Neil Young and Crazy Horse released a live version of the album Ragged Glory a few weeks ago. I’m listening to it as I write this blog.
Neil is 78 now. Old man take a look at your life. He was 44 when he recorded Ragged Glory. I used to think that was old. That’s how old I am now. Well, almost. I turn 44 on June 9th. Describe me as middle-aged man at your own risk. Well, there’s not much risk for you, I guess. I’m a pacifist through and through. In mind, body, and soul.
Anyway, here I am caught up in listening to a live version of Ragged Glory in 2024. Incidentally, Neil released the recording I’m listening to under the title Fu##in’ Up, which is the name of a song on the album that is about, well, fu##ing up. The funny thing about listening to this album in 2024 is that I don’t hear an old man singing. Or playing guitar. I don’t hear a middle-aged man either. Neil has that same shaky voice and Crazy Horse sounds like it always sounds. It might as well be 1970 and Neil might as well be 24. Growling guitars, frenetic angst, existential howling. Time doesn’t mean what you and I think it means, I guess.
Fu##in’ Up is a great fu##ing performance of a great fu##ing album. Forgive my profanity. I’m just trying to conjure Neil’s energy. Did the hashtags help soften the blow?
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Dad had a bunch of Neil’s records from the 70’s. Harvest and Everybody Know This is Nowhere. I got into Neil through those records. This was when I was a kid. An adolescent, I guess. Twelve or thirteen. Sometimes, when I was home alone, I’d go upstairs to Dad’s stereo in the living room. Put Neil’s albums in Dad’s record player. Turn the volume way up. Dad was a savant when it came to setting up stereos. Picture huge speakers and spliced speaker wire. Dad’s stereo setups always sounded magical. I’d let Neil rip until I heard the garage door open. Then I’d return to my basement sanctuary.
Neil started playing with Pearl Jam in the early 90’s and I liked Pearl Jam in the early 90’s. So I started buying Neil’s CD’s. I got Decade to cover the classics. I was familiar with the folk songs from Harvest, but songs such as Like a Hurricane and Tonight’s the Night hit a little bit harder. Such darkness. Such angst. Such strange music. I ate it up.
I spent most of the money from my first jobs washing dishes for nuns or working at McDonalds buying CD’s. I got anything I could from Neil. Each album was different, stranger than the one before. Dead Man will blow your mind. It blew mind. Eventually, I ended up with my first copy of Ragged Glory. Like most of Neil’s catalogue, there were no hits on the album, but it did have a song called Fu##in’ Up. I’m sure, as an adolescent, I found that subversive rejection of social norms through the use of profanity appealing. As an adult, I still find the subversive rejection of social norms appealing.
The album became a standard for me. I can’t explain it. There’s such a flow to the songs. It’s great music for driving. Later, in reading about the album online (thank you, Internet), I realized that Neil and Crazy Horse spent a couple of weeks on his ranch in 1990, playing new songs each day. They’d hit record and play. Eventually, they chose the best songs from the session. No revision. No editing. They just captured what was there and released it. Thirty-four years later, Neil and Crazy Horse recorded and released a concert of those same songs. They didn’t care if they fu##ed up. They just made something and shared it. There are no mistakes in improv. In fact, in reading Wikipedia, I came across a quote from Neil in which he said this process allowed them to take thinking out of the game. That statement, like the album Dead Man, blew my mind.
The heart of my approach to improv and, really, to most creative work is rooted in non-evaluation. The moment an improviser starts questioning whether what they are doing is good, bad, funny, stupid, or whatever, they are no longer improvising. Improvisor and art scholar Stephen Nachmanovitch wrote that. I think the same statement can be applied to teaching, to writing, and to any of the other creative pursuits I’ve spent my life pursuing. For Neil, non-evaluation helped to create Ragged Glory.
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I’m feeling good as I write this. Strong. I’m 44 and I still feel like building things. Even if I’m building things that well-adjusted 44-year-olds don’t build. Even if I’m using the word fu## or engaging in the subversive rejection of social norms. And I hope I still feel like building things at 78.
Neil Young is no saint. And plenty of his music is silly to me. Still, I can’t help but to admire his unashamed enthusiasm for art-making. He’s spent a lifetime balancing commercial success and fame, yet his creative will to build strange things remains. Will to love. A light that hasn’t been extinguished. That, my friends, is a model for a way to be in the world. A way forward that I can get behind. A path to follow.
I really do feel good as 44 looms. And I feel like I haven’t scratched the surface of the strange things I want to make. There’s a ragged glory caught up in my chest, more things to do and to make, Horatio, then dreamt of in your philosophy.
In the spirit of Neil, let it rip, I guess. Even if most of what I do looks or feels just like fu##in’ up. Who cares?
Samuel Jaye Tanner 