“I had a lot on my mind”: The album Neil Young made in just two weeks
At times, I often wonder how Neil Young made it to be such a commercially successful musician. Don’t get me wrong, the very act of wondering brings me great joy and brief flickers of hope in humanity that authenticity will always reign supreme, for a man hellbent on avoiding any form of commercial compromise was revered on some of music’s biggest stages.
But perhaps what is more interesting about Young’s case is that on some occasions, he deliberately went out of his way to provoke not only industry heads but also the general public. In 2006, Young released the lyrically vicious ‘Let’s Impeach The President’, aimed at George W Bush and given its sentiment, he made no bones about it being intended to cause discomfort.
“When I wrote ‘Let’s Impeach the President,’ a lot of people criticised it as a crappy song, that it was such a terrible melody,” Young said. “What am I going to do, write a song like that and use a good melody? That doesn’t make sense. You want a melody that pisses people off, that’s so stupid and repetitive that it aggravates people.”
Whether you love or hate the end result, you can’t deny it proves Young’s fastidiousness when creating art, which is designed to serve a purpose beyond simple listening. But maybe his more considered approach on that 2006 record was an effort to heal some artistic burns received the year before on his record Prairie Wind.
While many devoted Young fans herald it as a record that showcases his gruff and jagged vocal style that leans into the darker sensibilities of his writing style, to him it was project cobbled together too swiftly and lacking the nuance he prides himself on.
“I had a lot on my mind,” Young told Goldmine magazine. “And I just came to Nashville and started writing,” he added. “The songs appear on the album in the order that I wrote them. I had only one song when we went into the studio. We recorded that, and then there was the next day. I had the melody for the next song, but no words, so I went back to the hotel and wrote the lyrics, and we recorded the second song the following day. Things just kept going like that”.
He added: “After we did the third song, I had to go to New York and meet with the doctors, to set the date for the [surgical] procedure and so forth. But then I went back to Nashville right away, and we kept on recording”.
Despite Young’s reservations, the record still boasts some stellar musical moments. ‘It’s A Dream’ is a whimsical and stirring piano ballad that proves Young’s vocals are certifiably timeless. But I suppose, when your name is cemented in rock immortality like Young’s, anything but perfection doesn’t cut it.
