Don't Wanna Be Good
Why I love Neil
I’ve been chronicling this journey through Neil Young’s music for two years now and have had many conversations with friends about it. I heard various immediate reactions, including the often repeated criticisms of his voice or references to his popular songs. During one recent conversation, I brought up a quote I had read about why fans like his voice: he sounds like we sound when we sing along to his songs. That leads me to something I’ve always admired about Neil. He has a genuine presence that is relatable. While he has certainly chased studio perfection before, the realness is what matters to him. It’s not always going to be good, but it will be laden with true meaning. As “Prisoners of Rock ‘n Roll” tells us, Neil (and the Horse) don’t wanna be good. That’s not the point of the music that Neil makes. The unreleased film Mountaintop has Neil putting it more explicitly: “It doesn’t have to be good. It’s going to be great.”
I was an early teen when I discovered Neil through my dad and MTV. That’s an impressionable age, to be sure. Full of uncertainty and insecurity, trying to figure out the kind of person I wanted to be. Previously, I had bought into the plastic heavy metal of the 80s like most kids my age, but when I saw Neil and learned more about him, something switched in how I viewed music and myself. The sheen of fame became a lot less important than how it made me feel inside. That over stylized rockstar look started to look a bit fake and performative as I entered my teens. But here was a guy who dressed like the older kids in school as the grunge scene took hold in the early 90s. It’s no wonder the grunge acts were name checking Neil Young. This was the real stuff, something I could actually relate to and belong to in a way.
As I’ve related elsewhere, the late producer David Briggs loomed large in Neil’s life and perhaps shaped that realness more than anyone. With Briggs, Neil developed what he called a “studio vérité” approach to recording. A spin on cinéma vérité, or “truthful cinema,” the idea was to present his music as close to how it was performed as possible. So they recorded everything and avoided messing with it, choosing takes based on feel vs. precision. When I went to art school, I related to this approach a lot. The more regimented processes and styles were hard for me because I liked when something felt organic and natural as opposed to labored. There was just something less manufactured when you could see rough edges and mistakes, more from the heart. When Briggs was dying, he called Neil to his bedside and they had a long talk. Briggs’ message was to get closer to the source. That source is what I think has driven Neil since the beginning, something fundamental to life and music.
Neil’s got three faders of her. And he said ‘Now, Nicolette, this is the best vocal you did’ — pushes the fader up — ‘and now here’s the next best vocal you did’ — pushes that fader up — ‘but here’s the one we’re gonna use, ‘cause we like the feel.’ (Comes a Time Engineer Denny Purcell to Jimmy McDonough, Shakey)
What is the source, though? To get metaphysical, it’s the soul. But perhaps not the supernatural soul that we think of. If you take the soul to just mean your own consciousness, everything that makes you, you, then it’s easier to understand what Briggs wanted Neil to convey: he wanted him to be true to himself because that’s when Neil makes his best music. Whether it’s an honest outpouring of love or grief, his most naked music is generally his best. Conversely, when he’s attempted to act like someone else or chase fame, the source suffers. The art suffers. There’s always been this push and pull with his career. The oft-cited Ditch Trilogy is where the source became art, where his soul and his music became one. It’s some of the hardest music of his career to listen to, but I would posit it’s because of how open and raw it is. That desire to convey honest emotion and creativity is part of what makes me admire him.
The source is what makes him a great artist, but it’s Neil’s idiosyncratic nature that makes him a fascinating one. It’s in the way that he talks to his audience during Songs for Judy, full of jokes and camaraderie. It’s in the way that he conceived Trans as a way to speak to his son but didn’t tell anyone until later, the way he releases an album called Chrome Dreams II even though the original was never released. He names songs after other well known songs. It’s in the bizarre choices of Arc (a noise album) and Earth (a live album overdubbed with animal sounds). The way he plays with expectations has always been the thing that delights me about him. I always come back to this one quote of his to unlock his sense of humor:
Here is a new song, it's guaranteed to bring you right down, it's called 'Don't Let It Bring You Down'. It sorta starts off real slow and then fizzles out altogether. (Neil Young, 4 Way Street)
Then there’s the way he’s conducted the business of his career. The story of him shingling his roof with vinyl he bought back from the record label because he was unhappy with the mix. The push and pull through the decades with CSNY, knowing it’s the easy way to fame and money, but the less interesting one for him. Dissatisfied with digital audio quality, he builds his own digital player. When that fails to take off due to everyone switching to streaming, he builds his own streaming site where he can control the quality of his audio. He outright states he sold half his catalogue so that he can do what he wants when he wants. He dumps Spotify, a huge revenue source for an artist of his stature, because of what he believes in. He does what he wants and truly does not care what anyone else thinks. No wonder he’s a hero to Gen X. He only serves what’s real. And never stops.
As I cross this two year mark, my admiration and interest in Neil has not waned. I’m looking forward to what he has cooked up next in all his idiosyncratic ways. Bring on the NYCH tour this year, bring on Volume III (which is going to be extremely weird and more massive than anything he’s released to date, it sounds like), and please bring on Volume IV, Alchemy, more timeline concerts, more weird movies, more of those frustrating and entertaining Letters to the Editor replies. He even wrote a forthcoming sci-fi novel called Canary! He turned 78 last fall and shows no sign of slowing down. And no indication of being anyone other than himself. He may not necessarily be good, but he’s Neil Young. That’s great.
Postscript: January 31, 2024 marks the two year anniversary of my deep dive into Neil Young. I felt like writing a piece like this was appropriate. Expect more of these essay type pieces in the future. As a matter of order, January 2022 was when I started the cursory thoughts on Twitter before making the leap to Substack in March of the same year. I’ve been watching what is happening on Substack and grappling with how I feel about their moderation policies. I think it’s likely I will be relocating this year, but I’m still unsure where that will be. Wherever it is, I promise the transition will be completely invisible to subscribers. You won’t have to do anything.