“One of my best friends”: the musician Neil Young thought no one could equal
Only a handful of musicians have an infallible status, and Neil Young is certainly one of them. A progenitor of alternative rock, highly stylised, textural guitar playing, and a master songwriter, lyricist and singer, the Canadian was one of the first to perfect heaviness and melodic splendour in the rock context. His constant tiptoeing between both environments has been incredibly fruitful.
Having all bases covered has led to a creative journey quite like no other, featuring his lauded solo work, as well as era-defining stints with Buffalo Springfield and CSNY, the latter of whom is arguably the greatest supergroup of all time. Feted by his generation and all subsequent others, few have managed to continue moving with the times and keep their legacy intact; it’s like a trophy cabinet full to the brim that’s survived a devastating hurricane. It speaks to Young’s natural resonance and the undiluted emotion that underpins all his work.
Although Young is one of the finest ever to do it, he’s also a shrewd individual. Not only has he worked with some of the best in the business in his most famous outfits, as well as the early group The Mynah Birds – a shortlived but Motown-courted act, which featured a young Rick James – but he’s also regularly drawn upon the talent of others across his career.
This has come in an array of forms. Whether this be his main backing band, Crazy Horse, the likes of Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, or even The Band’s rhythmic maestro, Levon Helm, the list of musical icons that have featured on his albums is remarkably extensive. While David Bowie is often remembered as the one who most concertedly drew upon the skill of others, Young beat him to it by a few years.
To be fair to Young, he’s never done this in a throwaway capacity and has always had those he could rely on. While Crazy Horse have been his ballast for the longest, when he wasn’t working with them in the early 1970s, The Stray Gators seamlessly took their place as he entered a dark place psychologically. Inspired by the death of his close friend, their brief member, and Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, they set about making inroads into the depressing ‘Ditch Trilogy’. They supported him on both 1972’s Harvest and the following year’s first instalment of the trilogy; Time Fades Away.
Comprised of the core group of pedal steel and slide guitar whizz Ben Keith, pianist supremo Jack Nitzsche, bassist Tim Drummond and drummer Kenny Buttrey, The Stray Gators assisted Young’s evolvement. While all would feature on future albums after the end of the Gators, it was Keith who was most important to Young, and he thinks no one could equal him. Playing the emotive slide guitar on classic tracks such as ‘Heart of Gold’, helming bass on ‘Ambulance Blues’ and even hand drums on ‘On the Beach’, Keith’s musical mastery wasn’t just significant for Young. He was one of his “best friends”, making it extra tragic that Keith died following a heart attack at Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch in 2010.
Reflecting on Keith’s passing, Young told Rolling Stone India in 2012: “He was one of my best friends in this life, and I miss him dearly. It’s a huge void. No one can play those steel parts like Ben. I wouldn’t want to hear anybody try. So, I have retired all of those songs he played on unless I do them solo. And that’s a lot of my songs! But since Ben’s gone, it has also opened up a huge space in my head to do more music. There’s an old saying, ‘The barn’s burned down, now I can see the moon.'”
Keith must have had a profound impact on Young. After all, he still plays staples such as ‘Down By The River’ and ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere’, which the late Whitten, the man deemed most significant for his solo career, played on. While Keith has passed, his legacy remains on record if not the stage.
