The Slider wrote: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.