The 1971 song Neil Young will always regret: “It put me in the middle of the road”
As an alternative artist, growing to hate your biggest song is pretty much par for the course. In essence, having a commercial smash hit as an anti-establishment figure is like being granted a free bar in a pub that you hate: all the trappings, none of the truthful delights.
More often than not, this confused disposition leads to artists regretting their mainstream-leaning effort. It happened to Radiohead with ‘Creep’, Led Zeppelin with ‘Stairway to Heaven’, Frank Sinatra with ‘Strangers in the Night’, and it positively derailed poor Neil Young.
So, what exactly is the problem with 1972’s US chart topper ‘Heart of Gold’ and why does Neil Young regret it? Well, aside from that gorgeous, heavy strummed yet soft, lilting intro and the overall luscious performance, you could argue that the song itself is highly derivative. At least Bob Dylan certainly argued that. “The only time it bothered me that someone sounded like me was when I was living in Phoenix, Arizona, in about ’72, and the big song at the time was ‘Heart of Gold’,” he said when reflecting on his various imitations.
The freewheeling forebearer of pretty much everything added, “I used to hate it when it came on the radio. I always liked Neil Young, but it bothered me every time I listened to ‘Heart of Gold’. I think it was up at number one for a long time, and I’d say, ‘Shit, that’s me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me’.”
Alas, it wasn’t Dylan, and if it was, I’m sure he’d hope to inject a touch more originality to the lyrical side of proceedings rather than wallowing in pop’s greatest platitude: a lonely-hearts song by a weary star. No sweet four chord, Em, C, D, and G, melody can redeem that commonplace sin in the eyes of folks who strive for originality.
None of this, however, makes the track inherently bad. Music always has a place for mawkish mundanity, provided that it’s done with the sort of melody and performance that makes Dullsville seem like the dominion where music truly belongs.
Occasionally, a polished classic can make it seem as though the middle of the road is the fine-tuned peak of the mount, the honed high point where you should be driving. However, the issue for Young is that he never wanted to live there or coast along such familiar terrain. He’s proven that with countless reinventions since.
However, even his tracks up until this point had poked and prodded at the mainstream. He had set his stall out as a star capable of beating the drum for environmentalism, illuminating the tyranny of governmental force, and even questioning the drug culture that had beset his own coterie. Now, with a few chords and a simplified sentiment, he was being dragged into the self-same centre he had established himself by critiquing. In ‘72, he was an AM radio mainstay, an endless loop of shallowness.
Five years on from its release, a decade into his glistening career, he mused: “This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.” As those liner notes on Decade suggest, reaching the top – ‘Heart of Gold’ is Young’s only US number one – actually proved to be a fork in the road.
And like many other artists who have hated their biggest hit, his next step was to reassess his place in culture and venture towards a rather more personal leftfield. In Young’s case, this resulted in his follow-up masterpiece On the Beach, quite possibly his greatest album. It proves telling – given his driving off the middle of the road into a ditch comment – that the album artwork for the 1974 album sports the image of a car crashed into the sands of a desolate beach where Young stands alone, his back turned to a snapping camera.
While apparently inspired by the cover for JG Ballard’s book, Drought, perhaps the half-buried fancy tailfin and Young gazing out to sea also symbolise him ditching the trappings of the smooth ride and looking towards a more singular horizon. A horizon that more keenly courts the unknown rather than the same sentiment that Bryan Adams is probably peddling for the thousandth time on whatever tripe he delivers next.
Yet, like all disowned hits, it is also clearly a hit for a reason. It’s so easy to sing that it’s been covered endlessly. It’s so smooth that the lyrics linger on long in the mind even if their sentiment does not. It’s so brilliantly performed, with stars like James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt in the mix, that there’s magic amid the mundanity, too.
It’s catchy enough to showcase that Young was a star at the height of his game, crafting songs with prolific confidence… but this one maybe came a little too easily. Therein lies its deepest issue, and perhaps the source of Young’s sorest regret: it could just as easily have been a masterpiece with a just a touch more development.
Thankfully, that’s exactly what ‘Old Man’ is, and stands as the song’s thoughtful counterpart. it seems it always will.
