The rock band Neil Young knew he could never come close to: “Couldn’t get it”
Not every rock and roll frontman is meant to have the greatest voice. It would be nice if everyone had the God-given vocal talent of Freddie Mercury, but for every virtuoso singer, there are more than a few who rely on their attitude and personality to carry the tune for most of its runtime.
Neil Young usually didn’t need to prove anything whenever he opened his mouth to sing, but he admitted that he had always tried to emulate the Everly Brothers whenever he tried to put a melody together.
Granted, trying to put Young in one distinct style isn’t something you should really take seriously. Whether it was to get a change of pace or to spite his record company, Young was known to change his genre constantly, either making something new as an artistic endeavour or sticking his nose into places it had no business being in.
That restlessness has always been part of what makes Young so compelling. Just when it feels like he’s settled into a sound that suits him, he’ll veer off somewhere completely different, leaving fans to either catch up or get left behind.
But even with all those detours, there are certain touchstones that keep reappearing. No matter how far he drifts into distortion or strips things back to the bare minimum, there’s always that underlying sense of melody that ties everything together.
And more often than not, that instinct can be traced back to the kind of music he grew up on. For all the noise and unpredictability that define his catalogue, the influence of harmony-driven songwriting never really disappears, quietly shaping the way he approaches even his most ragged performances.
If you break down the core tenets of any great Young project, it all normally comes back to classic rock and roll. He may have been able to crank up the distortion and play blistering rock whenever the time called for it, but he was just as liable to break out the acoustics and play a song that could rip your heart out of your chest.
Plenty of bands had broken out the acoustics from time to time, but Phil and Don Everly had it down to a science. While their songs normally veered closer to pop-flavoured country music than traditional rock and roll half the time, their distinct blend of vocal harmonies was what made everyone take notice.
On tracks like ‘Bye Bye Love’ or ‘All You Have To Do is Dream’, neither of their vocal parts could be considered a proper lead vocal. They were a singing partnership, and every song that they wrote felt like you were two strong melodies that happened to be sung at the exact same time.
Even though Young spent most of his salad days in Canada absorbing all of the music he could get his hands on, he admitted that none of his bandmates could get anywhere close to sounding like The Everly Brothers, recalling at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “We were trying to get the sound that we loved so much. We never did get it. We used to listen to the records over and over again and try. I’d sing one part, and [my bandmate] would start singing the other part. We’d sing together and throw each other off”.
If Young was struggling at the time, he corrected that with a vengeance the minute he joined Crosby, Stills, and Nash. While he freely admits that he was still chasing after The Everlys’ sound on albums like Deja Vu, what they had was completely unique, taking layers of harmonies and putting a healthy dose of muscle behind it on tracks like ‘Woodstock’ and ‘Teach Your Children’.
It’s the same looking at every other band that cited The Everly Brothers as an influence, like The Beatles pioneering their love of vocal harmony from hearing them sing for the first time and Simon and Garfunkel putting a folk spin on that duo format. The Everly Brothers may have created a sound that no one else could capture, but maybe it’s a blessing in disguise for the rock community since the rest of the world got more great music out of everyone trying to copy them.
