The one album Neil Young refused to talk about: “It stands on its own”
Part of the deal of being a Neil Young fan is not knowing what you’re going to get on every single record.
There are plenty of songs in his discography that are close to perfection, but Young felt much more comfortable following his muse and leaving whatever he did in the past in the dust whenever he started making his next record. He loved keeping his audience guessing as to where he was going next, and while not every record hit the mark, there were tunes that were bound to speak for themselves a lot better than others.
Then again, Young’s habits haven’t exactly made him the most pleasant collaborator to get along with by any stretch. He’s a fantastic guitarist and a brilliant storyteller, but even when he was making the pure folk records that he was doing in the age of Harvest, his goal wasn’t centred around being the next version of Bob Dylan. He had other plans, and the late 1970s are usually the moment where things start to get a little weird.
His fixation on country music fit him pretty well, but listening to him try his hand at strange electronic music on Trans was bound to rub some people the wrong way. But even if his label was pissed off at him half the time, Young at least found solace in being able to make fun of them. ‘This Note’s For You’ is one of the funnier songs he ever wrote about selling out, and even if Everybody’s Rockin’ is one of the worst records in his catalogue, the fact that he made it to deliberately poke fun at his label for wanting a rock album is one of the greatest power moves anyone has ever done.
And while the 1980s didn’t treat him all that well, watching him get his second wind in the 1990s was fantastic to witness. The grunge scene practically had the same mentality that Young did back in the day, and while he could ride the wave all he wanted when he started making records with Pearl Jam, it wasn’t exactly the greatest time for him when he saw the bigger picture in Seattle.
There were plenty of artists who were more than willing to give it their best shot whenever they walked into the studio, but when Kurt Cobain passed away, all of the angst of the genre became far too real. It was no big secret that Cobain hated the limelight, but while Young did everything he could to try and talk to him before he passed away, Sleeps With Angels became the only thing he could do after April of 1994.
If Young couldn’t tell Cobain everything in person, he wanted to lay out his thoughts in song, but he was never going to make a big deal out of the record, either, saying, “I’m not doing anything with that album. It stands on its own. That’s why I made the record. Too sensitive of a subject to isolate comments on. When you speak to someone who can write things down, you have to remember that they only write what they select.”
And for lyrics that were this heavy, Young wanted to make sure fans looked at the music before any interview he made. Nothing else could be said about a tragedy like that, and while Tonight’s the Night was a decent diary for Young when he saw his friends pass away in the late 1970s, this sounded like a concerned older brother trying his best to help everyone move on after Cobain’s passing.
He could have easily not commented on any part of the tragedy and grieved in private, but Sleeps With Angels was far too important to him to just ignore. Emotions like this demand to be felt, and if he was going to speak his mind and open up his heart like this, he was going to make sure that no one was twisting his words for him.
