‘Southern Man’: The song Neil Young thought he shouldn’t play live
By the mid-1970s, Neil Young’s career and artistry were in a chaotic state of flux.
He’d entered the decade on a high note. Fresh off the folk rock defining Déjà Vu with Crosby, Stills & Nash, two acclaimed solo records would follow, 1970’s After the Gold Rush and Harvest two years later, towering over most of the Woodstock generation’s album efforts, including his half-in, half-out supergroup members.
Yet, from 1973, dark clouds began to circle. After heroin had claimed the lives of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, the raw and slapdash Tonight’s the Night, shelved by label Reprise for its dark and unpolished edge, was in the can before On the Beach was cut and released in 1974. Further records remained in the vault for decades, a mammoth Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tour was undertaken, and a series of live shows with Stephen Stills ended on a sour note when Young walked halfway through.
Young’s story has always been guided by a haphazard and temperamental antenna toward artistic satisfaction, forever following his gut intuitions about which direction he needs to hurtle down with full-throttle gusto. This can create fascinating work and gripping chapters of his mythos, attested by the 1980s forays into synthpop and rockabilly to piss off his then Geffen label, but it can upend bandmates and touring members’ plans, people’s lives moved aside so Young can honour whatever calling’s pulling him toward.
This tumultuous clash of restless creativity and personal drama clouded his interview with Creem in 1975, offering an insight into his headspace as a solo star and captain of several backing bands and musician circles that all orbited his fruitful decade. “In concert, what I play all depends on how I feel,” he said. “I can’t do songs like ‘Southern Man,’ I’d rather play the Lynyrd Skynyrd song. That’d be great. The thing is, I go on a different trip and I get a different band together, or I group with some old friends, then they don’t know how to play the stuff that I did with some other group and I have to show them all those things”.
The Lynyrd Skynyrd song Young was referring to was ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, the Florida blues rockers’ riposte to ‘Southern Man’s lambast of the US South’s legacy of racial segregation and Jim Crow laws. The mutual lyrical clashes never appeared to affect their friendship, however, Young known to play ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ in concert, and Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant often sporting a Tonight’s the Night T-shirt.
In Young years, five Earthly years is a hell of a long time, and the creative space he’s inhabiting at times is a different universe from even 24 months earlier. Such is the winding and storied output of the former Buffalo Springfield guitarist.
While it may drive his collaborators to hair-tearing madness, Young’s unwavering commitment to his creative fancies’ magnetic pull shines all over his body of work, never without a doubt that every record with his name on it is without a scintilla of contrived calculation or insincerity.
