The “overblown” Neil Young song that led to protests against ‘Harvest’
In 1971, Neil Young was lying in bed recovering from a back injury and falling madly in love with Carrie Snodgress, the star of the wacky comedy Diary of a Mad Housewife. The troublesome title to that film may well have served as a portent to the songsmith, but he was too smitten and missed it. He soon penned an ode that was panned by the women’s liberation movement for its sexist lyrics, and even the oft-misogynistic critics of the day found the arrangement fraught.
He had intended for the Harvest track ‘A Man Needs a Maid’ to serve as the partner piece to ‘Heart of Gold’, to paint a complete picture of pining, but one has faired far better in the history books than the other. After all, the sentiment of ‘A Man Needs a Maid’ was outdated even upon release. Its reductive title led to protestation from the second-wave feminist movement and left diehard fans scratching their heads in search of a defence.
Although there is an argument that Young’s intention was, in fact, the opposite, to empower women by flouting his own inadequacies, there’s too much ambiguity to be playing around on such slippery terrain unless the ironies are more open. The post-modernist contrasts more clear, and the language used is less nettlesome. The fact that the defence remains cloudy is not the failure of a close-minded listener but a songwriter for once struggling to put his point across.
Even the defence he offered in concert seems tentative. “This is another new song. It’s called ‘A Man Needs a Maid’. It’s kind of a…it doesn’t really mean what it says,” he announced during a live broadcast concert. “It’s just the idea that anyone would think enough to say something like that would show that something else was happening. So, don’t take it personally when I say it. I don’t really want a maid.”
But it was taken personally by women still trying to overcome the perpetuation of dated language labelled against them. Thus, the track proved problematic from the very start as the women’s liberation movement raised concerns over the release of a record from a popular artist that housed such a tune.
Subject matter aside, the song’s sweeping tones fail to save it from the relegation zone of Harvest when it was released in 1972. Although light and melodic, the tune struggles to be as impressionable as the other ballads. A middle eight immediately following a chorus is an interesting and innovative choice but one that, sadly, makes the song all the more disjointed. It wouldn’t be a Neil Young song, however, without a little bit of lyrical wizardry as he laments his loneliness and exile in art as he chokes out, “To give a love, you gotta live a love / To live a love, you gotta be part of.”
While Young has defended the song from the argument that it is sexist, stating that ‘maid’ was a reference to Robin Hood, he is still happy to admit that the track is “overblown” melodically.
