The songs Neil Young used to attack other musicians
In the realm of lyricism, Neil Young stands apart as a true master. With an unparalleled command of melody, he has woven incisive poetry into his music since the inception of his solo career. His lyrics possess a remarkable ability to evoke both wry smiles and streams of tears, showcasing the depth and potency of his musical palette.
The Canadian undoubtedly ranks among the most affecting musicians of all time. While he is esteemed as ‘The Godfather of Grunge’ for the distorted and dissonant innovations he enacted on the guitar in the 1960s and 1970s, Young is best known for the more melancholy moments he has produced. These touch on a range of areas, including the heartbreaking aspects of his childhood, the death of his close friend and Crazy Horse bandmate Danny Whitten, and, of course, the infidelities of his partner, Carrie Snodgress.
There’s a reason why the aptly named ‘Ditch Trilogy’ from the early 1970s ranks among some of his most influential records; the sadness is palpable. Never afraid to explore the most challenging junctures of his life with poetic verve, Young’s candid nature certified him as a fan favourite as soon as he released his debut solo album in 1968.
However, Neil Young’s songwriting style diverges from the confessional approach favoured by other acoustic guitar luminaries like his longtime friend, Joni Mitchell. While his repertoire does contain moments of poignant vulnerability, it also brims with sharp, incisive commentary. From politics to economics and even playful parodies of various musical genres, Young’s versatility is evident. It’s this substantive breadth that has underpinned his enduring and extensive career beyond his days with CSNY.
When he’s at his most irritated, Neil Young can also launch personal barrages. This is not in the sad, reflective method he’s known for, but instead, on the rare occasion he’s used his work to attack other musicians. One of the highlights of this tact is ‘Hippie Dream’ from 1986’s Landing on Water. As is well known by fans, Young often reflects on his countercultural era in his music, and he used this one to delve into his time with the era’s most important act, CSNY.
However, this song is more of a regretful peek at how things turned out in contrast to the heady days when hippiedom was at its zenith. He wrote the track about his former bandmate, David Crosby, a man whom he would have several spats with across his life regarding his struggle with drug addiction in the mid-1980s. For many, seeing a figure once inextricable from the countercultural ideal to be embroiled in such darkness was strange.
In Jimmy McDonough’s Young biography Shakey, producer Joel Bernstein says of the track: “I got chills when I heard it. ‘Hippie Dream’ is a great portrait of David. So cutting.” For instance, in the line at the end of the second verse, Young sings, “But the wooden ships were just a hippie dream,” about the CSNY countercultural staple ‘Wooden Ships’. Following this lyric, he adds, clearly alluding to Crosby and others that drug addiction had consumed, “Capsized in excess, if you know what I mean”.
It transpires that one of Neil Young’s most culturally significant tracks was also something of a critique of other musicians. Although ‘My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)’ is a key part of the end of late Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain, due to his use of the line “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” in his 1994 suicide note, the broader meaning of the song, which saw a world-weary Young grapple with seemingly waining relevance, saw him take a shot at one of the day’s most respected musicians.
Released in 1979 as part of Young’s masterpiece Rust Never Sleeps, the song and album emerged from a period when the Canadian grappled with supposed irrelevance due to the arrival of punk and changing listener attitudes towards the old guard. Although the classic rock acts deserved criticism, Young was unfairly attached to them, as his work was much more pioneering and culturally significant than many of those punks had in their crosshairs.
This threat of obsolescence is something Young discussed in The Complete Guide to the Music of Neil Young, where he explains why the title “rust never sleeps” appealed to him so much. “It relates to my career; the longer I keep on going the more I have to fight this corrosion,” he said, “And now that’s gotten to be like the World Series for me. The competition’s there, whether I will corrode and eventually not be able to move anymore and just repeat myself until further notice or whether I will be able to expand and keep the corrosion down a little.”
In one of his greatest pushbacks against the tide, Young created history. Parrying the blow of punk, he asks in the song, “Is this the story of the Johnny Rotten?” before explaining why he and his music will never die, no matter what the fleeting zeitgeist says.
