“What am I? Stupid?”: the album Neil Young wrote in self-sabotage
When you have a career that spans decades, like now-iconic artists such as Joni Mitchell’s or Neil Young, you must learn to take the rough with the smooth. Very few things are going to turn out the way you plan them, even when things are going right, but especially when things are going wrong. So, you should focus less on preventing your massive flubs and more on how you react to them. You can do this in several ways, but each needs to be handled carefully.
Most infamously, there’s the good old-fashioned, “I was off my tits when I made it, please ignore” defence. This may get you some rock star cred for all the bad behaviour, but eventually, it gets old, so use it with caution. Speaking of using it with caution, there’s the “it’s secretly a masterpiece, and you’re all philistines” defence that only a few can get away with.
If it works, this can actually come across as savvy, knowing the direction the cultural wind is blowing. Especially considering people have come around to Nickelback in the year of our Lord 2025, absolutely anything can happen. However, you need some serious faith in your work or in people, but who has that anymore?
Finally, there’s the one that Neil Young himself has in stock. Now, you might not think that the most cantankerous Canuck since Wolverine needs many excuses. He’s one of the pre-eminent songwriters of his generation and has been consistently popular for well over half a century now, counting his work in Buffalo Springfield. The thing is, though, the ‘Heart of Gold’ songwriter’s reputation, much like his temperament, has a habit of blowing hot and cold.
How did Neil Young defend his worst albums?
Nowhere is this more apparent than Neil Young in the 1980s, a banner year for relics of the 1960s. Even The Monkees were able to have a comeback, let alone the decade’s genuine icons like George Harrison and The Beach Boys. However, for Neil, the 1980s were a catastrophe. One that, for a period of time, he didn’t seem likely to come back from.
We’re not talking about Springsteen’s late ’80s either, which were mocked at the time but were eventually revealed to be some of his best work in hindsight. Neil Young absolutely honked in the ’80s. To the point that after releasing the genuinely baffling one-two punch of Trans and Everybody’s Rockin’ in 1983, his label sued him on the grounds that the two records were “not commercial” and “musically uncharacteristic of [his] previous recording”.
The suit didn’t go anywhere. Young had a written clause in his contract promising no creative input from the label, so he countersued and got a written apology from label head David Geffen for his troubles. I wonder if it was galling for the suits to hear what Young had to say about those records afterwards because his defence was the typically bold move claim of, “Well, yeah, of course, they were shit, I knew that at the time!”
In a 1995 interview with Mojo, he was asked about those two records, and Everybody’s Rockin’ in particular. With over a decade of hindsight, he had this to say about them: “When I made albums like Everybody’s Rockin’, and everyone takes the shit out of ’em…l knew they could do that. What am l? Stupid? Did people really think I put that out thinking it was the greatest fuckin’ thing I’d ever recorded? Obviously, I’m aware it’s not.”
One can only imagine the fists that were put through walls at Geffen Records when he said the next part: “Plus, it was a way of further destroying what I’d already set up. Without doing that, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now. If I build something up, I have to systematically tear it right down before people decide, ‘Oh, that’s how we can define him.’”
In short, Young claimed that those albums were doing exactly what Geffen Records were suing him for. I guess that’s the kind of life you can lead when you write ‘Old Man’.
