Watch Neil Young track down his own bootlegs in rare footage of a record store confrontation
It’s a great mystery of the world to muse over how many masterpieces have simply been lost or otherwise precluded from seeing the light of day by tragic mishaps. Bob Dylan used to leave song sheets lying around behind the back of the piano or in basements, Tom Waits reportedly had tapes robbed from his car, and Neil Young picks up his own forgotten bootlegs in a record store.
And Young wasn’t all too happy about that. “It’s not a good record,” Young tells a shopkeeper with an illegal bootleg in hand, “What about the artists who make the record?” Things then divulge into comedy as Young informs the effacing clerk, “I’m one of the people on this record and I don’t recognise this record.” And quick as a flash, he puts things brilliantly into perspective by replying, “I don’t know, I don’t listen to records. I can’t afford a record player so that’s it.”
All the while, Young seems to be considering: ‘Do I buy this record to make sure it’s off the shelf and out of circulation or is that giving the owner profits which simply perpetuates the problem?” Fast-forward fifty years and Young was fighting the same battle with Spotify as he pulled his music off the platform over a feud regarding misinformation disseminated on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast.
In the end, Young simply decides that the best plan of action is to steal the record only seeing though he claims it isn’t technically stealing because it’s his property. Backed by a record store soundtrack from the era, this all collides to form a somewhat thrilling organic time capsule of the era. The whole thing preserves the zeitgeist in amber as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ plays on.
The summation of the whole thing aside from the allure of the 1970s presented in an organic fashion is just how protective Young is of his art. The folk star simply will not let it lie and is willing to go the extra mile to ensure that anything that bears his name on the stands comes with a quality-checked seal of approval. Some of you might think that this is pernickety pretence but some of you might think it’s a worthy pursuit from a man of integrity.
You can make your own mind up by watching the comical footage below.
