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Neil Young’s still rockin’ in the free world
BY BRETT MILANO
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Late in their recent FleetBoston Pavilion show, Neil Young and Crazy Horse uncorked one of their long-time barn burners, the rock-and-roll anthem "Hey Hey, My My." As ever, the song’s peak came when the Horse members shouted back a name that Young had invoked in the lyric: "Johnny Rotten! Johnny Rotten!" In 1978, mentioning that name was almost heresy on Young’s part, since the two artists came from different worlds, with Rotten representing everything Young’s hippie-esque fan base was afraid of. The song was particularly ironic at the Pavilion given that Rotten had been on the same stage a few weeks earlier fronting a reunited Sex Pistols. But Rotten played familiar oldies for a crowd who knew what they were getting, whereas Young hit a mostly unsuspecting audience with the new 90-minute, fully staged concept piece Greendale (Reprise). One woman near my seat was so miffed by his choice of material that she kept her middle finger raised toward the stage for a good 45 minutes. You decide which artist was more punk. On stage and on disc, Greendale has probably polarized Young’s audience more than anything since his eyebrow-raising techno album, 1982’s Trans (Geffen, now available only as an import). But whereas the concept of Trans wasn’t immediately clear (few realized at first that its Vocodered vocals represented Young’s attempts to communicate with his disabled son), Greendale lays its narrative cards on the table with its clash between what’s old and good (Grandpa, the environment, "love and affection") and what’s new and bad (violence, pollution, Clear Channel). Whatever else you want to say about the piece, it’s not unfathomable. In fact, Young devotes so much energy to the plot that four tracks on Greendale are stretched to 10 and 12 minutes by lyrics, not guitar solos — a first for a Crazy Horse album. As anyone who’s seen Young’s two whacked-out movies, Journey Through the Past (1974) and Human Highway (1979) can attest, plotting has never been his strong point. Given the finale of Greendale — in which a heroine named Sun Green runs off to save the environment after her grandpa drops dead while being pursued by TV reporters — it’s easy to hear the album as one more hippie gesture on Young’s part. But in fact he’s made relatively few such gestures in the past. Although he played Woodstock with Crosby, Stills & Nash, his work of that era was a long way from the hippie ethos. While everyone else was getting back to nature, Young was down by the river shooting his lady. In the mid ’70s, while his peers were living the high life at Hotel California, Young was providing a harsh reality check with Tonight’s the Night (Reprise). And he famously claimed in the ’80s that he’d voted for Ronald Reagan, though he later noted that as a Canadian citizen, he couldn’t have done so. He didn’t truly embrace hippiedom until that era was long over. His first real peace-and-love anthems ("Love & Only Love," "Mother Earth," "Mansion on the Hill") were all on 1991’s Ragged Glory (Reprise), whose message got overlooked while its guitar sound reinforced Young’s status as godfather of grunge. So the Woodstockish sentiments on Greendale just add to a long history of contrarian moves. One of its few specifically political songs, "Leave the Driving," takes on the creepier aspects of the Patriot Act — an obvious move, you might think, but Young is the first major songwriter to do so. And the finale, "Be the Rain," sets its idealistic "save the planet" lyrics to a classic-model Crazy Horse rocker. The live show (in which actors mime to Young’s vocals) provides a visual explanation of why the lead vocal is sung through a megaphone: it’s Sun Green leading a rally. But even if you didn’t know that, the distorted vocal adds just the right touch of weirdness to the recorded version. Greendale may be a concept album, but it’s above all a Crazy Horse album. The songs are full of long, loping grooves, and nobody can lope like drummer Ralph Molina and bassist Billy Talbot. During the mid ’90s, Young toured with soul veterans Booker T. & the MG’s and made them sound just like Crazy Horse. During much of Greendale, he does just the opposite. The sound is sparer and funkier than it’s ever been, with rhythm guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro shut out of the sessions (Sampedro sat behind a keyboard for the live Greendale, but damned if I ever heard him play it). Crazy Horse have been in a slump: two years ago, they scrapped a finished album and Young put out the lackluster Are You Passionate? (Reprise) instead. But the new direction (or slightly tweaked old direction) of the Greendale songs proves to be what they needed to get fired up again. So whether or not Sun Green succeeds in saving the planet, Young’s done us a service simply by reuniting this outfit.
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