He went on tour with Sonic Youth. The album of that tour (a double album) is called Weld. Talking with Thurston Moore about guitar noise, he compiled his favorite feedbacky bits and solos and crunchy intros, and edited them into Arc, which was a kind of promo extra. I've never gotten a copy of Arc, but have Weld on a couple cassettes.
Shortly before hearing about the Sonic Youth/Neil Young tour, two of my friends and I coincidentally formed a band called Kneeling Youth, which was built around Sonic Youth and Neil Young covers. Something in the 1990/91 zeitgeist was all about crunchy, head-crunching guitar rock.
I first turned into a Neil Young fan when I went on a road trip with my mother and sister in mom's new Camaro. It was the first car I'd ever seen with a tape deck. This must've been 1982 or so. We had three cassettes: Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Judy Collins' Judith and Neil Young Comes a Time.
The Neil Young was easily my favorite, and "Look Out for My Love" is still one of my favorite songs. It's so lonely and mysterious. Nowadays, looking back, that might be one of the world's most perfect alt.country albums, but at the time, it was just some rock dude doing country-ish songs.
I bought Trans shortly after it came out (got it used... there were lots of copies at the used stores). I loved the track I bought it for for a while, but then came to regard it as a dog of an album. Then Sonic Youth covered "Computer Age" on the On The Bridge tribute album (the same one the Flaming Lips did that song on... the Pixies. Psychic TV and Nick Cave are also on there). And rediscovered Trans. It's a great album, except for one sort of misguided song about being an Inca. In Peru. Which doesn't fit at all, and is basically a not-great revisioning of "Cortez the Killer" with some added psychedelia in it. Unfortunately, it takes up almost all of side two.
Neil Young embraces new sounds and new feelings.
The On The Bridge album was a tribute that sent proceeds to a children's charity. Neil Young has a kid with (I think) severe cerebral palsy, and in between doing the rock, has invented and patented electronic devices that make his son's life a little better. The one I know about was either a model train controller or else was built from a model train controller.
My parents used to live across the street from Neil Young's ex-father-in-law (he has a few, I think). He was not a Neil Young fan and insisted the man treated his daughter poorly. I didn't discuss it much with him.
Bob, who sits behind me at work, used to know Neil Young from the San Francisco folk-rock scene. I've seen photos of them together, looking sweaty and drunk in some nightclub. I don't think they were big buddies, though. The impression I get is that Mr. Young was a little unearthly even when not floating on a river of LSD.
At one point, I knew how to sing and play the entirety of "Last Trip to Tulsa," a song that clocks in at about 18 minutes, and is all Neil singing surreal lyrics with a kind of disjointed acoustic guitar part consisting of three chords. Maybe four, counting the chorus bit. I used to sing it to annoy friends.
"I used to be asleep, you know, with blankets on the bed.
I lay there for a while, till they discovered I was dead.
Well, the coroner was friendly, I liked him quite a lot.
If I hadn't have been a woman, I would never have been caught."
That kind of thing.
One of my other favorite Neil Young things is his cover of "On Broadway" on the Freedom live album. It's very grungy, and really points up the lyrics, which are actually about begging for change and living on the street. |
