Neil Young song draft

[Erik]

98. Look Out for My Love (Comes a Time, 1978)
Crazy Horse is usually saved for Neil's most raucous outings, but here they show how they can play with grace. The melody is lovely and there are all kinds of memorable snippets in the lyrics.

[Erik]

Because we're in lockdown and I'm bored and have a lot of time on my hands, I made a list of my top 100 Neil Young songs. I'll be posting one a day on Facebook (when I remember) and when I do, I'll add it to this thread because why not.

97. Get Back to the Country (Old Ways, 1985; with Waylon Jennings)
Neil tried out a number of different genres in the '80s, usually with disappointing results. His country album, Old Ways, was no exception. It was mostly corny and overproduced, with the exception of this barnburner collaboration with Waylon Jennings, which would have fit in just fine on any of the better "outlaw country" records of the '70s.
Live, this material -- and other country-style songs he wrote around this time that didn't make the record -- really soared with the crack backing band he put together, the International Harvesters. More on that in a later entry. Believe it or not, I have seen this song performed live (December 2008 at MSG).

[Erik]

96. Homefires (unreleased; written and first performed in 1974)
In 1974, Neil wrote a series of heartbreaking songs about the end of his relationship with the mother of his oldest child. This is the most devastating. They were intended for inclusion on an album called Homegrown, which he described as "the other side of Harvest," and some, including this one, were performed on that year's CSNY reunion tour. The couplet "I'm free to give my love/but you're not the one I'm thinking of" is a real gut punch.
As you might expect, an entire collection of these kinds of songs would be a real downer, so in 1975 Neil shelved Homegrown and his label put out Tonight's the Night, which it had shelved 2 years earlier, instead. Many of Neil's unreleased sessions and albums (and there are MANY) leaked out legitimately or illegitimately over the years, but Homegrown never did. But it's finally getting an official release next month as part of his Archives series. Neil recorded a ton of songs at those sessions and it turned out Homefires didn’t make the cut.
At least there are a few live versions of Homefires on Youtube. Of course I picked the one from Philly. Sadly, I was not at that show.

[Erik]

95. This Old Guitar (Prairie Wind, 2005)
One of the things I've most admired about Neil is that he can write about or from the perspective of anyone -- or anything. This unexpectedly emotional song is about a guitar he has that was once owned by Hank Williams, and is one of his standouts from this century. A harmony vocal from Emmylou Harris doesn't hurt. And yes, it includes a few licks from another one of his songs that will appear later.

[Erik]

94. Slip Away (Broken Arrow, 1996)
When Neil's music starts, sometimes I just slip away. That's basically what this is about. Neil's guitar is at its most trance-like and it's a blast to just let it wash over you.

[Gregg]

95. This Old Guitar (Prairie Wind, 2005)
One of the things I've most admired about Neil is that he can write about or from the perspective of anyone -- or anything. This unexpectedly emotional song is about a guitar he has that was once owned by Hank Williams, and is one of his standouts from this century. A harmony vocal from Emmylou Harris doesn't hurt. And yes, it includes a few licks from another one of his songs that will appear later.

Love Emmylou, like the lyrics, but can't get past the tune. Sounds too much like a kid's song. I would like to hear it with a different arrangement.

[Erik]

93. This Note's for You (This Note's for You, 1988)
This song was Neil's first step back into the zeitgeist after having been irrelevant to pop culture for much of the '80s. The infamous award-winning music video is below. And yet it's a product of his '80s genre-hopping. The blues album to which it lent its title was more successful than most of his other '80s experiments, but, as with his country phase a few years before, the experiment worked much better live than in the studio, and many of the best songs from the period were played at the shows but didn't make the record. More on that later. Of those that did make the record, this one is the tightest of the bunch and sums up his "art above all else" ethos as well as anything.

[Erik]

92. Mansion on the Hill (Ragged Glory, 1990)
I wore the hell out of my copy of Ragged Glory in college and you'll be seeing plenty of it here. This one is prime garage rock.

[Mithrandir]

Ragged Glory is my favorite Neil album and among my top 50 all time albums

[Erik]

Ragged Glory is my favorite Neil album and among my top 50 all time albums

It's a monster. I'm not kidding about wearing it out in college. By the time of graduation (1993), the jewel case of the CD was held together by Scotch tape.

[Erik]

Because we're in lockdown and I'm bored and have a lot of time on my hands, I made a list of my top 100 Neil Young songs. I'll be posting one a day on Facebook (when I remember) and when I do, I'll add it to this thread because why not.

91. Grey Riders (A Treasure, 2011; written and first performed in 1985)
As I said a few days ago, Neil's country phase in the mid-80s was marked by strange choices; a tour that worked far better than the album it supported, and a number of new songs that were left off the album that were better than those selected. Grey Riders illustrates both. It's a propulsive hoedown with some extremely evocative imagery in the lyrics. Powerful enough to be selected as the closer to 25 International Harvesters shows. But forgotten for Old Ways and never performed again after 1985. It saw the light of day in 2011 on the archival release A Treasure, which is essential.

[Erik]

90. Motion Pictures (For Carrie) (On the Beach, 1974)
This is a sleepy little tune with surprisingly aware lyrics; the narrator is both suspicious that his partner is cheating on him (this was in fact happening to Neil when he wrote this) and that the trappings of success offer false hope. As with all of side 2 of On the Beach, it was recorded under the influence of honeyslides (google it).

[Erik]

89. Downtown (Mirror Ball, 1995)
Neil's collaboration with Pearl Jam should have been better than it was, but it produced some winners, including this one. Here, PJ serves Neil as well as Crazy Horse ever did.

[Erik]

88. White Line (Ragged Glory, 1990; written in 1974; first performed in 1975)
This song has a long, glorious history. Initially titled "River of Pride," it was written in the 1974 batch of songs about a bad breakup and recorded for the abandoned Homegrown album (that version will be released in a few weeks). It begins by comparing the emotional burden of the relationship to a truckload, and then goes off into an extended musing on vehicles and travel, as Neil is wont to do. Neil played it a few times with Crazy Horse in 1975 and 1976. One version from around that time turned up on the Songs for Judy archival release. Then it disappeared until 1990, when Neil and the Horse re-recorded it and put it on Ragged Glory. That version is another example of garage rock at its finest.
We almost got yet another studio version. In 1999, Neil started working again with CSNY, and brought over three songs he had been working on for what would become Silver and Gold. All those songs were acoustic, and CSN wanted an electric Neil song on the album (which became Looking Forward). He worked up White Line for them, and after one take, the young engineer said "that sounds just as good as the version on Ragged Glory!" All of them, INCLUDING NEIL, had not remembered that this song was released 9 years before. A redundant White Line would have been better than the dreadful song Neil put in its place (Queen of the Mall).

[Erik]

87. Ride My Llama (Rust Never Sleeps, 1979; written in 1975; first performed in 1978)
Rust Never Sleeps is peak Neil. How good is it? This song, with its keening melody and far-out sci-fi lyrics, would be one of the best on most albums. Here, it is an afterthought compared to what surrounds it. I have very strong feelings about this album, which I'll delve into later.
Like many songs Neil wrote in the mid-70s, this one has a twisted history of how it ended up where it did. It was written during the Zuma sessions and was slated to be the title track of an early version of that album. Then it was recorded for the Hitchhiker sessions in 1976 -- an archival release of that abandoned effort came out recently. Then Neil dusted it off for 10 acoustic shows in 1978. One of these performances, with the audience noise stripped out, is what made it on Rust Never Sleeps. It has not been performed live since.