The Neil Young Discography Reimagined 4: Freedom Revisited

I didn't know Brigham Young from Neil Young until one of them was playing guitar on stage with Pearl Jam at the MTV Video Music Awards. I didn't immediately go and hungrily hunt down Neil's previous work, though. Instead, I waited for his next album, which I kind of liked, then got one of his earlier albums, and wasn't in the right head space for it, so I stopped seeking his work out. Mea culpa.

But this era of Neil Young's work from the late eighties to the early nineties is the era I most enjoy. An angry forty-year old man still yelling at the system while playing loud guitars with a bunch of twenty and thirty year olds. Sign me up.

The synths are gone man. Someone plugged in an electric guitar, and Neil Young tried to reinvent the 1970s. Cocaine Eyes is pure Before I Was Born rock. The song uses the word soul a bit too much for my liking, but he's back to pushing his falsetto until it breaks, and I am Here For It. Listen to those guitars wail at the end. Welcome back, Neil.

White Lines seems to  be, I don't want to say on the nose, but thematically related to the previous track. This song was actually written and recorded in the 1970s,  but Young didn't release it until 1990 when he gave it a heavier guitar sound. But the background vocals are pure 1970s AM radio rock.

A light departure from all the guitars shows up with in the form of Inca Queen. The long instrumental intro, vamps, and outro would usually preclude me from including this song. It's long. Like a live performance from one of The Eagles Hell Freezes Over Tour tracks long. And, at times, it sounds like the kind of rock you could hear playing softly in the background at a resort your grandparents would rent in New Mexico. But I like it. It seems to know what it is, embraces it, and just refuses to end.

We stay chill and southern for a track with The Blue Notes...sorry, Ten Men Working. This song about lost love and cars, Coupe De Ville, would have felt nearly at home on The Damage Done. It's so Retro In The 1970s, you can almost imagine Roberta Flack or Linda Rondstadt covering it.

Eldorado bubbles up through the end of the previous track with a a Very Latin lick and ... castinets? Whle there are some guitar crunches, this continues to give the impression that this album has settled into soft rock. 

Twilight does nothing to change your mind about the softness of this album. It's an occasional electric guitar plucked lovingly over saxophones, a very metronomic drum beat, and lyrics about how Neil is totally going to hold you when the twilight falls.  It even goes instrumental for an absurd amount of time before Neil comes back in, requesting you not be sad because you're the best thing that  he ever had. They're hardly challenging lyrics, but it's a sweet nostalgic love song with a very twangy electric guitar.

And then BOOM, the song that originally got me into Neil Young when he performed it live at the MTV music awards, along with Pearl Jam. It's Keep On Rockin' In The Free World, and it's a screamer, a banger, a call to revolution, and a jam all-in-one. Listening to the original version, just causes me to sing the Eddie Vedder portions of the duet version. 

I bought a ton of Pearl Jam bootlegs in the 90s. For at least a couple of years, I thought Fuckin' Up was a lesser Pearl Jam B-side. I like it, mostly for nostalgic reasons, but I've always considered it a kind of whiny, self-reflective song, which is TOTALLY 90s alt rock. This continues the driving guitars of the previous track, with some excessive wammy work. It's exactly the kind of song an angry teenager would shout along with when their mom took away their computer privileges for something they absolutely knew they shouldn't have been doing. It, naturally, ends with an excessive amount of reverb. TAKE THAT, MOM!!!! 

We return to acoustic folk rock land with Hanging On A Limb. This is another track that you could easily convince me came out in the mid-70s AM radio boom.  Particularly because it's a duet with Linda Ronstadt. It's a political lullaby. It could easily have been the final track of this album.

From Linda Ronstadt to the return of Crazy Horse, Neil Young draws his 70s past into his 80s and early 90s work. Too Lonely sounds less nostalgic than the other tracks, and works as a very simplistic rock anthem.

Because Neil spent the 80s doing his avant-pop synth work, he didn't do the weird 80s transition rock that happened. The slightly crunchier arena rock style guitars with cleaner lead vocals but background vocal arrangements that hadn't yet  powerwashed the stink of the 70s off them. Mansion On The Hill is as close as he comes. It's one of those self-reflective songs where a guy who got rich off of art realizes he's no longer the underdog, he's The Man! But it's not very specific and stays just distant enough from the self-reflection that you can focus on the guitars and not think This Is So Whiny because, miraculously, it isn't whiny at all.

Don't Cry should be from an 80s soundtrack. The protagonist is getting his shit together. He realizes he treated his lover bad and he's helping her leave him. He was never abusive, he just kind of sucked. But he could get better. But he knows it's not her job to stick with him while he gets better. His guitar riffs vacillate between grunge crunch and new wave noodling. I feel like Pearl jam is ust waiting for Neil to pass before they cover this song as well. It's right in their wheelhouse.

The previous epically long tracks on this album have been soft AM whispers with great beats and instrumentation. Love And Only Love starts with a minute and a half of This Is Definitely A Rock Song before the vocals kick in. At over twelve minutes ,I expected this to do more than just verse breakdown chorus bridge instrumental verse breakdown chorus bridge instrumental etc, but the guitat jams between bridges and the verses are so catchy, I don't mind that it's twelve minutes that never break form.

The transition to No More, a similarly toned but half the length jam was so seamless that I didn't notice it took place. It's really an echo of the previous track. I don't mean that disparagingly.  

The Long Walk Home could be the last track on any previous Neil Young album. Harmonica, sweeping near-falsetto, complicated relationship with America, synth rise, wait ... gun sound effects? Ok, so it quickly veers from classic Young ballads, but then it settles back.The guns are a bit much. Using the drums instead would have been just as powerful, and not removed me from the song. I still like this as a closer, particularly when the harmonica wafts back in. Also, the song doesn't overstay its welcome, getting out in about five minutes.