The album Neil Young wrote to keep his marriage alive: “Never get bored”
Those looking for a crash course in staying power should look no further than Neil Young.
Sure, there are folks who’ve been around a little longer, like your Bob Dylan’s and Paul McCartney’s. We all saw this past summer that Frankie Valli’s still (kind of) going at 90. Young, though, still has a renegade cool to him that weirdly only grows with age. He is the right kind of cantankerous, still finding it in himself to rage against predatory music industry practices and not, y’know, young people. Way back in 1992, he released an album that showed he knew how to keep things going in a very different manner.
An old friend of mine once said that no one who was good in the 1970s was good in the ’80s. There are a scant few counterarguments (The Cure, Bruce Springsteen, Joy Division/New Order), but broadly speaking, it was a rough time for the leading lights of the previous decade. However, none of them were ever sued by the head of their record label for putting out music that was “not commercial” and “musically uncharacteristic of their previous recordings”. That pleasure was all Neil Young’s. However, 1989 turned things around with his reunion album with Crazy Horse Freedom.
His mojo was fully back, and a whole new generation of plaid-shirted grungers hailing him as the one ’70s legend it was fine to listen to; the early ’90s were a full-on return to form for our Neil. Culminating in one of the genuine, no-qualifiers-needed highlights of his entire career, 1992’s Harvest Moon. If the title sounds familiar, there’s a reason for that. His recent revival of fortunes had played up his proto-alt-rock credentials, getting Crazy Horse on the road to play long, ungodly loud live shows filled with feedback and solos. The man had even taken Sonic Youth out on the road as a way of making sure that at every show, he was playing his absolute best.
Harvest Moon was a step back into the folk world he’d originally stepped out from, its title a deliberate homage to his 1972 masterwork Harvest. There was a practical aspect to this, though. In a hilariously on-the-nose welcome to middle age, the previous tour had blown out his ears, and he was eager to tour something that would be a little less taxing on the old cochlea. On a personal note, he was also dipping into his past to show how things can last.
He elaborated on this in an interview with the NME, where he said the following: “This album here is about making things last, how to keep that interest, how to keep the fire burning. Never get bored with the fact that you’ve been with someone for a long time, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Relationships should enrichen with age, that kind of thing.”
Harvest Moon is that made sound. The fact that contentment isn’t a dirty word and that joy can be just as well expressed via wild, shrieking guitar solos as it can be via a romantic, gentle shuffle like the title track, one of the best love songs of Young’s entire career.
It’s wisdom well won that he seeks to pass down to us. Those things last because people make them last, and whether it’s a career or a relationship, it’s good for the soul when they do.
