They say rock ‘n’ roll will never die. But what if
rock isn’t an idea, but a man?
Allow me to explain. Looking back at the rock music canon, a
number of artists grasped the parts but not the whole: The Beatles
helped develop the pop song, as well as a healthy desire to test
the genre’s limits, Bob Dylan reinvented folk, and Led
Zeppelin showed what guitars are capable of.
There are dozens more, even from fairly recent times. One must
look no further than Radiohead’s “OK Computer” or
Nirvana’s “In Utero” to see what rock can still
accomplish.
There’s one man, though, who has always personified what
rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be. He’s a
transplanted Canadian who’s often known as the godfather of
grunge, and has an angry new album with a song titled
“Let’s Impeach the President.” His name is Neil
Young.
Young has no shortage of rock credentials. He was a founding
member of the seminal Buffalo Springfield, the band that also
included Stephen Stills and was responsible for “For What
it’s Worth.” He also performed at Woodstock with his
band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and along with his
sometimes-band Crazy Horse, he’s released scores of classic
albums.
Still, Dylan has plenty of good records too. What makes Young so
important is not so much what he does, as the way he does it.
Young has always been true to both the balladic and ferocious
aspects of rock music with his blend of gentle folk and abrasive
guitar firestorms. It’s his sympathetic heart and
uncompromising ethos that have made him so relevant.
Back in the 1970s, Young recorded and released music at a
furious pace, releasing eight albums between 1969 and 1975 ““
arguably his most creative period. At that rate, Beck and Radiohead
should have about 20 albums apiece by now.
In an era in which albums and singles are marketed and promoted
through payola for longer than it takes to write and record them,
the only recent artist to match Young’s prolificacy is Ryan
Adams ““ who got away with releasing three albums last year
because his label has long since given up on him ever putting out
anything commercial.
Much the same thing happened to Young after the
“Harvest” album. Having passed on attempting to match
the success of his most popular work, he followed his muse and
recorded an electronic, vocoder and synthesizer-based album
(“Trans”) and a rockabilly set entitled
“Everybody’s Rockin.'”
Young was sued by Geffen Records for making
“unrepresentative” music ““ essentially, for not
sounding like Neil Young.
Incredibly, that kind of independent spirit remains unequalled
37 years after the release of his first solo work. His new album,
“Living with War,” is a perfect example of everything
Young ““ and indeed, rock ‘n’ roll ““ stands
for.
Always one to shirk expectations, Young has released the
hard-rocking “Living with War” hot on the heels of last
year’s folky, mortality-ruminating “Prairie
Wind.” Like “Prairie Wind,” Young wrote and
recorded the new album quickly, but the lightning-quick turnaround
between his March recording sessions and this week’s CD
release is virtually unprecedented in the clunky modern era. The
full album has already been available in free-streaming audio on
his Web site.
More important, though, is the record’s content. The music
of “Living with War” captures the aging musician at his
most passionate and fiery, churning through waves of distortion
with an ease not even Young-disciple Pearl Jam captured on its own
new protest album.
And protest album it is. The record is an unflinchingly direct
look at U.S. politics and the war in Iraq, specifically a look at
President Bush. In “Let’s Impeach the President,”
he sings “Let’s impeach the president for lying / And
leading our country into war / Abusing all the power that we gave
him / And shipping all our money out the door.”
It gets more vehement, with further verses about wiretapping and
the racial politics of Hurricane Katrina. The words are simple, and
the message clear and undisguised. With all due respect to Bruce
Springsteen, no one in recent memory has delivered songs this
powerful, aimed directly at the common man.
The problem is that Young, at 60 years of age, might be the last
of his breed. No one before or since has captured the spirit of
rock better, from the sense of teenage rebellion and naive
discovery to the unrelenting passion for one’s beliefs.
For the moment, Neil Young seems unstoppable, but he won’t
be around forever. Let’s not let his legacy fade away.
Greenwald rocks out to “I Am a Child.” E-mail
him at
dgreenwald@media.ucla.edu.