The CSNY album Neil Young called a massive failure: “Failed to reach anything”
Rock stars on the level of Neil Young probably care less if an album sold a million or just ten copies.
There’s something inspiring about Young. He is certainly driven by some ego, and his artistry tends to trump everything in his pathway. But, it also means that as soon as his work is complete, Young doesn’t really pay much attention to how the record is received or performs commercially.
While, of course, we would suggest that delving into his whopping 42 studio albums is certainly worth your while, and may even see you through most of your adult life without repeating a single track, if you’re time-poor, then Young has one that you should avoid, even if he did his usual trick while recording it.
Regardless of who was listening, Young was just following his muse, and no matter how many times he went in the wrong direction, he at least stood up for it being a different piece of his work that he had never tried before. Then again, sometimes people don’t make specific albums for any good reason, and when Young got the chance to reunite with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, he thought that they took every wrong step when working on American Dream.
But if Young didn’t like the album, why didn’t he bail on it? After all, this is a man who abandoned Stephen Stills in the middle of a tour because he got fed up with him, so it wasn’t like it was out of the ordinary. The only problem was that Young had made a promise to David Crosby that he would make a record if he got clean, and he wasn’t about to go back on his word once his friend kicked his habits.
All of the elements of the album feel like they should make for a great project, but a lot of Young’s material leaves a lot to be desired. ‘The Name of Love’ is pretty decent, and ‘This Old House’ is one of the sharper lyrics that he wrote during this era, yet there’s something that seems to keep him at a distance from the rest of the group.
In fact, this LP has more in common with The Beatles’ White Album in that it sounds like four completely different artists working on one record. Whereas the Fab Four could balance everything out, hearing Young’s critique of the US on the title track is a little hard to take seriously when the next thing you hear is Graham Nash singing some of the most syrupy muzak of his career on tracks like ‘Shadowland’.
There were good intentions behind the record, but Young couldn’t say that it was any good by the end, telling Mojo, “I think CSN&Y reminds people of a certain feeling. Our audience wants to see it alive again because somehow it verifies the feeling that they’re alive, too. CSN&Y – when it works – can make music that is very committed, heartfelt and sincere. It’s not easy to get it out, and it’s not easy to overcome some of the bullshit around it. American Dream was an attempt that failed to reach anything like its true potential.”
Looking at some of the album tracks, it’s hard to see the potential in some spots. While it’s understandable that Crosby would take a back seat on the record because of his poor health, hearing Stills turn in songs like ‘That Girl’ and ‘Ridin’ Thunder’ just feel like a sad rocker of yesteryear trying to show his kids that he was cool once upon a time.
By the time that the album hit store shelves, there was no way of getting the group on the same page anymore. Young didn’t even show up for the photo shoot for the album cover, so any chance of hearing any of the tunes live was only a handful of shows before he returned to his regularly scheduled solo career.
Then again, it’s more than a coincidence that classics like ‘Rockin’ In the Free World’ came right after this album. Those tracks could have been a massive shot in the arm for American Dream, but when the premise of a record is that flimsy, Young probably wasn’t going to fork over his A-material just yet.
