The 1991 album that almost made Neil Young go deaf: “I didn’t want to hear any loud sounds”
The whole idea of suffering for one’s art wasn’t lost on Neil Young when he made one of his records.
He answered to not one else but his own muse whenever working on his music, and if that bothered some of the suits with whom he had been in business, that was their problem, quite frankly. There was no reason for him to make the same kind of corporate schlock everyone else was doing, and he figured that it would be a lot more fun to play his music loud and proud, even if it meant sacrificing a bit of his hearing to get everything done.
But when looking through all of Young’s work, it’s not like he was trying to make the heaviest records of all time whenever he worked on something. A lot of people got into him from the Americana-style folk music that he was playing half the time he made a record, and even if there were a million ways for him to play acoustic tunes, there was no rule that said he couldn’t dismantle everything and start over on the next record.
He was more than willing to work on something new whenever he felt the time was right, but that didn’t mean that everyone had to like it. His audience was accustomed to the ‘godfather of grunge’ look that he had pioneered in the days of making albums like Rust Never Sleeps, so it was a lot easier for people to start questioning what the hell they were listening to when they got served up an album like Landing on Water.
But throughout his discography, Weld is something that most Young fans could recognise pretty well. The entire concept of him going back to the same kind of loud record was exactly what fans wanted, and Young was in rare form when he finally decided to kick out the jams again. Once he finally settled down, though, he needed to walk away from that kind of record as soon as possible if he ever hoped to make another record again.
He wasn’t about to completely destroy his career or anything, but he could feel the early stages of tinnitus coming on if he didn’t slow things down, saying, “I made Harvest Moon because I didn’t want to hear any loud sounds. I still have a little bit of tinnitus, but fortunately, now I’m not as sensitive to loud sounds as I was for a year after the mixing of Weld.”
And by the end of the 1990s, hearing him go back to the same kind of rustic feel that made Harvest so great was exactly what people were looking for. No one would have expected people like James Taylor to come back and deliver some background vocals or anything, but Young also didn’t want to give fans the impression that he was going to be playing the nostalgia circuit for the rest of his life, either.
He had already tried that with American Dream with CSNY, and if that didn’t work like it was supposed to, Young was going to keep expanding outward. His music didn’t have to go through drastic changes anymore, but being in the business this long meant that it was time for him to turn his voice up, especially when talking about the issues that were going on ever in the 2000s ever since the attacks on 9/11.
Young could still make some punishing riffs when he wanted, but after years of trying to fight one creative battle after another with his label, no one was going to blame him for wanting to make music solely for himself. He earned the right to get loud when he wanted to, tone things down when he wanted to, and maybe throw up the occasional middle finger to his higher-ups, because no matter what happens, Young was ready to stand by what he said in every one of his songs before cowering to what everyone else wanted.
