The album Neil Young was sure everyone would hate: “The most ridiculous damn thing”
Neil Young has always been a songwriter, constantly looking for his own unique identity within his music.
You’re never going to find a songwriter who puts his own creativity at the forefront of everything more than Young. Album sales and global renown don’t come into his head; instead, he engages in some soul searching, and he brings his ideas right to the surface, regardless of what shape they take.
Even people who have had problems with Neil Young in the past respect his creative ideology. All an artist can ever really do is make music which is an accurate reflection of themselves, and that’s exactly what Young does. During his exclusive interview with Far Out, Graham Nash admitted that while he has his problems with Young, he loves the way he chases his muse within music.
“I think Neil is very smart,” he said. “I do respect his connection with what he calls ‘the muse’ of his music. He follows that intently, and I understand that, and I respect that.”
While other musicians might respect Young’s decision to be unwavering in his approach to creativity, it isn’t the kind of mindset that record labels appreciate. Throughout all of musical history, you find disputes between artists and their labels, and the reason for as much is pretty simple: where one person values creativity, the other values profit, and the two don’t often mix.
A lot of artists don’t think too much about the end product, they care more about the journey leading to it, keen on making sure that they are staying true to themselves throughout that process. Labels don’t care for the same thing, as they can only sell the end product, they can’t sell the journey, but it’s pretty common for these conflicting mindsets to rub up against one another, and that’s exactly what happened when Neil Young started expanding his sound.
When he started working on a different kind of music, his label interfered, saying that they didn’t care for the way he was conducting himself and would prefer him to make music that sounds like the kind that sells – Young was being asked to compromise on his creative vision, and he didn’t appreciate it, as the album he made as a result was Landing on Water, a record which was laced with imagery that reflected how much disdain he had towards people interfering with his art.
Young was sure that the title would be hated, and the cover and album name were both a representation of that. “You see, the cover and the title of that album, it’s directions on how to survive an insurvivable thing: how to land on water, in a jet that’s crashing,” he said. “The most ridiculous damn thing you’ve ever heard of. You’re really landing on water where there’s no clear floor underneath you: everybody dies. That title was there because I knew where that album was going. I knew the process and the thought behind the people who were putting the album out; what they wanted me to do.”
Young continued, “That was me doing their method. And my title for it. Geffen tried to force me to do things – the record company, not David Geffen himself – when they saw that I was on – tangents.
Concluding, “Ultimately, ‘Make a record that sounds like you.’ That was a very tough thing to do. But I tried to do a great record. We put everything we had into making that a great record. But I was just starting to come out of the trees at that point.”
