Blushing admiration: Neil Young would happily play with Paul McCartney “anytime he wants”
Among the greats of classic rock, there exists a sonic calling card that inextricably links a song’s stylistic traits to a particular artist. While Paul McCartney has mastered the four-on-the-floor love song, Neil Young has trademarked an ability to achieve sonic depth with simple monochromatic chord structures.
They’re two artists who exist within the same orbit but captain very different ships, achieving a similar cultural impact but with different methodologies. While McCartney wraps his delicacy up with a big red bow and smile, Young slides his to you in a brown envelope and a fleeting glance. Nonetheless, the common thread that is woven throughout their music has seen a kinship develop between the two of them. They admire one another’s work and regularly collaborate on stage.
In an interview with Rolling Stone back in 1975, Young made his first public proclamation of his adoration for Paul and The Beatles, stating: “I remember singing Beatles tunes… the first song I ever sang in front of people was It Won’t Be Long, and then Money (That’s What I Want). That was in Calvin High School [Winnipeg] cafeteria. It was my big moment.”
While both tracks exhibit the poppier tendencies of an early Lennon-McCartney partnership, they still act as the blueprint for a style McCartney would go on to dominate in the following decades and be undoubtedly influential in Young’s penning of choruses like ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’ or ‘Down By The River’.
But perhaps one of Young’s lesser-known tracks drew the more identifiable comparisons between his work and McCartney’s. On the title track of his album Silver & Gold, released in 2000, Young celebrates love and commitment in the face of material possessions in a song whose depiction of undying love would comfortably fall into McCartney’s wheelhouse.
During a past interview with KGSR Radio, Young gave a fairly forthright assessment of the track’s creation: “It’s just such a song, you know. It just kind of lives with the guitar. It’s just there. And it’s always a kind of song you do it the first time, it’s fine, it sounds great. And then you do it the second time, and it’s like, you know, why are you doing it again? You just—you’ve already done it. It’s such a simple thing that either you — I would get it right the first time, and then by the time the band knew it, it sounded so contrived to me that I could never get it.”
The sort of natural genesis of ‘Silver & Gold’ is perhaps what provokes comparisons to McCartney. Macca’s greatest romantic musings often came on stripped-back compositions that hinted towards an idea that the song was drawn out of an instrument instead of painstakingly crafted. ‘Here There and Everywhere’ and ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ have a similarly natural melodic quality to them that any act of production that followed the initial writing of the song would negate its charm.
It’s that very uncanny ability that has marked McCartney as one of the all-time greats, so it’s no wonder that when asked about the song’s likeness to a McCartney track in the same KGSR interview, Young gave the sort of blushing, non-descript answer that goes no way towards hiding his admiration for the Beatle: “Oh, 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. So…’”
Some 25 years later, we’ve yet to see McCartney and Young share a studio together. They have, of course, performed on stage multiple times, and Young indeed had the privilege of inducting McCartney into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, but they have never bumped elbows on a mixing desk.
