Schau - chow

By 2014 Neil Young’s discography in the 1980s - the Geffen Years, roughly 1982-1987, seem completely plausible. These are less than exciting moments, especially considering his work as a whole - but at this point, also less maddening. 

Throughout his career, Young has so consistently headed for the ditch, his six records produced for Geffen - those records he was sued for, by his record label, for not sounding like characteristically Neil Young records - are not the anomalies they once were. With a catalogue that grows, sometimes twice annually, each outing a completely new experiment in form and style, Young’s hodgepodge of sound is no longer so novel. It is, after all, what makes his records his, so distinctly Neil Young records, but it is expected and beloved.

This week will be an exploration of Young’s sonic identities throughout the 1980s. Beginning with 1975’s Tonight’s the Night, Young played a tremendous amount of characters.

“It’s hard for anybody to believe me when I do those things because of who I am,” Young told Jimmy McDonough in an interview for Shakey; “For them to believe that I’m not just diddling around, that I must be bored, so I’m doing this or that. I can’t explain why I get so into what I do. I just do it.”

More chameleon than contemporaries like Bowie, Young has put on every costume, worn it to an extreme, and quietly passed on.

The gentle troubadour has always been there. Harvest, Harvest Moon, Silver and Gold - many of the songs in these sets were born much earlier in Young’s career and out of his troubled 80s productions. Young’s clunky, three-chord style is his. The textures, the weight - those change record to record, regardless of songwriting, and have the power to make or break the simplicity of his ballads and rockers. Where three minutes by Lennon and McCartney will sound quite only like Lennon and McCartney, Neil Young has no style.

Like his fuzzy record covers and the growl of grunge from his guitar, Young refuses to be fully pictured, only glimpsed. If a guitar line brings some form of clarity, during the 1980s, it was smashed by production or miscarried by a lyric. 

To keep this week in perspective (and within publishing ability), this will  explicitly be an exploration of Young’s years with Geffen Records, those albums between Trans and Life, bookended by Re-Ac-Tor and the Eldorado EP, which help fully illustrate the many roads Neil ventured on throughout these lost years.