There is something to be said about an artist who came to fame in the late sixties and still continues to consistently produce albums on a very regular and frequent basis. The artist in question here is none other than the great Neil Young. Now, most people would probably agree that his best material came out before 1975. It could even be argued that Zuma was Young’s last great record. Not that he hasn’t put out decent music since then, just nothing has had the same sort of druggy, visceral, raw emotion that was so frequent in his earlier work. Neil Young is the perfect example of a true artist. He strikes me as someone who has never catered to critics or public opinion. Everything he has produced has been for the sake of music and personal expression. And with any true artist, there are bound to be some experimental missteps. Most of Young’s missteps took place in the 1980’s after a very infamous lawsuit in which Geffen Records sued Young for not producing music that represented himself. In other words, Geffen sued Neil Young for not sounding like Neil Young. With that being said, here’s a list of my favorite awkward Neil Young songs from his weirdo 1980’s Geffen period.
We might as well start out with the obvious. Transformer Man was one of stranger songs from Neil Young’s album Trans, released in 1982. Heavily influenced by Devo and Germany’s Kraftwerk, most of the music is comprised of early synthesizers and vocoders, which give it a wonderful and weird sound.
This next little number is from Young’s 1987 album Life. The backing vocals and piano are particularly creepy and almost sound like they could have been lifted straight from a David Lynch film.
Neil Young and his backing band, The Shocking Pinks (a band made up just for this particular album) took at stab at rockabilly with their 1983 album Everybody’s Rockin’. The bulk of it is less than memorable, but this song stands out thanks to Young’s quavering, warbly harmonica.
Landing on Water is overall a straight up bizarre and awkward album. The drums are overproduced and the vocals are muddled behind weirdo eighties synthesizers. It’s one of my least favorite albums of his and definitely his least accessible.
Computer Age is actually a pretty sweet song. This is one of the better tracks from Trans.
Neil Young’s This Note’s For You is a kind of concept album dealing with corporate commercialism in music during the late eighties. While the underlying themes of the album are pretty cool, the actual music falls short. Most of the songs are cheesy, jazzy and feature a heavy horn section. The video for the title track is pretty fucking goofy and was actually banned from MTV for a short while thanks to legal threats from Michael Jackson’s attorneys.
Mr. Soul is an older Buffalo Springfield song rerecorded for Trans. There’s actually some pretty cool guitar work in this one. It also kind of sounds like Devo, who Young was collaborating with at the time.
Arc technically came out in 1991, even though Young had already recorded an earlier version for a film he made around 1987 called Muddy Track. Young showed the film to Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, who then persuaded Young to release a full album in a similar manner. The album is comprised of one thirty-minute long “song”, and features the lyrics of Like A Hurricane, while musically it’s really nothing but noise and feedback. Imagine a slightly more accessible Metal Machine Music.
Speaking of Neil Young and Devo, this last clip is from Neil Young’s strange foray into film making. Human Highway came out in 1982 and has been described as “The Wizard Of Oz” on acid. It’s a pretty bizarre brand of comedy and you should totally check it out. The video features Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, dressed as Booji Boy, the closest thing to a mascot Devo ever had, playing synth in a crib, while Neil Young wails away on his guitar until everything devolves into noise and feedback. It rules.
Death and Ego 