What is Neil Young’s ‘Ditch Trilogy’?
The common acknowledgement among rock music fans is that Neil Young is a lyrical master, but is there any particular album or era that holds the key to his genius? Of course, the answer to that is subjective and heavily dependent on who you speak to – but the wonderment of the ‘Ditch Trilogy’ still has the closest pull towards the inside of Young’s mystical mind, charting an evolution of albums that painted the most vulnerable portrait of his soul.
The pivotal triple instalment of records highlighted a specific conflict and crossroads at this early stage in Young’s career. Ultimately, by the mid-1970s, he was an indie boy turned mainstream superstar and having had enough of his stint in the spotlight, he wanted to crawl back into his cave of quiet recording sessions and intimate gigs.
But with his evergreen crop of Harvest tunes taking the whole world by storm, much to his dismay, that was never going to happen. As such, following the seismic 1972 release transforming him into a rock success story on a global scale, Young receded into a depth of despair that a prized veil of elusive anonymity would never again belong to him.
Granted, you might think melancholy lamentations are pretty much a Young trademark – and to be completely fair, you wouldn’t be wrong – but the ensuing ‘Ditch Trilogy’, much as its name suggests, depicted the folk star as he wallowed in an artistic and personal rut; struggling to come to terms with the harsh toll of mainstream fame, and feeling as though he had lost part of his sonic identity to the masses. Despite how bleak it seemed, however, many argue that the ‘Ditch Trilogy’ exhibited Young in his lyrical prime, hence retrospectively making it one of his most revered collections of work.
Why were these the ‘wilderness years’ for Neil Young?
It does warrant explaining that the trilogy comes under many guises – most commonly ‘Ditch’ but also known as ‘Doom’ and even the ‘Wilderness Years’ – but regardless of which term is your weapon of choice, they all illustrate the same notion of darkness and disarray that Young felt he was shrouded in, as well as the emotion that pours out most expressly through the works.
After Harvest, Young’s next trio of records – Time Fades Away, On the Beach, and Tonight’s the Night, released in 1973, ’74, and ’75, respectively – constitute the ‘Ditch Trilogy’. In many ways, it scored Young a certain level of what he set out to achieve because, particularly on the point of the latter two, his lyrical explorations of depression, over-exposure, and the isolation to the world he once knew gained him nowhere near the commercial success of their predecessors.
In the end, this did prove to be a short-lived ruse. With picking up the moniker of the Godfather of Grunge, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and the heady heights of CSNY all eclipsed him since, it can hardly be said that Young has eschewed the spotlight in all that time. Maybe it was just a process of getting acclimatised to the mainstream, but if there’s anything the ‘Ditch Trilogy’ represents, it’s not a position he ever set out to be in.
