(Paris) At 76, he still rides his crazy horse: Neil Young signs an attractive album, between intimate and commitment, recorded with his musicians from Crazy Horse Paris in a barn in the Rockies of Colorado.
The living legend is in shape, alternating on Barn melancholy harmonica (Song of the Seasons Where They Might Be Lost) and scratched guitar (Heading West Where Canerican).
“It’s a good surprise, we weren’t expecting such a good record, the last one, Colorado (2019), was a disappointment and we feared the repetition, ”dissects 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 …
“Damage to Earth”
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 do. And yet, it is difficult to get together to take care of it, ”says the singer on France Inter radio, a 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 am getting older, my voice has changed. But I hope I still have a lot of time, I still have so much to do ”.
And to come back with humor to his abrasive guitar style that inspired the grunge scene of the 1990s. “The polio (of which he was a victim as a child) made one half of my body the shadow of the other half. This affected my playing on the guitar: most of my expressions come out of my right hand, my left is slower. I can’t play like Eddie Van Halen! “
Biden and his “big picture”
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 now has the right to vote in the United States and has chosen Joe Biden. Neil Young also said to appreciate 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 is still as active as ever, as evidenced by his YouTube channel or the live tracks filmed during the first confinements by his partner Daryl Hannah (star actress 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 cannot be telescope, it is not imbued with the past,” concludes Olivier Nuc. A record announced the program in 1979, Rust Never Sleeps.