The 1969 album Neil Young is most proud of: “It’s my favourite one”
The number one rule to understanding Neil Young is to forget everything about what a rock star is supposed to be.
Young may have been interested in writing songs that connected with people on a deep level, but it was also important for him to make the kind of tunes that he wanted rather than what was decided by a boardroom of music executives.
Over the years, he has often found himself at odds with his management. And he thrives with the impetus of creative defiance. Sometimes, you suspect he even orchestrates it himself. So, while he always stuck to his guns, there were a few musical curveballs that he was bound to throw his audience every now and again.
That didn’t mean that all of them were necessarily horrible, either. Mirror Ball was an incredibly inspired idea when he decided to collaborate with Pearl Jam, but even when something didn’t come together at all, like on Everybody’s Rockin’, you could respect the fact that Young was going to stick it to his record label by making something that he knew his typical audiences wouldn’t want to buy.
When there are so many twists and turns in someone’s career, though, it’s easy to lose track of the kind of music that he’s actually known for. As much as an album like Trans was a nice gesture on Young’s part to appeal to his son with cerebral palsy, it definitely stood out as strange the minute that his nasal voice was heard being processed through a vocoder on half the tunes.
Especially for someone with the track record that Young has, though, it’s easy for fans to go back to those glory days when everything got rolling. He was already the tour de force guitarist behind Buffalo Springfield, but there was no reason for him to be simply a guitarist for the rest of his life. He wanted to spread out, and while his debut solo album was fun for what it was, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere was really the birth of what we have come to know as Neil Young.
There were the mandatory singles from the project like ‘Cinnamon Girl’, but the reason why his sophomore effort worked so well is because of how much it felt like an impromptu, wavering jam at points. Young was always one for capturing a feeling whenever he played, and the music itself may as well be as rustic as the photo of him leaning against a tree, almost like you’re being invited into this jam where everyone’s playing for the hell of it.
As Stone Gossard told Louder, “He’s the ultimate songwriter, singer, lead guitarist and soundscaper, he’s in that Dylan zone. The way he mixes up distortion and feedback and blues and folk and rock and soul and noise is just inspirational. The way he digs solos out, just throttling his guitar is masterful.”
Adding, “And he has the heaviest groove around. He just sits back, and where he puts the downbeat just feels so great, so perfect.” On one occasion, at the close of the ‘60s, all of that perfect imperfection came together at once, and it has had a lasting impact on even Young himself.
Neil Young’s greatest masterpiece?
Although Young would have some fine moments like After the Gold Rush and Harvest afterwards, he knew there was something special about the way his second album was made, saying, “My first album was very much a first album. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. And I did, thanks to the wonder of modern machinery. That first album was overdub city. It’s still one of my favourites though.”
The album was a full assault of everything Young could offer. And because it was something he had been ruminating on for a long time, the assault was backed up by tunes and melodies that had stayed the course, prompting him to proudly conclude, “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is probably my best. It’s my favourite one.”
The overdubs certainly helped that first album, but the real magic behind Everybody Knows This is Nowhere was bringing in the members of Crazy Horse. Young could be spellbinding on his own, but since he had a lot more power behind him with people like Danny Whitten and Billy Talbot, he had a certain amount of muscle on the new tunes that he could have never accomplished on his own.
Buffalo Springfield was already starting to become far greater than any one member, but even if Young was asked to join Crosby, Stills, and Nash for Deja Vu a few months later, it’s not like he was hurting in his solo career. If anything, the vocal power trio probably didn’t realise they were drafting in another giant into their ranks. And he was coming in with great enthusiasm under his wings.
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