The weird albums Neil Young wrote “to piss everybody off”
Every artist is allowed to have a bad spell, especially people like Neil Young who have been making music for decades.
He has always had a knack for songwriting, which was perfectly reflected in his recent headline performance at Glastonbury. Young went for a very stripped-back approach, choosing to focus on playing the music he is renowned for rather than putting together an elaborate set. He performed songs throughout his entire career, spanning the many different eras he has tapped into throughout his time as a musician.
For the majority of that career, Young has produced work that he is deeply proud of. He has always chased what he calls the muse, which means that he is always looking to write in a way that reflects the current times. Whether that reflection is on a personal level or a global one varies, but you can guarantee that when you listen to Young, you will be getting a glimpse of honest-sounding music.
Even former band members with whom Young has fallen out admit that they have admiration for how committed he is to his craft. “I think Neil is very smart. I do respect his connection with what he calls ‘the muse’ of his music,” said Graham Nash in an exclusive interview with Far Out. “He follows that intently, and I understand that, and I respect that.”
Of course, while the majority of the work that Neil Young is responsible for is solid, there are some songs that don’t quite land as well as he would like. Throughout the mid-1980s, Young was responsible for a run of albums that felt disconnected compared to some of his other work. Fans didn’t take to it much, and it was hardly representative of Neil Young’s most successful work. Years later, when Young was asked about said albums, he said he made them intentionally directionless in a bid to frustrate people.
“I was doing this that didn’t really commit me one way or the other,” said Young. “I think I was disillusioned with a lot of things […] With life. For whatever reason, I chose to disguise the music, and keep everything inside the music, and not reach out, do things in styles that I knew would piss everybody off, so nobody would even buy it or listen to it.”
Despite the fact that Young was making albums with the intention of confusing people, he stands by the opinion that they’re good pieces of work. At the time, people didn’t enjoy the likes of Everybody’s Rockin’, Old Ways and Landing On Water, but Young still thought that they would fit into the bigger picture of his career and that people would start to like them later on.
“I don’t make excuses for those records,” Young noted. “I think those records are going to stand up, in time. I don’t feel the records are not as good as the records I’m doing now, I just feel that they’re not aimed at success—in any way. Yet if you put them on a wall—I look at them as if you’re walking through a museum.”
Concluding, “You see somebody’s paintings. You go, Wow, look at this period here! Is this weird!’ Especially considering what came after it and what was before it.”
