out of you, and you spend the rest of your life as an invalid.
The synthesizers are back in full force, along with the drum machines. Everything sounds disjointed and out of order, like a jigsaw puzzle with the wrong pieces forced into one another. Young has inexplicably decided to adopt a William Hung vocal style. What more can one say? I now know what it must feel like to be interred at Guantanamo Bay.
Are You Passionate?, 2002.
This album is most famous for its 9/11 single “Let’s Roll”, which extolls the bravery of the passengers aboard United Flight 93. As noted previously, Young was an outspoken advocate of Reagan’s foreign policy in the 1980s, so that aspect of the album isn’t a huge surprise. It’s always weird to see the occasional musician/counterculture hero praise or support the people in power who basically exist as their complete opposites. But, I suppose Young wouldn’t be quite as interesting if he voted for Mike Gravel.
This album is not quite as spectacularly disastrous as some of the others on this list. However, it is not a good album, and it is much worse than middling Young affairs such as Silver & Gold or Sleeps with Angels (neither of which will appear on the third and final list.) Young seems to be trying to find his soul groove on these tracks, and employs pretty simple chord progressions to that end. The result is incredibly boring and pedestrian. In contrast to Everybody’s Rockin’, the songs on this album are way too long (most clock in at over five minutes), which is not a good combination with the album’s simple structure. In accord with the album title and cover art, the song subjects are often incredibly schmaltzy. The opener, “You’re My Girl” is about Young’s daughter coming of age and leaving him. I’m sorry, is this the Oxygen network? Can we pretend this never happened?
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