What makes Neil Young the original punk rocker?
There aren’t many subgenres of rock that have had quite as significant an impact on society as punk music. After years of artists playing the most lacklustre takes on stadium rock to be found in the wild, acts like Sex Pistols and Ramones were known for bringing things back to basics, crafting songs that didn’t have to rely on any technical flashiness to grab the attention of the public. Although punk may have had its inaugural year in 1976, Neil Young was already making a name for himself as one of the genre’s legends before it had a name.
Then again, does Young truly belong in the conversation of the greatest punk artists? When listening to songs from albums like Harvest and After the Gold Rush, it’s hard to see how Young fits into the equation, crafting songs that fit more in line with folk music. When looking at the aesthetics and ethics of Young’s work, he was the godfather of everything the genre stood for.
First rising to prominence as a member of Buffalo Springfield, Young already knew how to use his guitar as both a weapon and an instrument. Throughout some of the band’s most celebrated work, Young was known for squeezing as much attitude out of the instrument as he could, often sounding like he was in a furious battle every time he took a solo.
For all of the lack of technical finesse he had going for him, Young could still sing from the heart whenever he wanted to. While working with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Young never minced words when it came to singing what was on his mind, either contributing furious lines to his bandmates’ songs or writing scathing indictments of the system on protest songs like ‘Ohio’.
Outside of his folksy background, Young also had little regard for what his records sounded like. Thinking that most of the power of the song came from the melody and the structure, many of his finest albums tend to have a few rough edges, from the subtle out-of-tune vocals thrown in here and there to the frail delivery he possessed on albums like Tonight’s the Night.
By the time Young had conquered the music world, though, punk rock had already started to take over the world, with everyone wanting to put safety pins through their cheeks and rally against authority. Instead of conforming to the new trends, Young couldn’t help but notice the common threads between his sound and what he was hearing from the new kids in town.
While many of his contemporaries looked down upon punk, Young was happy to see that something had come to the forefront to change rock and roll, telling The Boston Globe, “We started making these layered, . . . produced-sounding records, which are the foundation of schlock- rock that we have today. So when the punk thing came along, and I heard my friends saying, ‘Oh, I hate these . . . people with the . . . pins in their ears, these people are disgusting,’ I said, ‘Thank God, something got their attention. These people are doing something right because they’re waking up these other people who are sleeping who shouldn’t be sleeping’”.
Even into the 1990s, Young garnered respect amongst the grunge crowd, becoming known as the godfather of the punk rock mentality. While Young may have never managed to put a safety pin through his nose or adopt the mohawk look, his mentality of playing every note that counted and following one’s creative bliss became the guide for every punk act that was to follow.
