Hear Neil Young’s haunted isolated vocals for his song ‘Old Man’
There’s a good reason Neil Young is considered the ‘Godfather of grunge’. The icon may well have provided a blueprint for some of the genre’s more caustic riffs and scything lyricism, but it was his marriage of melody and melancholy in his vocal performances that made him legendary. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Young delivered soulful tunes that were intellectual while also providing a serene and clean vocal display. There’s no better show of that than when you isolate the vocals on some of his better songs.
One such track is the heartbreakingly beautiful ‘Old Man’. It ranks as one of the singer-songwriter’s best amid a strong canon. Though Young had been crafting music on his own and with Buffalo Springfield for some years, by 1970, Young had shaken off the shackles and was quickly marking himself out as a contender for the title of America’s songwriter.
It was during this time that Young made the move and bought a plot of land in Northern California and turned it into Broken Arrow Ranch, where he still lives to this day. When he was buying a plot of land he met Louis Avila, who showed him around the estate: “Louis took me for a ride in this blue Jeep,” Young said in 2005.
“He gets me up there on the top side of the place, and there’s this lake up there that fed all the pastures, and he says, ‘Well, tell me, how does a young man like yourself have enough money to buy a place like this?’ And I said, ‘Well, just lucky, Louie, just real lucky.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s the darndest thing I ever heard.’ And I wrote this song for him.” Despite Young now being older than Avila was in the song, the track still feels as ageless and timeless as when he first wrote it. This is pure Youngian lyricism at its finest.
The lyrics may have changed, their meaning gnarled by the passing of time, but they still reek of the central themes of Young’s work. However, it is difficult not to enjoy the crystal clear, pitch-perfect vocal performance Young delivered as a sprightly youth. Full of hope and promise, one such moment during which Young showed himself to be a legend in the making, was when he arrived at the BBC studios and provide his UK audience with a hauntingly beautiful performance of his songs.
It’s a performance that goes down in Neil Young’s history but, brought into 2022, and by isolating the vocal track of the young singer-songwriter, we can hear, with more clarity than ever, the beauty in Young’s song ‘Old Man’.
