“What I’d set up”: The album Neil Young used to destroy his career
Neil Young never seemed to care one way or the other if someone bothered listening to his music. He always took a firm artistic approach to every one of his records, and if it didn’t land with everyone in his audience, he was going to keep on moving forward and make whatever the hell he wanted. Although it wasn’t always the best business decision to make certain albums, he felt that this album was a plan for him to deliberately destroy his career when up against the wall.
Looking at where Young started, though, it’s not like he didn’t know what made a hit song. From his work with Buffalo Springfield to the beginnings of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the Canadian icon was never afraid to embrace his pop side on tunes like ‘For What It’s Worth’ or ‘Cinnamon Girl’. To be a pop star meant cowering to the suits, though, and that was the last thing on Young’s mind.
Despite After the Gold Rush and Harvest selling massive numbers, there were pieces of his discography that were bound to be divisive amongst fans. His way of embracing folksy music always had a rock edge to it, but when he started making pure country records, not as many people were willing to embrace him as the Canadian equivalent of Willie Nelson. What he needed was a rock album, but the kiss of death was always going to be telling him what to do.
After going through different disputes with his label, Young would find himself in court when the label accused him of sounding too little like himself. If they were talking about the album Everybody’s Rockin’, though, they may have had a small point in thinking that he was tryingto sabotage his own songs.
The whole point of the record was to give everyone the rock album they had wanted, but hearing him return with an album less than a half-hour long and made up of rockabilly-style jams is almost funny in the right context. It’s clear that Young is having fun on the record, but it’s the same kind of fun that a punk kid has when they are pushing their parents to the limit when they misbehave.
The stakes weren’t lost on Young, either, saying, “When I made albums like Everybody’s Rockin’, and everyone takes the shit out of ’em…l knew they could do that. What am l? Stupid? Did people really think I put that out thinking it was the greatest fuckin’ thing I’d ever recorded? Obviously, I’m aware it’s not. Plus, it was a way of further destroying what I’d already set up. Without doing that, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now.”
As much as it was terrible at the time, Young wasn’t 100% sure of what he was doing. He would still put out wild experiments that never clicked with his mainstream fans, like Trans or Landing on Water, but all of them make up pieces of his career that make you appreciate an album like Mirror Ball with Pearl Jam or his turn towards rustic music again on Harvest Moon.
And maybe that’s the real genius behind Neil Young. He knows that he’s got some outright stinkers in his catalogue, but sometimes, the only way to achieve legendary status is to balance out the classics with the wild experiments. That doesn’t make for the cleanest discography, but at least it’s better than having to cash in on a trend.
