BCB 100 - Neil Young

[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.

[The Slider]

All of which applies to Dylan 100-fold.

Not that I disagree with you in the slightest.

[Bungo the Mungo]

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

Suzi Quatro just did it, live on German TV!!

[&]

Album: 'On The Beach'
Song: 'Don't Let It Bring You Down'

[Sneelock]

What's the big deal about 'Powderfinger'?

maybe you need to hear it when you're 22.

ablum: "Harvest"
I hadn't intended to choose 'harvest' but I did.
that albums a pretty big part of my life, I guess.
like my garage.

song:
win:there's a beautiful fucking song on "Greendale" with the chorus
I hope you find everything you're looking for
it's gone straight to the top of my Neil Hit Parade and stayed there.

place: Needle and the Damage done
I heard this shortly after meeting my first junkies. I'll never forget it or them.

show: Cinammon Girl
best guitar solo ever!

[geoffcowgill]

song:
win:there's a beautiful fucking song on "Greendale" with the chorus
I hope you find everything you're looking for
it's gone straight to the top of my Neil Hit Parade and stayed there.

"Bandit". Yes. Amazing. I'll never be able to hate that album if only because of this one song.

[kath]

album: harvest
song: cortez the killer

(look at all these threads. i might even know a third of these bands. yeehaw.)

[purgatory brite]

album On the Beach

song A Man Needs A Maid

[Penk!]

Oh yeah,
Rust Never Sleeps
Walk On

[randlepmcmurphy]

Neil Young is great. Not a lot left to say really but i will. I've got a dozen or so albums of his albums but i tend to play the same three or four and leave the rest in the cabinet talking to each other about crisps and things, but yesterday i played 'Harvest Moon' which isn't everybody's first choice and it's rather good. The track 'War Of Man' actually had me and the wife dancing (i say dancing, she was dancing i was doing fourth form school disco moves), and there was some alcohol involved but it brought us closer together in only the way that a song of such beauty could. So for that Mr Young you rock.

[pcqgod]

album: Tonight's the night
song: A man needs a maid