“Life-threatening”: the album that helped Neil Young to keep going
At the turn of the millennium, Neil Young was in as good a position as any artist to call time on his career.
At that point, he had summited the musical mountain, becoming one of the most iconic artists of all time. Spearheading the rock and roll movement of the late 20th century, Young had laid down a number of iconic records that not only pushed the boundaries of songwriting but also engaged deeply with the political outlooks of the time.
It was the latter ability that made Young the artist he was. Not the relentlessly innovative artist, say David Bowie was in the same time period, Young’s music rarely deviated from a simple songwriting model that foregrounded his ability to arrange a hearty chord progression, and so created a sense of artistic relevancy by making music that engaged with the world around him.
Young was faithful to that obligation and simply never shied from it at any point in his career. Not even when the century of his fame came to an end, and a sunlit vista of retired acclaim awaited him. Rather than pack his guitar case off, head for the horizon and leave us with a string of greatest hits releases, Young continued to get in the studio and make albums that he deemed necessary for himself and the world around them.
“Like Dylan said, ‘Don’t look back’, I can only play the old songs if there’s also new material,” he said in 2004, when asked about the possibility of a greatest hits compilation. Rather than succumb to that, he penned his album Greendale, which he later cited as the record that encouraged him to keep going, in a time during his career when he felt a glimmering sense of creative resistance.
He continued, “Greendale is what gave me enough belief in myself to continue and to sing the old songs. If it wasn’t for things like Greendale, I’d just be replicating myself, travelling round the world doing things I’d already done. Which would be very depressing and probably life-threatening.”
Achieving artistic greatness isn’t easy, though, and Greendale served as a reminder of that. For Young, pushing through the barrier and creating an album he felt was necessary, as opposed to easy, almost pushed him away from the one instrument he truly loved.
While he initially stated that “Greendale completely drained me, to the point where I’m just standing here, the wind is blowing, and I’m waiting,” he also added that in the aftermath of the record, he “didn’t pick up a guitar for almost 18 months”.
But as he stood from his observational standpoint and looked at the world around him, Young knew that he had to engage with art once again, for the world was in desperate need of his voice. Shortly after Greendale, before his follow-up albums Prairie Wind and Living With War, America was plunging itself into conflict in the Middle East, and a myriad of social injustices were coming to light, ready-made for the commentary of our beloved political artist.
