Remembering Evan Dando’s cover of Neil Young’s ‘Thrasher’
“Ever since I was a little kid,” Evan Dando once declared, “Neil Young’s been drilled into my head.” He might have taken more of a light-hearted approach to music himself, but somewhere in the welter of The Lemonhead’s frontman’s work is a fair swathe of Neil Young’s profound influence.
In fact, he even likened his major motivation of Dinosaur Jr. to the classic folk star. “I think they’re a major band that said to everyone, you can all relax now and play the kind of music you want to play,” he told Jud Cost, “which is the Neil Young-ish stuff you grew up with-do a couple of leads here and there, and have a cool rock band. It’s okay not to be so punk.”
Young took a similar tact in the counterculture age. The folk star stood aside from the usual tropes and proudly sported his own laidback individualism. His impact was seismic and the respect he has garnered from his fellow musicians is equally esteemed. Dando proves that his influence pans various generations.
However, the track that Dando chose to cover is decided stuck in the amber of an era. As Neil Young explained: “’Thrasher’ was pretty much me writing about my experiences with Crosby, Stills & Nash in the mid-’70s.” That lived-in sense of life on the road shines through in Dando’s jagged cover, he captures the aura of looking back perfectly.
However, perhaps the most notable feature of his cover is just how damn awkward it is. The host sat a few metres away simply wavers between indifference and insouciance before shielding her eyes from the sun and then finally succumbing to nearly enough cutting him off with a quip about running out of tape. Dando then proceeds to offer up a relatively solid Bob Dylan impression to finish off the track at a point when the camera crew seem to be packing up anyway.
All in all, this actually lends a fitting sense of ruggedness to the cover. After all, with Dando, it was never going to be polished, but he imbues it with a sense of love all the same despite the despondency surrounding him. This makes for a fitting tribute to a song of troubles, and he really rams home how good the track actually is without ever straining to do so.
