Neil Young Back in the Saddle

Q: What's your response to people who say your playing is primitive? A: Well, I think they're right. I'm proud of it!

AFTER AN ECONOMICALLY lackluster, if not disastrous, 1980s and a wrongheaded flirtation with right-wing politics, Neil Young, typically unpredictably, re-merged energized, upbeat, and full of beans, confounding the many critics who’d tolled Young’s death knell. Two albums, 1989’s Freedom and 1990’s Ragged Glory, demonstrated, amply, that the 45-year-old had fully regained his edge, and when we spoke, in October 1991, a third strong one, Harvest Moon, was on the way.

Young and I spoke in October, at the release of his third strong project in a row, the double live album Weld, cut with Young’s (as of today) 50-plus-year mainstays Crazy Horse. He’d just written all the songs for an album whose title he’d just settled on, Harvest Moon, which, of course, would solidify his comeback. He and the Stray Gators, the same band with whom he’d cut his quadruple-platinum Harvest (1974), Young’s only #1 record, were headed into the studio in two days.

Neil Young was, in short, feeling pretty good. Young has, famously, always tended towards the cantankerous and contrarian, but today he was a pleasure to talk to, on an autumn morning in Manhattan.

This is the first unedited audio interview I’ve ever posted (okay, I tweaked the sound a bit, but not a word has been removed). No editing was needed: this was an articulate, engaged interviewee who’d thought long and hard about his craft, and knew where he stood on multiple aspects of music-making, others’ as well as his own. It was a relaxed, open-hearted conversation—wide-ranging, too, considering that it clocked in at under 40 minutes.

I’ll say no more except to all but guarantee that you’ll all enjoy the interview, as well as learn a lot about about how this chap’s unusual mind works, about his immediate and distant past, and about music, period. After a few print snippets, it’s on to the talk itself!