BCB 100 - Neil Young

[Bungo the Mungo]

Didn't Loop do 'Cinnamon Girl'?

[Beno]

Saint Etienne did 'Only Love Can break Your Heart'.

[Snarfyguy]

And anyone for that horrible Like A Hurricane by Roxy Music?

Probably the worst thing they ever did, wasn't it?

Except for maybe their cover of Jealous Guy.

Completist or no, I still refuse to have that "The High Road" record in my collection.

[Carl's Son]

Saint Etienne did 'Only Love Can break Your Heart'.

That's a great one. Completely different in style to the original but it works really well and doesn't come across as gimmicky.

[The Slider]

You'd think it was just that his simplicity and individualism makes his own versions definitive and all others completely superfluous (as I personally think the Pixies' Winterlong is - it is a carbon copy).

But then there is Bob Dylan.
And there are hundreds of brilliant interpretations of Bob's songs.

I don't know why, it is just is.

[Bungo the Mungo]

You'd think it was just that his simplicity and individualism makes his own versions definitive and all others completely superfluous (as I personally think the Pixies' Winterlong is - it is a carbon copy).

But then there is Bob Dylan.
And there are hundreds of brilliant interpretations of Bob's songs.

I don't know why, it is just is.

Interesting. I was thinking about posting something about being creatively crippled by respect, but then that wouldn't explain the abundance of decent Dylan covers, as the man is accorded more respect than any other rock/pop musician.

[Corporate whore]

Personally I'd like to hear Frank Sidebottom take a stab at Rockin' in the Free World.

[JQW]

Personally I'd like to hear Frank Sidebottom take a stab at Rockin' in the Free World.

It'll be an improvement over the version I saw Neil do with Pearl Jam at Reading some years ago! That version was rotten.

You know it was! It really was!

Thank you!

[Piggly Wiggly]

Geoff Cowgill sums his appeal up quite succinctly in the opening post.

Favorite LP: After The Goldrush

Favorite song: "Country Girl"

[Neil Jung]

The Church do a decent cover of Cortez The Killer on A Box Of Birds, their covers album, but then they can do no wrong for me.

[Snarfyguy]

- non-Neil Young related digression -

'Sedan Delivery' is on The Good Earth. They did 'Barstool Blues' too, for a French promo CD. 'Powderfinger' I'm not sure.

They used to play it live; it might not have come out on a record.

There actually is a recorded version by Feelies side project Yung Wu, opening their Shore Leave album.

Ah yes, maybe that's what I'm thinking of. I get those acts a bit confused twenty or so years later. They also appeared as The Trypes and perhaps in one or two other incarnations I don't recall. We used to see them a lot when they played here regularly and one nice thing about the bands was that they always seemed to play on (U.S.) holidays. So if you didn't have anyplace in particular you wanted or were obliged to be, you could always go and see one of their bands with a bunch of other fans, and it was a cozy sort of experience.

[The Slider]

Maybe Neil Young is more a performer than a songwriter. Dylan is (was) both, his own versions of his songs are often definitive, but many songs clearly have (had) pop / soul / etc potential. Put on Solomon Burke's 'Maggie's Farm' in a party and only those who know the song will think 'Dylan'. It is always great to tell the others: 'You are actually dancing to a Bob Dylan song'.

With Dylan all the great cover versions seem to be of his more stripped back and less musically involved songs - Ferry's Hard Rain, Hendrix's Watchtower, The Byrds Mr Tambourine Man/My Back Pages, Rod's Tomorrow is a Long Time etc etc .
No one ever did an interesting version of anything off Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 did they?

Not that this ties in with NY at all - all the covers of his songs are pretty poor (or at best somewhat superfluous) whether stripped back (Cash's Pocahontas) or Crazy Horsed (Pixies' Winterlong)


maybe it is because while Dylan's early songs are often musically ambiguous (I might venture even a little bland) Neil Young's never were. And that ergo there was nothing much to add to them the way that The Byrds and Hendrix added melodies to their rewokings of Dylan's songs....

[geoffcowgill]

With Dylan all the great cover versions seem to be of his more stripped back and less musically involved songs - Ferry's Hard Rain, Hendrix's Watchtower, The Byrds Mr Tambourine Man/My Back Pages, Rod's Tomorrow is a Long Time etc etc .
No one ever did an interesting version of anything off Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 did they?

I take your point, and for the most part agree, but I think Nina Simone's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" is the exception to this.

[Carl's Son]

I still say St. Etienne's Only Love Will Break Your Heart stands as a brilliant cover.

[The Slider]

With Dylan all the great cover versions seem to be of his more stripped back and less musically involved songs - Ferry's Hard Rain, Hendrix's Watchtower, The Byrds Mr Tambourine Man/My Back Pages, Rod's Tomorrow is a Long Time etc etc .
No one ever did an interesting version of anything off Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 did they?

I take your point, and for the most part agree, but I think Nina Simone's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" is the exception to this.

There is always an exception or two to the rule.
I like Madeleine Peyroux's take on You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go as well.

NS's JLTTB is a pretty radical reinterpretation if I remember rightly isn't it?
Almost like an opposite of the other songs - she strips it back where the others all build the bones of just the voice and acoustic guitar up to some huge great cathedral of sound.
Interesting.

Just playing it now - it is exactly that.

[Bungo the Mungo]

I still say St. Etienne's Only Love Will Break Your Heart stands as a brilliant cover.

Yes.

[The Slider]

I'm not sure I would go as far as brilliant, but it is certainly one of the very few NY covers that might be considered succesful in any way whatsoever.

[Shaun]

According to a feature on Young on the guardian homepage he's working on the archives as we speak!

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1805195,00.html

I just hope I outlive him so I can eventually hear them.

[andymacandy]

I think that women have done the best covers of Neils work.
The tracks by Nicolette Larson, Emmylou and Linda Rondstat have done have usually fitted the more sensitive timbre of Youngs songwriting.
"Rockin In The Free World" is becoming a bit of an "encore" cliche these days.
Everybody has done a version...............

[Davey the Fat Boy]

You'd think it was just that his simplicity and individualism makes his own versions definitive and all others completely superfluous (as I personally think the Pixies' Winterlong is - it is a carbon copy).

But then there is Bob Dylan.
And there are hundreds of brilliant interpretations of Bob's songs.

I don't know why, it is just is.

I'd argue that Neil Young's songs gain more from his performance style than many other songwriters we'd list as being great. Think of After the Gold Rush for a minute. Would a line like "flying mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun" seem half as great with anyone else singing it?

I think being a Neil Young fan requires a certain willingness to look beyond Neil-isms that you might not look beyond for anyone else. Take a song like "Lotta Love." Nicolette Larson's succesful cover version required her to change the line "my head needs relating'" to "my heart needs relating." To a certain degree, I think we all do a certain amount of translating "Neil speak" whenever we listen to his music. In a way it is a testament to him and his ability as a poet that we are willing to afford him this bit of good will. But I think his semi-literate, semi-lazy, semi-insane way of writing makes many of his songs less useful as standards than other writers of our time.