“So beautiful”: The band Neil Young called the sound of modern rock
No one wakes up one morning and says they will rewrite the future with their music. Anyone can try to make something authentic to them, but once you start talking about music like you’re some artistic version of Nostradamus, that’s when people start tuning out and labelling you as pretentious. The future of music is only dictated by those still around to see it, and while Neil Young had been around the block, he knew something futuristic was on the horizon when this band emerged out of the ashes of punk.
Before he had become a legend of rock, though, a lot of people forget how forward-thinking Young was at the start of his career. Many artists had been mining the same traditional sounds of folk songs, but since Young added loads more distortion into the mix, he bridged the gap between the Led Zeppelin fans and the Byrds fans all in one go.
Considering his total disregard for whether everything sounded in tune or whether something was too complicated, he also seemed on the verge of the punk revolution. Most people would not have had the confidence to do a brilliant one-note solo but on that lead guitar break of ‘Cinnamon Girl’, Young was writing the simplicity handbook that Johnny Ramone would follow to the letter whenever he played anything that sounded remotely like a lead guitar.
Right as that main wave of punk was crashing, Sonic Youth took every lesson their peers taught them and went even more artsy with it. The times of Lou Reed weren’t that far away, but while Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon had the same artsy bent to their tunes, the raw noise behind the guitars was descended directly from The Stooges.
While all punk rock was known to be fairly simple, though, most guitarists are in for a ride should they try to piece together what chords they were playing. Punk was never supposed to sound like anything else, so why not move outside of conventional tuning as well? Looking through the group’s discography, some of their best tunes feature tunings that aren’t seen on any other track, especially when they start rolling during the breakdown of ‘Teen Age Riot’.
Although Young was a genuine innovator and continues to think outside the box, the sound of modern rock was descended from Sonic Youth, saying, “It’s obvious that I like Sonic Youth. In my book, they really do modern rock. They make magnificent music. You know that one, ‘Expressway to Your Skull’? It’s incredibly good, so beautiful. It’s a classic. Superb melody and even better live. They have quite a few that are that good.”
Moore and Gordon might not have seen the same heights as those that they influenced, but it’s hard to deny that modern rock wouldn’t have sounded half as good if not for them. After all, Goo was the metric that Geffen Records used to measure the success of Nirvana, and it doesn’t really get more forward-thinking than inspiring the next voice of a generation.
But if anyone were to ask Moore or Gordon what they were thinking about at the time, they were more likely to talk about their need to make the best noise that they possibly could. There was no sense in thinking about being a rock legend, but becoming that kind of iconic only comes when people follow artists well after they’ve made their classics.
