At 76, he still rides his crazy horse: Neil Young signs an attractive album, between intimate and commitment, recorded with his Crazy Horse musicians in a barn in the Colorado Rockies.
The living legend is in shape, alternating on Barn (“Grange”) melancholy harmonica (Song of the seasons Where They might be lost) and scratched guitar (Heading West Where Canerican).
This 41st album by the Canadian musician comes out two years later Colorado, already recorded with his group Crazy Horse. “It’s a good surprise, we weren’t expecting such a good record, the last one was a disappointment and we feared the repetition “, dissects for AFP Olivier Nuc. This journalist (and guitarist) recently hosted a concert-exchange around Neil Young at Johnny’s Bar in Bercy (Accor Arena, in Paris).
“The confinement helped him, he had more time. In the last albums, the first drafts were recorded, there he reviewed his copy and recorded only the best”, continues this connoisseur of “Loner”, one of the artist’s nicknames.
On paper, the project could appear flawed. Neil Young has indeed summoned his Crazy Horse accomplices (Nils Lofgren, Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina, all in their seventies) to a barn from the 1870s refurbished in a recording studio, for sessions during the full moon …
But the result, between acoustic ballads and electric shocks, turns out to be touching. In Heading West, Neil Young talks about his parents’ divorce as a kid. And at the other end of the spectrum of his life, he questions what he leaves to future generations in an endangered planet (Human race).
“In 76 years, I have seen a tremendous amount of damage done to the Earth. Back then (in his youth) we didn’t know what we were doing, but now we know. to come together to take care of it “, confides the singer on the radio France Inter, rare interview outside the American continent.
Neil Young believes that “The power of a song is measured by the listener. If someone is open to change, a song can make them reconsider their actions.”
As on his disc, the composer gave himself on France Inter on the passage of time. “I’m getting older, my voice has changed. But I hope I still have a lot of time, I still have so much to do.”
And come back with humor to his abrasive guitar style that inspired the grunge scene of the 1990s. “The polio (which he suffered as a child) made half of my body shadow the other half. It affected my playing on the guitar: most of my expressions come out of my right hand , the left is slower. I can’t play like Eddie Van Halen! ” A mocking tone that we find on Canerican, pun on his dual US-Canadian citizenship. But behind the irony points to a political implication.
Born in Canada, he had applied for American nationality to be able to vote in 2020. A right he obtained and which allowed him to vote for Joe Biden. Neil Young says he appreciates the action of the President of the United States and his “overview” in an interview with Apple Music.
Neil Young will be talking about him again in the future. First, because 2022 will mark the 50th anniversary of a masterpiece in its repertoire, Harvest. And the man with the sideburns is still active, as evidenced by his youtube channel or the live songs filmed during the first confinements by his companion Daryl Hannah (actress-star of the 1980s, seen in Splash, Blade runner, etc).
Without forgetting his pharaonic archives exploited with his son Zeke, from which he regularly draws nuggets like Homegrown (album recorded in the mid-1970s, left in a box until its draft in 2020). “All this does not telescope, it is not steeped in the past”, concludes Olivier Nuc. A record announced the program in 1979, Rust never sleeps (“Rust does not sleep“).