Was the worst album by Neil Young bad on purpose?
Everybody’s Rockin’ is one of the most baffling projects ever put out by a mainstream rock artist. The kind of record stuffed with kitsch and schmaltz one would expect of any 1970s rock legend making a record in the 1980s, except its creator. Seriously, you take The Rolling Stones or Eric Clapton, and you can imagine that their 1980s output would be cringe. Both acts have always had it in them. Neil Young, though? That’s a different story.
It’s true, Neil Young wasn’t just one of the most successful and beloved folk artists of the 1970s; he was also one of the most respected. An artist whose integrity didn’t just verge on stubbornness, it dove in like Scrooge McDuck upon a pile of coins.
When the world was begging for more Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the last name of the list went solo. When the tender folk of Harvest and ‘Heart of Gold’ in particular made him one of the hottest artists in the world, Young responded by releasing several albums of raw, deafening hard rock.
He remains as such to this very day. Young could make a killing drifting through the nostalgia circuit, strumming ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ and ‘Harvest Moon’. Instead, he treats his audiences to extended new songs, sometimes reaching the 15 to 20-minute mark, before diving into his back catalogue of hits exactly when he feels like it and not a moment before. This is a man who does exactly what he wants, when he wants, and would rather say nice things about David Crosby than chase the mainstream dollar.
So, what in God’s name was Everybody’s Rockin’? At the very least, his previous album from the same year, Trans, was bad in a bizarre, defiantly unique Neil Young way. Everybody’s Rockin’, from its cover art to its godawful production, reeks of the one thing that Neil Young claimed to never do—it’s a sell-out move. A craven act of boomer nostalgia-baiting that sees a quiffed-up Neil on the cover all but saying to the audience, “y’all remember the 1950s?”
Did Neil Young do this on purpose?
If this were anyone else, the answer would be obvious. In a career as long as he’s had, no one bats an eye. Everyone has an infamous bomb in them, and, in terms of quality, Young’s might not even be the worst of them. Check out The Beach Boys’ soul-destroying album Summer in Paradise for proof of that. However, because it’s Neil Young, there is always the possibility that this was on purpose.
I know how this sounds, but hear me out. As mentioned, Young has a perverse fascination with not so much toying or subverting expectations, but outright laughing at people who’ve ever had them. This goes double for record label folks. In the 1980s, Young’s relationship with his label Geffen was even worse than normal. He submitted an old-school country album for release, but the label rejected it, and asked if he could instead make, in Young’s words, “a rock ‘n’ roll album”.
In an interview with PBS’ American Masters, Young explained that when Geffen made this demand, “I said, ‘Do you know what rock and roll is?’ and there was kind of a silence and then I tried to figure out what it was. And then I thought in my mind, ‘Rock and roll, what the hell is rock and roll? Let’s go back in time to when rock and roll started and try to see what it is’.” Thus, Young began putting together a throwback to the classic rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950s, which was clearly not what his label was asking for.
One can tell this because, after the one-two punch of Trans and Everybody’s Rockin’, Geffen sued Young for making records that were “not commercial” and “musically uncharacteristic of [his] previous recordings”. However, for further proof that this was all part of the plan, it turned out that the singer had backed his label into a corner.
Young had a contractual agreement in writing that the label would exhibit no creative control over his work, that is, he could release whatever the hell he wanted and the label had to live with it.
Was the record meant to be hailed as one of the worst rock records of the decade? Probably not. Was it meant to be a legitimate attempt at making a rock album? Also probably not. However, if the record was a complete misfire and a genuine attempt to connect Young back to the music of his youth, then he can thank God for his reputation. Very few other artists could fall on their face that hard, act like that was the plan all along, and have everyone in rock fall for it hook, line and sinker.
