The masterful singer Neil Young would work with in a heartbeat: “I’m ready”
It’s never really easy to get a handle on what path Neil Young is going to be going down on any record.
He always thrived on making music that was a bit more left-field than what everyone else was doing, and it wasn’t all that surprising if he decided to take his music in a completely different direction every single time he made a record just to spite some of the more predictable members of his fanbase. He was going to do what pleased him first, but he felt that he wouldn’t exactly say no to working with some of the biggest names in his record collection if they asked him.
But anything that Young ever played was going to have to be done on his terms. He does have one of the most easygoing demeanours in rock and roll, but he could be extremely fickle about what he wanted whenever he made a new record, and if Crosby, Stills, and Nash didn’t have the sound that he was looking for, he wasn’t above leaving them high and dry and moving on to whatever next record he was working on.
Switching things up was his style, but that was all done in service to making the music sound as perfect as it could possibly be. No one was going to be complacent playing the same kind of song over and over again, and it wasn’t out of the question for Young to go from making something strange on Trans to hard-edged on Freedom to going back to his roots on Harvest Moon.
All of it was about keeping things fresh, and that’s exactly what The Beatles did when they made their greatest records. The Fab Four didn’t like the idea of making one kind of song for the rest of their lives, and from Rubber Soul onward, it was also as if they were trying their hardest to make something that was deliberately out of the ordinary every single time they worked on one of their records.
And while John Lennon seemed to be more Young’s speed in terms of making something truly strange, he did have a soft spot for what Paul McCartney did. Lennon had abandoned the road long before his passing, but Macca was the kind of working musician that Young could always appreciate, whether that was him constantly switching up his approach on his albums or giving it to the people every time he got up onstage with Wings.
That kind of work ethic was all Young could ask for, and he would give anything to write a song or perform with McCartney if given the chance, saying, “I’d love to work with someone like Paul. I’d love to work with Paul. I mean, I love Paul’s music. Paul’s like – his potential is great. I mean, he’s right there, you know. He doesn’t – you know, he can do what – basically whatever he wants to do. I’m available to play with Paul McCartney any time he wants to play. He knows it, too. I already told him. I said, ‘Listen, if you want to do something with me, I’m ready.’”
Granted, Young probably wasn’t going to hop on one of McCartney’s granny songs, but when looking at some of the former Beatle’s records, there are certain places where Young would fit right in. Every self-titled McCartney effort was always about stripping things back and making music that was a bit more homespun, and Young has been doing that his whole career, so who’s to say they can’t break out the acoustic guitars and jam on a song for one of their albums?
The door is still open, but it would also need to be the right occasion as well. Young wasn’t going to crank out a completely filler song for McCartney to sing, and if he was going to turn up on one of McCartney’s tunes, he was going to need to come correct and remind everyone why he was one of the true legends of the 1970s.
