The drunk ballad Neil Young doesn’t remember writing: “I woke up and went ‘fuck!'”
Life imitates art, or so they say. Arguably, music remains such a relevant art form because of how well it can talk about the real world. This stems from the songwriter having that connection with the world and being able to put it into words. Sometimes, that connection comes from being in love. It can also come from falling out of love, losing someone or finding something unexpected. In other instances, as Neil Young experienced, it comes from getting drunk and letting your unfiltered feelings rise to the surface.
We’ve all woken up after a night out and regretted some things we said. It’s a common occurrence that people go out, get drunk and let some kind of hidden truth spill out, leading to arguments and awkwardness. Usually, we don’t regret what we said; we regret that we said it. Telling someone you fancy them, telling someone they’re an arse; chances are those emotions were always present; it’s just no one was supposed to hear them.
The reason we tend to let the truth slip a little bit easier when we’ve had a few is because of the perverse impact alcohol has on our brains. It doesn’t just make us feel like we can dance and coach the England football team to World Cup victory, but it also stops us from evaluating circumstances as effectively as we can when sober. Essentially, neurotransmitters in our brain that would usually tell us whether saying something is a good or bad idea either slow down or stop altogether. The result? Brutal honesty ensues.
There is nowhere that people are more honest than in their creative work. Subdued thoughts are brought to the surface and vocalised beautifully. That vocalisation is what makes people connect with art. People are also honest when they’ve had a drink. As such, when someone engages with their art while drunk, you will get a glimpse into exactly what was on their mind at the time.
In Neil Young’s case, he was feeling a sense of longing when he wrote the track ‘Barstool Blues’. Whether this was longing for his youth or a lost love isn’t clear, as both are referenced in the song. Chances are, we are getting a glimpse into a drunk mind feeling lots of different emotions at once and putting them down onto paper.
It’s worth pointing out that none of this is speculation; Neil Young himself confessed that he was blackout drunk when he initially penned ‘Barstool Blues’, to the point that he doesn’t remember writing it. “We came home from the bar, and I wrote that song,” he said, “I woke up, and I went, ‘Fuck!’ I couldn’t remember writing it.”
The first verse sees Young pine for youth and sobriety as he seems to lose track of the world around him. The second verse sees the narrator look elsewhere as they stare at an empty bar stool and reflect on the person who should be sitting on it. Finally, in the third verse, we hear Young sing about somebody who oddly reflects himself. “Once there was a friend of mine who died a thousand deaths / His life was filled with parasites and countless idle threats.”
With ‘Barstool Blues’, we are given unfiltered access to Young’s mind. Already willing to be vulnerable due to the nature of creativity, the fact he was drunk at the time of writing means the messages portrayed in the lyrics are as on the surface as you could possibly want. The difficulty comes from trying to properly work out what they mean and who they’re about.
