Jouney through the Past : Controversial Opinion : Neil Young's Best Period

For someone who has been releasing music for approaching 60 years now most Neil Young fans would point to those early years and then add in Rust Never Sleeps as his golden period.  I do enjoy that period and the quality is undeniable.  My favourites from that era being Rust,  Zuma,  After the Goldrush, Tonight's the Night and, in particular On the Beach.   

However, and to be a bit controvesial I believe he was at his best when he rediscovered his muse in the late 80s and produced the run of albums that I keep coming back to.  Later releases of live albums from this period also show that he was on fire on stage as well.  

I think the resurgence started with his return to the Reprise label (Geffen must have been really pissed off) with This Note's For You.  The songs on that were genrerally pretty solid even if the arrangements did not seem to bring them to life.  That took the quadruple live album (Bluenote Cafe) released years later.  Things were definitely looking up. 

Then, following the Japan, Australia and NZ only EP Eldorado, came Freedom, now my most played Young album.  Terrific songs and arrangements.  He repeated the Rust Never Sleeps trick of opening and closing with acoustic and band versions of Rockin' in the Free World.  Between those songs were some great originals like Crime in the City, Don't Cry, Someday and the Emmylou covered Wrecking Ball and then a nice bluesy version of the Goffin/King classic On Broadway. 

After the mix of acoustic and band tracks on Freedom,  Young reconvened Crazy Horse for what I now think of the definitive Crazy Horse album - Ragged Glory.  What an aptly named album - typical Horse sound, sloppy, driving and glorious.  A key question was whether it was inspired by or inspired grunge and it was after this and the accompanying tour that Neil was dubbed the Godfather of Grunge.   We are very lucky that the tour is so well documented with both Weld and Way Down in the Rust Bucket 

After such a great hard rocking album, clearly recorded in the ditch,  you could probably have put money on Neil returning to the middle of the road.  However whether you could have anticipated just how well he would do that.  Calling his next album Harvest Moon clearly referenced his much loved earlier album.  The songs reflected an older Young looking back on how he got to where was at that stage in his life.  It was a big success.  The band he assembled even resembled the band for Harvest with the addition of Spooner Oldham (if there a keyboard player with a better feel and who can make such a big contribution by playing so little?)  

The next album, Sleeps with Angels, was another curve ball, back with Crazy Horse but with only one song, the 14 minute epic, Change Your Mind,  recalling the grunge sound of Ragged Glory.   In much the same way that Hey Hey My My (out of the blue/into the black) was inspired by Johnny Rotten with its "Better to burn out that to fade away" line  the title track and
Prime of Life was inspired by the death of Kurt Cobain who quited that line in his suicide note.  

While not my most played Young album it is my favourite as I think, apart from the god awful and aptly titled song Piece of Crap, is his most cohesive thematically and lyrically. To me it seems like his reflection of the breakdown of the American Dream, whether it is the ghost like image of the abandoned  "Safeway Cart" rolling down the street,  the songs bookending of the album My Heart and A Dream that can Last or the reflection on the Western Hero.   

For his next album he really embraced his new mantle as Godfather of Grunge and went into the studio (and then on tour) with Pearl Jam.  Many people did not like or rate Mirror Ball  the album that came from those sessions but I always thought it was a solid "Heavy Neil" album with a couple of really stand out tracks.  I particularly like I am the Ocean (which would easily be in my top 10 (or 20) Neil songs, Downtown and Throw your Hatred Down.   It would be good to get a release of a live album but I understand that is locked up in record company politics.  

The run of great albums then finished with the release of the good but not great Broken Arrow and Silver and Gold.  Following the heavy Crazy Horse then more acoustic country approach he so often takes and while these were maybe not to the same standard as to what came before they still included some excellent songs with Big Time and Music Arcade on the former and Silver and Gold, Buffalow Springfield Again and Razor Love on the latter.

After these I feel his efforts have been quite patchy - Three great albums (Le Noise, Psychedelic Pill and Barn), some patchy ones and some I never connected with.   But for me these five albums represent a real purple patch and a middle/late career resurgence/reinvention that perhaps only Bowie has matched with his last 5 albums - but that is another story.