Advanced studies:
After a 1964 recording session with Young's high-school band The Squires, engineer Harry Taylor told the aspiring rocker, "You're a good guitar player, kid, but you'll never make it as a singer." Turns out, Young wound up getting far more credit as a singer-songwriter than as a guitarist. It took him a long time to live down his one-note solo in "Cinnamon Girl"—even though the flipside of Everybody Knows This Nowhere boasts "Down By The River," Young's first epic, explosive guitar workout. Throughout the song's nine-plus minutes, the interplay between Young and Whitten rides on telepathy and nuance rather than fret acrobatics; choppy and jarring, the guitars carve skeletal chords and piercing leads out of Young's bleak, fatalistic atmosphere. Such workouts have since become staples in his albums and concerts—especially those with Crazy Horse—but calling them jams is a bit off the mark: His distended solos often unravel in crude, organically lyrical, and stupefying ways.
"Down By The River" by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Young took a break from such guitar demolition for much of the early '70s, and it seemed like Whitten's death marked the end of that era, until 1975's Zuma yielded "Cortez The Killer." With new Crazy Horse member Frank Sampedro on rhythm, Young delicately crafted (or drunkenly stumbled through) the most gorgeous guitar meltdown of his career. From then on, he returned to such primal chaos every few years, and almost always with Crazy Horse: 1981's underrated Re-act-or, 1995's superb Pearl Jam-backed Mirror Ball, and 1996's sprawling Broken Arrow all contain moments of Young's scrambled six-string genius. 1990's Ragged Glory, however, is his finest latter-day grunge-fest, thanks to tracks like "Over And Over." A year from releasing the experimental noise-collage Arc, he imbued "Over And Over" with eroded, bowel-thudding leads that still managed to drift and chime alongside the song's sweet, love-affirming sentiments. Rarely had Young used bludgeoning heaviness to underscore his uplifting songs, and this reconciliation of extremes resulted in a punchy exultation that he's carried in his work ever since.
"Over And Over" by Neil Young And Crazy Horse
The essentials:
1. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)
Young and producer David Briggs fired up pure alchemy with Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, the first of many classic collaborations between the two friends. Their work on Young's debut is halting and uneven, but Nowhere captures easygoing grace and roiling mystique with equal ease: Whittled to the marrow, "Cinnamon Girl" injects subliminal twang and a primordial pulse into hard rock, while the title track and "Losing End (When You're On)" are nuggets of gritty, intimate country-rock that manage to keep one foot free of the cornfield. "Running Dry (Requiem For The Rockets)" is slashed with reverb and violin, while "Round & Round (It Won't Be Long)" lopes along despondently—but both the acoustic-based dirges balance the ominous, heart-gulping enormity of "Down By The River" and "Cowgirl In The Sand." Young's voice is cut glass throughout, and the album's jagged harmonies foretell his aversion to the requisite slickness of the '70s.
2. After The Gold Rush (1970)
Arguably Young's best album, After The Gold Rush is short on distortion and long on sterling folk-rock, bucolic meditation, and dark fantasy—topped off with a devastating overhaul of Don Gibson's jaunty country chestnut "Oh, Lonesome Me." Gold Rush's two official singles, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "When You Dance You Can Really Love," weren't as popular as "Southern Man" or the title track, but they still harnessed Young's love of immaculate pop songcraft (aided by frequent Young cohort Jack Nitzsche) and heavy, dusky rock. Both halves of the album conclude with short, sweet songs that scan like vignettes: "Till The Morning Comes" is a sugary, harmony-rich trifle, while "Cripple Creek Ferry" sends the album off on a wave of shuffling, frumpy roots-rock that The Band must have envied. Spiked with the serendipitous piano of a young Nils Lofgren, "Birds" remains one of Young's most elegantly depressing moments.
3. Harvest (1972)
In The Dark Stuff, Nick Kent quotes Bob Dylan as saying this of "Heart Of Gold": "Shit, that's me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me." Funnily enough, Harvest's (and Young's) biggest hit doesn't really sound anything like Dylan—on the contrary, it's the tune that codified Young's singularly hangdog, old-before-his-time persona. But there's more to Harvest than cozy classic rock: Plummeting from rarified orchestration to twangy grit, the album covers almost every base Young would touch again throughout his career. "Old Man" was written for a groundskeeper on Young's ranch, and its bare-bones sentiment—along with subtle accompaniment from James Taylor on banjo and Linda Ronstadt on vocals—is as appropriately timeless. The soaring, symphonic "There's A World" and "A Man Needs A Maid" offset Young's dusty aura, but the contrast between majestic bombast and plainspoken grace is breathtaking.
4. Zuma (1975)
Not usually lumped in with Young's upper tier, Zuma is a crystalline yet gloriously muddy masterpiece. Introducing the new Crazy Horse lineup, the record feels like a rebirth: Beneath the stark, scribbled cover art is a clutch of roughhewn cuts that collectively feel more solid and lucid than any Young disc since Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Blunt and raw—although it has tender stretches in "Pardon My Heart" and the Crosby, Stills & Nash-backed "Through My Sails"—Zuma sports mythic, guitar-charred numbers like "Danger Bird" and "Cortez The Killer" alongside the confessional, heart-worn simplicity of "Lookin' For A Love": "I hope I treat her kind / and don't mess with her mind / when she starts to see the darker side of me." Wrapping up all Young's storytelling verve is "Barstool Blues," a paean to inebriation and loss that shifts perspectives and mood while circling a core of coarse, elemental country-rock.
5. Harvest Moon (1992)
Often downplayed as a comeback bid or a pale echo of Harvest, Harvest Moon is one of Young's richest, most resonant albums. While he's known for his nakedness, he goes beyond the call of duty on "One Of These Days"—a ruddy, achingly sincere apology to old friends and bandmates he's drifted away from over the years—and "Natural Beauty," one of his few epic-length songs that coasts on billowing acoustics rather than blistering lead-work. Even potentially embarrassing tracks like "From Hank To Hendrix" and "Old King"—the latter an ode to his dog—are pulled off with sureness and spirit. The title track, however, is his greatest, purest love song. It's the sound of Young's soul, voice, public image, and place in rock history finally bedding down in peace.
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