Y – is for Neil Young – The Nineties – Arc-Weld to Silver and Gold

Monday 4th December

Although not quite so productive as the Seventies and Eighties, Neil’s output in the Nineties was full of quality.  He kicked off with Arc-Weld; another double (or triple really) live album featuring Crazy Horse, where Neil performs mostly songs form the last decade.  A superb version of ‘Cortez the Killer’ being the highlight for me; lots of feedback and grungy guitars.  In fact the separate album called Arc is simply feedback and reverb on an industrial scale – brilliant if you are stoned I imagine but hardly listenable otherwise.

But the real centerpiece of the Nineties was ‘Harvest Moon’.  Neil teamed up with the same players as ‘Harvest’ twenty years earlier and made a superb partner piece to that two decades earlier masterpiece.  It was as if time had stood still and the two albums were recorded together.  I have no idea how Neil comes up with his beautiful haunting melodies, but there seems no end to his songwriting skills.  The playing is superb and almost muted allowing his voice to soar above.  Best songs ‘From Hank to Hendrix’, ‘Unknown Legend’ and the title track – but really there isn’t a poor song on the record.  Simply sublime.

MTV ran a series of ‘Unplugged’ albums and Neil made a brilliant one, just one new song but lovely quiet versions of some old favourites.  ‘Sleeps with Angles’ came next.  Recorded with Crazy Horse it has some great songs, some lyrical and some heavier.  Neil almost invented ‘Grunge’ and certainly inspired many garage bands of the late Eughties.  And Kurt Cobain quoted Neil in his suicide note, the title track is a tribute to him.  Best song is ‘Change Your Mind’, with it’s long guitar solos and haunting melody.  And Neil’s fascination with grunge continued on his next record ‘’Mirror Ball’, which he recorded, almost live,  with Pearl Jam (not my favourite record.)   ‘Broken Arrow’ was better, recorded again with Crazy Horse, almost up there with his best work.  Then, apart from a couple of live albums, (and really how may live Neil Young albums do I need {quite a few actually}) nothing for four years.  This was the longest period of inactivity for Neil, but it was broken by the brilliant ‘Silver and Gold’ in 2000, an almost exclusively acoustic album of gentle songs sung in a quiet voice.  It is as if Neil has just picked up his guitar and sat down next to you and started singing a few old favourites.

I am never quite sure which Neil I like the best; sometimes it is this soft singer-songwriter of delicate songs, and at others it is the guitar heavy rocker with Crazy Horse.  Whichever Neil, he always sings with complete honesty, you never feel that he is just going through the motions.  He had released 24 studio albums and around 10 live albums in just thirty years, and as the new Millenium approached Neil wouldn’t slow down…