Work in progress: the song that took Neil Young over four decades to release
When you have a songwriter who has written a great deal of music throughout their life, you can hear specific periods reflecting whatever they may have been going through. Music can be reflective like that, and the insight it provides into other people’s lives is what can make it so special. When you listen to Neil Young‘s discography, you hear a range of different themes and emotions depending on the period of his life in which the song was written.
During his 20s, even though these were years filled with optimism for many people, Neil Young ended up writing a lot of music that was drenched in pessimism. This isn’t because he was making up emotions in a bid to sound more deep and profound, but instead because he was part of a music scene that seemed to attempt to push him out continually.
When he was making music in Toronto, he was working with a band called 4 To Go. They were all excited about the prospect of making music together and playing shows, but they ended up drifting and splitting up before they even had a chance to perform together. According to Young, this is because the Toronto scene was “locked up,” and it was impossible for new bands to get gigs.
Young’s music reflected this period of struggle. He wrote from the point of view of someone far past his years, with wisened songs filled with dread and nihilism. One of the tracks that best reflected this mindset is ‘Extra, Extra’, which he initially wrote in the 1960s.
The song is written as a conversation between a newspaper vendor and an old man. The vendor sees the man and wonders, “What made him this way?” Young doesn’t elaborate when talking about what is meant by “This way,” but the song starts digging into the man’s past and examining major life circumstances that have led to him currently walking the streets.
As the song continues, it becomes clear that the image of the man which caught the eye of the vendor is that he appears to have been “Destroyed by life.” It’s evident that Young sees himself in the old man, or at least his younger self sees his future in this fictionalised version of someone who has given up. It makes sense that Young might have felt this way during such a period, as he was pursuing music, the craft he was the most passionate about, and didn’t seem to get anywhere with it.
Young wrote several other songs during this period that followed a similar theme of hopelessness. Tracks like ‘Don’t Pity Me Babe’, ‘The Rent Is Always Due’, and ‘Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing’ all reflect the mind of a man who gives up on his dreams before he has even had a sniff at accomplishing them. Luckily, Young persevered, but he didn’t take the song ‘Extra, Extra’ with him. Instead, he left that pessimistic track by the wayside.
It wasn’t until 2009, on the album Neil Young Archives Vol 1 (1963-1972), that the track saw the light of day, revealing a new aspect of Young’s life that people were previously unaware of.
