The one album Neil Young said was “impossible” to tour: “It was a disaster”
There was no reason for Neil Young to stay in one spot for too long.
As much as he was applauded for being a fixture of folk-rock music back in the late 1960s, he was going to do everything in his power not to be pigeonholed, which normally meant more than a few genre switches throughout his career. As a listener, it was an impressive thing to witness, but serving the muse 24/7 does come at a price when someone is reaching out on a limb for different musical styles.
At the same time, Young can be really goddamn funny when he wants to be. The whole process of making Everybody’s Rockin’ feels like a nightmare for anyone who values their craft, but the fact that he made a short rockabilly album when his label demanded a standard rock and roll record is one of the more creative ways that a musician has ever tried to stick it to their record company.
But it’s not like the label didn’t have a small point? Everybody’s Rockin’ may have been intentionally bad in some spots, but if their artist wasn’t going to be making the kind of music that they expected him to be making, it was up to Young to either find some sort of compromise or go completely independent. Although Young did acquiesce a few times, the 1980s were always going to be a dark time.
Because in an era that was all about spandex and neon colours, was there really any room for someone like ‘Uncle Neil’? This is a guy who was practically allergic to the idea of phoney hair metal bands, and there was no way he was going to pass as a new wave artist, but he did at least give it a shot.
And to give him credit, Trans already had its heart in the right place. The hardcore fans were extremely confused hearing him work with a vocoder and synthesisers, but whereas that one had a heart-warming story about Young trying to communicate with his son, Landing on Water is him trying to make what he thinks constitutes a hit. And if ‘Heart of Gold’ was his first golden record, this was the cheap knockoff version of that guy reimagined as a leisure-suit dad that only just found out what keyboards were.
Although the record isn’t very good, Young knew the biggest tragedy was that Crazy Horse never got the chance to shine once they went out on tour, saying, “The playing wasn’t as good. On the Landing on Water tour, it was the material. They should never be forced to do covers of other songs I’ve done. It was a fuckin’ disaster. It wasn’t right. I really didn’t do Crazy Horse justice that last time out.”
And while everyone is usually there to see Young, not doing service to Crazy Horse would be like watching Bruce Springsteen perform with a less-than-stellar E Street Band. There’s no conceivable way for people to boo someone like ‘The Boss’, but they sure as hell aren’t going to cheer if Clarence Clemons was given the worst material to work with whenever he blew into his saxophone.
Everybody’s Rockin’ might be a far worse record than Landing on Water, but the latter only represents a dark time in Young’s career. He was not equipped for the 1980s, and even with the ill-fated reunion that came with Crosby, Stills, and Nash a few years after this record, the 1990s couldn’t have come fast enough.
