The controversial Neil Young song Bob Dylan called “one of his favourites”
In 1971, Neil Young was lying in bed recovering from a back injury. But his spirits were oddly high for an ailing man. He was falling madly in love with Carrie Snodgress, the star of the wacky and questionable comedy Diary of a Mad Housewife. The troublesome title to that film may well have served as a portent to the songsmith, but he was too smitten and missed it.
He soon penned an ode that was panned by the women’s liberation movement for its sexist lyrics, and even the oft-misogynistic critics of the day found the arrangement fraught. At a time when he was finding his feet in every sense, this track fell flat on every front. Or at least it did in most circles. As with all of Young’s work, it was divisive more so than more so than uniformly derisory.
He had intended for the Harvest track ‘A Man Needs a Maid’ to serve as the partner piece to ‘Heart of Gold’, to paint a complete picture of painful pining, but one has fared far better in the history books than the other. After all, the sentiment of ‘A Man Needs a Maid’ was outdated even upon release. Its reductive title led to protestation from the second-wave feminist movement and left diehard fans scratching their heads in search of a defence.
Although there is an argument that Young’s intention was, in fact, the opposite of its eventual interpretation— to empower women by flouting his own inadequacies — there was too much ambiguity in the mix for this to shine through. The fact that the defence remains cloudy is not the failure of a close-minded listener but a songwriter for once struggling to put his point across.
Even the defence he offered during a concert shortly after the release seemed tentative. “This is another new song. It’s called ‘A Man Needs a Maid’. It’s kind of a… it doesn’t really mean what it says,” he announced during a live broadcast. “It’s just the idea that anyone would think enough to say something like that would show that something else was happening. So, don’t take it personally when I say it. I don’t really want a maid.”
However, Bob Dylan was a buddy who was used to fishing the positives out of songs. His mode was to take things apart and see how they worked, like a child engineering prodigy, fiddling with the mechanics of folk songs rather than bicycle parts. And Dylan saw plenty of strengths in the song—the same strengths that encouraged Young to stick by the tune even though he recognised its nettlesome imperfections.
As Young told the late music journalist Johnny Rogan, “Some people thought that the arrangement was overdone, but Bob Dylan told me it was one of his favourites. I listened closer to Bob.” Young even later added that it was “overblown”, but that being overblown didn’t mean it wasn’t also “great”.
Its sweeping and schmaltzy tones are certainly a novel advancement on folk standards that the man who electrified the genre no doubt sincerely appreciated, in part because it sounded different to the sort of melody he was offering at the time, which is more than he had to say for ‘Heart of Gold’, a track that had him complaining: ”If it sounds like me, it should as well be me.”
But even with Dylan’s praise for the arrangement adding to its cache, the track still belongs in the relegation zone of Harvest. The track was rightfully vilified by women still trying to overcome the perpetuation of dated language labelled against them.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.