Thursday 1st March
I have always liked Neil Young, well the gentler side of Neil Young; ‘After the Goldrush’ and ‘Harvest’, and then again after all those noisy records came ‘Harvest Moon’, a late blossoming of his earlier flower ‘Harvest’. Whether this was a record company wheeze, or something which the ever belligerent Neil wanted to do we may never know. At the time I thought it was okay, but a bit of a pale copy of the original Harvest, but maybe I was wrong. One of the songs was called Dreamin’ Man, and I hardly rated it. As part of the latest issue of Live music from the Neil Young archives was an album called Dreamin’ Man, where Neil plays most of Harvest moon live. And as a live set it really comes into its own. Great versions of songs like One of These Days and From Hank to Hendrix, finishing with the brilliant War of Man. It starts with Dreamin Man and Neil apologizing and saying that the song is not really about him “I’m just a dreamin’ man, that’s half my problem,” he sings. But I wonder if it maybe is more than a bit about him. The whole Album, including the weird picture on the cover has a dreamlike feel to it, as you wade through and become enveloped in the music, and as Neil famously said on another Live album, “It’s all one song”, meaning that all his music is interconnected and just a different way of saying the same thing.
Listening to this album has made me realise that far from being a pale reprise of Harvest, Harvest Moon was actually a wonderful and whimsical album which transcends the single songs and becomes something else entirely when all are listened to together. For a while I couldn’t stop playing this album over and over again, but that is maybe because unlike Neil I am just a dreamin’ man; thank God that’s more than half my problem.
