The failed project that will always haunt Neil Young: “I still have a sense of loss”
He’s not an essential country artist, residing more firmly in the folk rock spectrum, but while Neil Young is many things, most of them come with a least a whiff of gingham about them.
The man has often been at his best when singing about ranch hands and pastoral scenes of escapist rural America. That is a fine feat indeed, and when he has wandered into other areas, he has graced them with his soulful individualism, too. However, one futurist pursuit was rendered somewhat of a train wreck upon release, and it has been a creative learning curve for Young ever since.
When Young released Trans in 1982, it was tragically panned by critics and fans alike. Nobody could understand it, both creatively and literally. However, the project actual sought to transfigure his family’s private battle at the time. You see, Young and Pegi’s son, Ben, was born with cerebral palsy, and the parents were informed that there was little chance he would ever learn to walk or talk.
Thus, they engaged in a rigorous routine to give him the best chance of succeeding on this front. As Young told Mojo in 1995: “At that time, he was simply trying to find a way to talk, to communicate with other people. That’s what Trans is all about.” Much of the album consists of indecipherable vocoder vocals alongside a synthy score. “That’s why, on that record, you know I’m saying something, but you can’t understand what it is. Well, that’s exactly the same feeling I was getting from my son.”
With this in mind, the album, though not commercially successful, arguably acts as one of Young’s most dedicatedly art-forward pieces. It picks up a particular motion of humanity and runs with it, refusing to bend or quiver in the face of possible critical blasts. It is Young at his most compassionate yet uncompromising.
However, Young kept this struggle private, so the intent was left unrealised by the masses, and they registered the angst without any understanding. Thus, the postmodernist point of Young using technology to convey the humanised tale behind the art was missed, and the project was panned.
Nevertheless, the star was unperturbed by failure and found creative liberation in it. “If I’d had the technology and the awareness I have today, I could have told the story of Trans really well. I had film scripts for all of the vocoder songs. CVs of the characters. There was a baby, nurses in a hospital, and a computer guy whose head was a keypad so he kept hitting himself – they were all lip-synching to my voice… But I just didn’t have the tools to pull it off.”
Technology catching up to a vision is part and parcel of being an artist, and will often see some performers going back to their old works to reframe them within the paradigm of modernity, but, in truth, it would be ruined if Young did so. Though some of the humanity of the piece may have been reduced owing to this lack of technological ability, there is something pure about the LP remaining a tragic miscommunication.
It was ahead of its time to such an extent that it couldn’t be effectively brought to fruition, and that is not something to lament. As Young asserts: “I still have a sense of loss that I didn’t get to do that project, and it was misunderstood. It’s one of my favourites. But that was when I learned that if you do something different a lot of people will really hate you for it and just jump on you for it. It’s not going stop me doing whatever I want to do, but it’s interesting to note that.”
Young now continues to pour money into causes related to those born with physical challenges. Trans is not only a mark of his creative forethinking but also his fortitude as a person. The avant-garde offering might not have been a hit, but there is more than enough merit in it for some retrospective celebration.
