Neil: Bad Judgemnet... Or Just a Bad Liver?

by Nick Kent

Give Neil his due - the old straw dog sure put out. Boy, he kicks up more toons than mules kick up dust, than hags spit teeth in Peckinpah flicks.

As I picture it, he's scarce risen with the rooster, taken his morning dump and settled down to chow back some beans and read the funnies, then the muse is round there, just a knock-knock-knockin' at old Neil's brain plate ready to spill out a whole slew of lyrical profundity all duded up in spangled melodies, any sort of thing into that bottomless well of an imagination of his.

I mean, who can forget such songs as Sweet Joni, Pushed it Over the Edge, Deep Forbidden Lake, Human Highway, Traces, Campaigner, Wondering, Hawaiian Sunset, Winterlong ... to name but a few? Who's even heard them? I have - most of them anyway - though I bet you haven't 'cos this list is just a small part of the great Young legacy of unreleased tracks he's holding back either until the muse stops knocking or he croaks off or else to give to his buddies to cover occasionally. Verily, this Canuck's cup runneth over.

So here's a new Neil Young album anyway and boy, I'm glad since it's a time since I've heard Neil's lonesome moan. One thing about that voice. that lean timber sure brings out the hunger in a man. My digestive organs start to howl in tune and... well, talk about the starvation artist! Just count your blessings that Neil's never actually sung about food or there'd have been wide scale breakouts of hippies looting supermarkets, for sure. Fact of the matter is I had to sell all my Young albums one day for groceries; I just get so hungry listening to them. So it's good to have him back again even though I'm getting kind of peckish right now listening to his latest masterpiece. Particularly the second side which is what you'd call yer more vintage Neil fare chronologically.

Side one is all new songs, recorded scarcely two months ago and all of 'em spot lighting a whole new slant to Neil's talents, this time as the drinking man's companion. This is made obvious by the cover art, one half of which is a clever shot of Neil passed out on a bar-room floor, his face scrunched up like a bruised plum next to a golden spitoon and under a crotch-shot of some bar queen similarly incapacitated. The comatose belle's brandishing a bottle of Canadian whiskey to make the point truly clear - in case you'd thought Neil had OD'd or something (bad publicity and anyway Tonight's the Night was the master's Thinking Doper's Companion). Nope this is definitely Neil on the sauce, either feisty and soused or else maudlin with tear stains in the whisky macs.

The first track sets the picture clearly. The Old Country Waltz is maudlin as hell, a virtual rewrite of The Old Tennessee Waltz - Neil stuck in the bar when he gets the news that his true love's severed the knot and he's weeping into his tequila sunrise. It's got that stately waltz time beat with back-up unit The Bullets (a hickory brick union of Crazy Horse plus Ben Kieth's pedal steel plus Linda Ronstadt and Nicolette Larsen crooning or Carole Mayedo sawing away on fiddle) holding up the poor boy from actually falling off his stool in a stupor and turning a slight, stupid song into something actually offensive to the ears.

The Bullets are pretty good, sounding like Young's very consciously copying one Bob Dylan with his Rolling Thunder backdrop of lachrymose violin and chick singers, but picking up points by incorporating Crazy Horse to hold down the bottom. So if you can imagine the Rolling Thunder bunch discarding that puny rhythm section they had and pulling in Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson instead, you'll get a rough parallel of the ground plan here.

Things get more spry with Saddle up the Palomino, a drunkards dream of stolen love - all bleary eyes, a headfull of bricks and on the trail to tie down the neighbour's wife, or maybe Carmelita the bankers daughter. I don't know - neither will you - but then nor does Neil so it makes no odds anyway. I like this one as it's sloppy without being messy - and I'm not even much of a drinker myself. Hey Babe is pure dewy-eyed hokum - John Denver could do this - but its very lack of poetry, its brusque schmaltzy attractiveness is enough to hold down its slight (again), airy charm. Hold Back the Tears is Neil's own answer to all those poor bar-fly sots who awaken from their drunken stupor every now and then to holler out "play Melancholy Baby" to nobody in particular and a pitiful testimonial to the fact that booze can fuse the muse when taken to excess. God, its horrible. But fortunately all is not lost as Neil exits the bar on a fine high-flying note, playing crashing electric rhythm guitar for the first time on the whole danged side on the boisterous Bite the Bullet. Again, no profundities, but more boozy lust abounds like corks popping as Young and Crazy Horse skip about keeping this drunken brawl of a song just together enough to work effectively.

Overall verdict - Neil's drunken binge makes for a 50-50 success-failure rate which is okay as I can't stand drunks myself. Anyway he's either a maudlin fool or a mean drunk, so take your pick. Meanwhile, predating all this recent liver torture comes side two, a mixed bag of four tracks, two of which which were actually placed on Young's postponed Decade, the great missing triple set of late last year which is great by the way, though God and Young alone know when it'll ever appear. Star of Bethlehem is a dour '74 affair, recorded for yet another cancelled Young album, Homegrown nixed in preference for Tonight's the Night. It's an almost classic Young lonesome paean which you'll either find deathly self-indulgant and depressing or else yearningly beautiful. I incline to the latter opinion myself and it isn't just Emmylou Harris' presence on shared vocals that puts me in mind of Gram Parsons greatest sad song performances. I've loved it anyway ever since it first came to my notice on Decade and it's good to see that Young's questionable taste in choosing his own best songs hasn't ignored its greatness yet again.

Alas, if only the same could be said for Will to Love, a dire affair dating from May 1976 which may well be the worst song Young's ever written. A horribly trite acoustic minor-chord affair which America wouldn't even dare to put on one of their albums, it gabbles on insanely about being fishes and swimming about in the endless oceans of pure love. "Never Loose the Will to Love" indeed! Actually, this abortion - lasting an amazing seven minuets plus sounds like something straight off the grisly Charles Manson album ESP Records put out after Chucko hit the front page for his gore-letting. What's even more criminal is that its time could've been used to allow both the immaculate Traces and Human Highway (two gorgeous cuts discarded from the last aborted CSN&Y album sessions) to find their rightful place on record. Alas and alack. Like a Hurricane is the other Decade extract, a highlight of last year's Young concerts (whence none of the six or seven other new songs have found their way onto Bars whither Country Home or Too Far Gone?)and considered a masterpiece by most Young devotees. Personally I find the chord progression unbearably predictable, the words - "I am just a dreamer and you are just a dream" ad nauseam thoroughly rubbishy, the King Crimson mellotron just about bearable and the extended guitar solo a most inadequate display of what Young a great electric guitarist - is capable. You may well differ, most I know certainly have. Lastly, Homegrown, recorded at the same time as Hurricane, is a complete jive hoedown throwaway of a song but it at least features that great amped-up,jangling electric guitar crackling and spitting for two and a half minutes or so.

Final conclusion: this is an incredibly lazy album but that's hardly the problem. Young could have stayed out of the studio for over a year and still thrown a great album together from unreleased gems already in the can. The fact that he hasn't and that the overall effect of Bars is uneven and unsatisfactory just isn't good enough and displays a weakness in the good taste department. One wonders if he really knows just how good and great he can be. Bad judgement, bad management (Elliot Roberts, credited with "Direction") or a bad liver?

Still face up, he's a great man even if these turkeys can't even cluck in time. Figure it this way. Anyone who's a "true rock enigma" who wasn't offered a "good kicking" by Sid Vicious in last week's Melody Maker and who has yet to be dragged into doing an interview with Barbara Charone is truly a master of his own destiny.

Chew on it, anyway . Me I'm going to eat.