About to turn 79, Neil Young continues to make news every week. For example, September 24, 2024 was an important day for his followers because he played Hey Babe live for the first time, a song from his album American Stars 'N Bars (1977) that he had never performed before the public. A couple of nights before he had introduced a new band (the Chrome Hearts, including Micah Nelson) in their traditional performance at the Farm Aid Festival, the charity festival organized every year to provide financial support to small American farmers, and on the 6th September was already marked in red because it was the launch of the third installment of his monumental archives. Unlike so many other legends – although perhaps he is now only comparable to his friends Dylan, embarking on his Neverending Tour, and Willie Nelson, who In November he publishes his 154th album—, Young never rests; Unlike so many other legends – in this he has been left alone – almost everything the Canadian does is still relevant and deserves attention. “If I think of a song or a project to put forward, I have to do it immediately. As soon as I have an idea, I just go with it and forget about everything else,” Young told interviewer Zach Sang about a year ago. To illustrate this, on other occasions, he has joked that if he were an airplane pilot, he would crash right away “because he would release the controls as soon as a melody appeared.” Based on the facts (and so many legends about songs composed while driving, such as Like a hurricane), it is easy to imagine that Young's rhythm is difficult to follow even for his most dedicated fans. Only during the last five years he has released three studio albums (Colorado, Barn and World Record) with his classic band, the Crazy Horse, to which is added All Roads Led Home signed by some Molina, Talbot, Lofgren & Young; four live albums and has recovered three “lost albums” that were not published at the time (Chrome Dreams, with the first versions of well-known songs, Toast, recorded in 2001, and Homegrown, with unreleased songs from 1974 and 1975, the glorious years).Neil Young during a concert in Saratoga, New York, in 2024. Gary Miller (Getty Images) Of course, Young has also continued to declassify material from his archives, sold both in pieces and in huge boxes. The third part, recently presented, covers the controversial period between 1976 and 1987, and with 17 CDs and 5 blu-rays (almost one hundred hours of music carefully compiled together with comments and explanations from its author) makes the expression “coffee for the “very coffee-loving” is an understatement. And that is only in regards to the music. In another recent interview, asked about his famous verse “it is better to burn than to burn out slowly,” the singer and songwriter responded that those words only make sense “if rock & oll is all you are and all you want to do,” but that In any other case, life is much more: “nature, family, beauty, there are a lot of things that are left out of that self-sufficient animal that is rock.” As demonstrated by his career, which includes confrontations with multinationals, activism in defense of nature, controversies related to politicians, more or less successful technological developments, successful businesses, business failures, dedicated fatherhood and all kinds of existential vicissitudes, for “the godfather of grunge” there is life outside of rock.
A force of nature
Only his closest friends have spoken ill of Young. For example, David Crosby, who died in January 2023, took advantage of a good part of his last interviews to say that “Neil is the most selfish person” he ever met. For his part, the writer Jimmy McDonough, author of Shakey, a detailed biography first authorized and then unauthorized that is considered the summit of its genre, today refuses to make statements about the musician, but he does remember that while he was preparing his book Everyone who depended on him “was afraid to speak, something common when it is a superstar who pays your salary.” It is often said that Brian Epstein was the fifth Beatle or that Jagger and Richards would be nothing without each other, but it is difficult to establish who has been or is Young's right-hand man. Periodically, collaborations with the legendary Crosby, Stills and Nash turned into disagreements (to be reconnected after a few years, the only one with whom the friendship has never faltered has been Stephen Stills), the Crazy Horse, including Frank Sampedro , also seem condemned to appear and disappear (and only stand out when they are close to their guru) and figures such as producer David Briggs or manager Elliott Roberts died years ago without Young's career suffering. Not even in 2014, after the divorce from his wife and partner Peggy Young (who died in 2019), with whom he had been married for 36 years, did the overwhelming productivity of the myth seem to suffer.
Neil Young poses in Los Angeles in 1967. Michael Ochs Archives The Old Man author's ability to work alone and without pause may be due, in part, to a stormy temperament (“it's hard to disagree with me,” he also admitted before Zach Sang), but that is something that, on the other hand, has also allowed him to never neglect the commitment to the truth and honesty of his music. Not by chance, one of the metaphors most used by critics of Young's work is that of the natural phenomenon, as if his voice and the distortion of his guitar came from a superhuman force: “But we are not talking about a hurricane, or a flood, or a plague,” explains Luis Boullosa, music critic and leader of the band Gog and the Telepathic Hyenas. “We speak, rather, of a venerable oak, close, almost one with the men who have seen it grow since they were children. As a mythological figure, Young embodies not only the common man, but the group of common men who know how to resist adversity and distinguish by instinct, by nobility, between good and evil. The Asturian Pablo und Destruktion, one of the Spanish musicians in which the Canadian's influence is more evident, he subscribes to Boullosa's words and adds: “He lived through all the folk revivals from the first one in the sixties and all the subsequent ones, which come more or less every fifteen years. He was there through thick and thin, and was always able to revitalize that bond with the truth and with the land, with the song as something confessional. He is a countryman, which here in Asturias not only means, as in Spanish, a native of the area, but has other nuances, it is like being a town gentleman, something similar to being a gentleman. And that marks me a lot, it inspires me a lot both for live shows and then for making recordings.”
Everything that is not rock: side adventures and business
In 2014, Neil Young brought together stars such as Elton John, Emmylou Harris, Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen in a video to promote PONO, a high-quality audio player developed and sponsored by him and intended to compete with the iPod. But despite that display, he was never very popular. The PONO is just one of the latest examples of those technological projects that Young is embarking on and which, according to McDonough in Shakey, fill his Broken Arrow ranch with eccentric engineers, bearded car restorers and representatives of technology companies.
A man listens to music from an ill-fated Pono.picture alliance (picture alliance via Getty Image)A few years before launching PONO, Young had focused all his energy on the LincVolt project. LincVolt is a Lincoln Continental, a classic car from 1959, which the star converted into a hybrid vehicle back in 2010. Young's involvement in this project was such that he toured the United States talking about the benefits of electric motors and biofuels and offered His fans, as they recognize in forums like Reddit, are an opportunity to get to know him up close and personal, much better than decades of touring. At SEMA 2013 (an auto show organized in Las Vegas) he spent hours discussing the benefits of fuel cells or batteries applied to the automobile and answering questions from other motoring enthusiasts. Are these endeavors eccentricities? of a millionaire still very influenced by the counterculture and the achievements of those years during which everything seemed possible in California or are they the product of committed activism and the desire to change the world not only through art? Both are probably compatible. At the very least, in recent years Young has been able to introduce into the public conversation issues that some Americans (especially fans of music like the one he produces) are very reticent about, such as fuel economy and climate change, the effects harmful effects of transgenic crops or – less important but closer to his main profession – the poor audio quality offered by streaming platforms. But, without a doubt, in addition to music and environmentalism, electric trains have been the main passion de Young. The singer came to own 20% of Lionel, the most prestigious company in the sector and, in collaboration with his technicians (according to what they say, during the nineties, at the end of each concert, sometimes right backstage, he ran to meet with workers of the modeling company), he developed a multitude of controls and devices that helped him strengthen his relationship with his son Ben, who suffers from cerebral palsy. That effort to communicate as best as possible with Ben also led him to found, in 1987, with Pegi, the Bridge School. From then until 2016, the institution was financed through charity concerts in which, in addition to Young himself, Tom Petty, Paul McCartney, Sonic Youth and REM performed (the star has no trouble keeping his agenda) and continues to operate and develop cutting-edge programs. in the use of technology to facilitate communication for students with complex needs.
What would Neil Young do?
When Primavera Sound stopped its programming in 2009 so that all attendees could concentrate on the main stage, where Neil Young was going to perform, no one, not even those who had gone there to see DJs, complained. Young has long been an incontestable figure, perhaps the only one about whom there is such unanimity (not everything is a consensus around Dylan), and the Canadian has managed to convey an authenticity (in the development of his work) and a commitment ( regarding the causes that he defends and his own crusades against the market) that have been unusual for years. Neil's thing goes beyond the personal brand. García Díaz (Pablo und Destruktion) explains it like this: “What happens to people who follow their path? That it is in a time that is traditional, and traditional time is not linear. There are no longer fashions, because honesty is neither progressive nor decadent; It is not left-wing, it is not right-wing; It's not from the sixties or the two thousand… Honesty is, and that's it. And these artists, who have a touch of prophets, know how to use that type of time as a source of eternal youth: they are always where they have to be and they are always what they are. So, well into 2024, is the cult justified? around Neil Young? Do all their launches, initiatives and struggles make sense, from the obsession with sound quality to the complaints against the multinational Monsanto? Boullosa responds: “Everything he does could be discussed. But to do so we would have to go down, petty, to the biographical details of a man undoubtedly more complicated than he appears. Or get angry with some inconsequential record of old age. Or consider that their commercial chimeras are absurd. But whether today's real man looks more or less like the leafy tree he became decades ago is none of our concern. And it wouldn't change the greater spiritual truth either: at the end of the day, if a problem arose, what would Neil Young do? «It's not the worst of questions.»