Music Writing by Carson Arnold
Music Writing by Carson Arnold
NEIL YOUNG, THE GHOST OF GREENDALE
I would first hear Neil Young's Greendale at 6 AM, the train sailing west across the border of Ohio and Indiana. Sitting in the coach car repeatedly listening to the album alone, addicted to its oak, I scribbled down anonymous words through a Pink-Floyd-pocket-book about whatever beauty was related to Young's rustic opera of working-class treasure. Here's one: Greendale is as alone as a panhandler with no coins to jiggle. But I'm wrong, it's full of life. Supermarkets, cornfields, a Georgia woman who shared her worries that her cruise-ship to Bermuda via Boston was a scam 'cuz, ("I never did get a receipt")-- it all soaked past, all rushed by, along with Greendale, feeling every inch it rolled. Over and over again, until when I arrived home late with eyelids of sad enroute and watched his acoustic Dublin concert, the record had become a complete ember in my heart. I had fallen in love with the family he unfolded, knew the smell of the town he sang, the great dust-bowl of age, so awakened, so new, as though a scattering wind of obituary clippings. A classic. It's a lonely walk from the stadium to the tour bus, and for the first time you can hear this destitution; Greendale is the palm of the American wound-- the whistle blows, the gears turn, and the train snakes all through the black night.
Now, I know I told y'all last year his previous one, Are You Passionate?, sucked big time-- and it does-- royally-- but this is probably the BEST of his career (and life) just 'cuz few rockers have attempted to compose music in such formula. An opera in a language all can understand-- ten songs that are subsequent chapters that tell a family, "the Greens", who live on the edges of Greendale on a flat called the Double E Rancho, and who by the last track I'm totally baffled to if Young's singing imaginary fiction or if indeed these are real people stranded somewhere out there-- in that strange land from my window. (Where?) (Gary, Indiana, everyone steps out for a smoke, I listen to the album once again.) You gotta. And most so, you gotta read Young's annotations to each cut, or else...you're dead, you'll never know, and you'll go write for Mojo and shun it two lousy stars (watch, next they'll probably hail his space-age Trans as a classic). To sit and read through it is a lot to ask, I know, no need mentioning why, and to me, the ones who will really reconcile with the album are the people who truly understand the feeling of walking along a road with grass running up the middle-- or anybody of some native, vernacular background. Anyway, Young has gambled his fortune to demand the strings of the listener to reflect upon the heroine, Sun Green, the visionary eighteen year-old girl of the story, her parents, Edith and Earl, her troubled cousin Jed, Grandpa's dock-yard brother, Captain John Green, and a few other characters that surround the perimeter of the Greens' stellar life in the draw-bridge of century and modern fast lane. No straight record has confronted this issue, and if so, 'tis been the utter madness of Zappa or something so molten like Eisler's Anti-Facist Cantata or Wagner's sermon-war in The Ring. Instead, this is dirt real, it focuses, accuses, and for this, will probably piss off any supposed "reality" simply because people and images like Jed, Sun or Grandpa diminish whatever has been spoon-fed about the national Celebrity and the 'ol Louie-Louie. Since most stories in this land are narrated like the first fifteen episode minutes of Regis And Kelly, Young's pound of flesh to the Vigilante will be rough for some, no doubt. At this point, Young is galaxies beyond anything Dylan is or has been conveying for the last few years-- but then again, it is somewhat familiar with Desire's vagabond cards. No kidding, it ain't fictitious, nor a myth, nor hiding-- it's pronouncing and responding (and really, if I knew all the answers to this record, I wouldn't be able to enjoy it without such gasps). Actually, the lantern of the record reminds me a lot of Peter Bogdanovich's desolate portrayal in his movie The Last Picture Show, or even Kirk Douglas in Lonely Are The Brave-- both films of which haunt the struggle for humanity in an industry of consequence and worthless crap...Crap...JUST A PIECE OF CRAP! (as told by Young in Sleeps With Angels). Through the span of his albums, there's almost always been some element of cinema locked in his surprise and hook-- everything of Harvest was to magnify love and reverie into a screen we all knew, each song drifted as though some vivid moonlight-- what better way to pronounce the world than a "Heart Of Gold"?
But the Greens are trying to keep stable during the buckling of new age greeted by the same old dawn. Of course, Young has already chanted this despair thirty years back in On The Beach and in Star 'n Bars-- the ol' crisis of the 70's where Young himself was searching for the tranquil as a singer-- yet in Greendale there's a far deeper octave into the delta of living between the clash of old tradition and new world order (and I'll get there in a second). Christ, he's been on the paean for wisdom and the "old man" ever since he rode the swan with Buffalo Springfield's "Expecting To Fly"-- what we cried for in Silver And Gold is bleeding here-- right now, finally, what his entire hunt-- mutton-chops and all-- has boiled down to: living on the outskirts of Greendale...or anything like it.
Honestly, I wanna be the first one to say it's a masterpiece. And it is. There's something seminal about it, as if taming the stallion of music into an entirely alternative realm we've never conveniently known. At first, the songs appear stilted-- sparse-- Crazy Horse's polka-distortion-- the audience is incapable of laughing or filling in the space the music ain't hitting, and for once in a very rare while, we are removed to actually breathe in and listen. What I love is that it never compromises into either a fable or fact-- Young merely lets the saga freely rip (it says in the notes he wrote 'em while driving to the studio each day). Like a dense book, it's the only album I can think of where you're forced to hear it in its absolute, that is, if ya wanna understand it. Other such cascades like the opera, you can easily prowl in and out (once I indirectly listened to Puccini's Madame Butterfly for the first time skipping side two and three and thought, "Now that's an amazing record"). The music supplements, and with Young, this has always been very minimal, and here it acts as a low foundation; "just enough". Anyway, you got a whole lotta bizarre occurrences here. Only Neil Young would, could, and can tell a story with the involvements of Grandpa reading the morning paper-- to-- Jed killing a cop-- to-- Sun, the beautiful girl-- to-- the Feds breaking down her door-- to merrily ending choruses like living in the summer of love beneath music of drive; Young's guitar so italic and different than ever before. Actually that's true, with Crosby Stills and up to the pig-wild of Weld touring throughout the 90's, his soloing has always been staggering between the scrape of sometimes three or four notes. And remember his impersonation of Carl Perkins and latter train grinds in the score for Dead Man? Here, his lyrics will sometimes be introduced two to three minutes into the song as Young brushes each note delicately as if Lester Young himself were trapped inside. Yet out of all his journeys, even in the remote, intimate clover of Harvest Moon, "home" has vaguely shown itself until now, which is why I, from a family of devoted Neil Young fanatics, shall announce this be his last record. His epic! Check out this lyric of his: some people have taken pure bullshit and turned it into gold. Although this could be true to anybody, the way it's phrased and combed is spoken in a certain personal paradox. Was he talking about himself, or someone we all know? It could change your life. It ain't a finale, but a great album. Where the bugle goes after it's blown. Period.
I hope this ain't another lecture where some wire-glass Joe is analyzing a piece of work as if the artist who produced it knew exactly what they were doing in sure advance. Unless of course the artist did know, did plan ahead, did arrange-- well then, that's a different story. With people like Dylan or Hank Williams, I never felt they were conscious of their creations, but instead waited for their audience to declare the love supreme in return. The magic. You think Beethoven sounded like the Philharmonic in his day? Lennon, same thing-- "Jealous Guy" is either a passionate serenade to Yoko or a sensitive testimony to the cycles of manhood. Or both. It depends. With Young, all of Greendale was planned, despite in the Dublin show how he insists he's "just surprised as you are" and takes a sip of beer. Nah, no way, you can almost even detect the faint bracing of this idea in the making back in stuff like Freedom. "Crime In The City's" howled lyric, meanwhile some punk blows my head off/when I'm playing by the rules, is similar to the whole feature on the record about cousin Jed killing a cop, officer Carmichael (you'll know about him in the following song). This has always been his pinnacle-- breaking down the murderers, telling it like it is.
The Greens are basically your common family that you see stuck in a Ford pick-up with strands of hay fleeing the back-bed and you gotta wonder: where are they going and why? Grandpa reads the paper on the front porch, supper time's a warm event; working-class; getting by on the Double E Rancho. The parents, Earl and Edith, are the maternal strength; Earl paints, their daughter Sun dreams, dances, and her cousin Jed's strung out, shooting a little dope here and there. You know the story, it's the perfect jury. The neighbors laugh at 'em year-round until their cars get stuck in mud or snowed in-- then they're friendly calling for help. The whole fam's been watching Greendale change its figments for a while, especially Captain John Green who hasn't walked through it in years, 'cuz as Young notes, "Satan" lives in the jailhouse (which I guess resembles what must be the subconscious crime and punishment of the community that's largely impinged later on...I'm so quick). They go about their business, despite in the back of their minds lurks a creepy noir (shown in Young's music) of unpredictability. Disaster falls in hands of Jed when he shoots Carmichael the cop after being hauled over for speeding along the highway; pocket full of weed and the glove packed with coke (all I could think of here, was the cop getting blown away in the film Fargo in a nearly identical fashion). It shatters the town and the Greens are quickly scorned and exploited. Carmichael's wife is entirely distraught, but later finds another man soon enough. The saloon's are open ("well, 'till two am", a taxi driver said to me when I stepped off the train wondering how to get home). No one knows how to act, and after firing a few rounds off to scare the press in the yard, Grandpa unexpectedly dies. Thud. Earl retreats to painting and even sells a picture to Leanore's gallery downtown. Meanwhile, Sun's conducting some demonstrative war-protesting in response to the whole mess; youth uprising, public objections, getting in trouble, and soon the Feds are breaking down her door, killing her cat (which Young sings in that retarded cool way of his). But she ain't there. She's out falling in love with a boy named Earth instead-- the answer to it all. They wanna run, and with the town up in smoke, they scoot off to Alaska, escaping Greendale alive. Young himself shouts in a megaphone: BE THE RAIN! Rhythm. Sun's driving with Earth on a steep road dreaming everyone's in heaven and all is perfect once again. Who knows if they made it. We hope they did. It ends. You can almost hear the guitars still humming in their cases.
And that's the ten-song story beneath a whole lotta other clips, verses, and tones intertwined and otherwise noted. It's clear the two adolescents, Jed and Sun, are the center oracle and moral of the plot, and since a lot of y'all already think I'm overly ebullient anyway, I'll just say for the record: I don't see any difference between Shakespeare or Greendale. Both contain the same message and possession of equality where the experience at the end is of running from the conviction and into the arms of a warmer embrace: Grandpa, Sun, Edith. Practicality (again, I'll get there in a second). During some point on his Dublin set, Young cracks that everyone was curious to know just what Sun looked liked (the crowd's like, Yea', dude) yet personally the compass of Young is evoked by Grandpa's character and spirit, which shouldn't be any puzzle (old man take a look at my life I'm a lot like you were... 'Nuff said). Oh yeah, and is Grandma alive or dead?? I couldn't figure this out, 'cuz within one segment Young's like, Grandma's ok/but not the same since Grandma's gone/she's living in the summer of love, which I suppose is suppose to symbolize Grandma's either dead and buried, or, not very stable and it's her presence that flows by. She's up in the attic somewhere, I dunno. What struck me as an odd (and maybe you too) was the collision of Jed's fate. Now, I've grown up with individuals like Jed, and Young does make good observation when he sings about all the gun racks in the boy's room (I don't know how many guy's I know who have a boner for guns and killing female deer, but it's a lot). Yet, few country kids I know ever drive around with a bag full of coke on 'em. The metabolism just ain't there. Pot, sure, liquor, yeah. Anything else belongs to more suburban killing fields. Jed, though, is an example of the young lunacy-- fallen cotton from the world's teddy bear-- romantic underneath, but powerless-- confused. I identify. This shouldn't come vague to you 'cuz Dylan also prayed for this person in "Joey" (System Of A Down does it in "Mr. Jack"), of the young rebel and the invisible testament. (I just realized) his character, however, is an exaggeration on the whole state itself, leading me to believe that the Greens aren't farmers, crackers, rednecks, or even proletariats like I had envisioned, but exiled hippies from the day-- Young's day-- part bohemian, part workers-- Jed and Sun-- flower children-- distilled in a world with no tooth for Grandma's wisdom (i.e. a little love and affection). One blows a cop away, one falls in love.
Oh yeah, by the way, Greendale's actually a real spot up in northern California, no joke. Just now, I took a couple of hours in attempt to contact a few inhabitants of the community, but was unable to do so. It's funny, before, somebody may have had luck in locating some chunk of the town's voice, but because of Young's album, instead, every search for such a thing winds up chattin' about: "Greendale, the fictitious town of Mr. Young's new album...on sale now." In a way, the town itself, publicized or not, becomes more strangled and obscure than ever before. If you look on your map, Greendale's a some thirty miles away from West Sacramento, running along the waters of the Oxford Slough on Jefferson Blvd. route Highway 84 (which is battling a million dollar contract to expand its lanes from two to four). Like the sun burnt wheat between Chicago and Milwaukee, this territory is a dimple of outer-city pathways and river channels accompanied by familiar bayou names like Gaffney, Courtland, and even Silverdale-- each town still carrying that gringo accent from the old Spaniard tow (visible when you pull into a Sizzler around 5 in the evening). The operator on the phone will inform you there's no listing for a "Greendale, California"-- nevermind an "Earl Green"-- and any digging for a gas station in its vicinity is strictly limited to Elk Grove and Sacramento. So...Vikki, a clerk at the Snug Harbor Hotel in Elk Grove, although she has never heard of Greendale but is well aware of Neil Young, she told me that this is mostly pasture land and aerial farm communities that promptly produce grape-vineyards. That's all I needed to know. Perhaps some elderly couple on a Sunday drive from Rio Vista would merge into the tiny Welcome sign of Greendale. Speed all ya want, 'cuz officer Carmichael no longer works the hidden bend, and the children are too scared to go out and play.
Okay, folks, yeah, since she's about my age, I too am interested to know a little more about Sun Green, I won't lie. I actually spent some time on the train wondering if she wore ripped jeans like me. But anyway...She's the wild iris of the album. The hope. What leaves Greendale shall return transmitted through her. How Young describes as her "canvas are the fields" sends a bit of shivers. However, I couldn't help but notice Dylan's Desire once again. Check out Dylan's "Joey", first track off the first second side, and "Sara", last track-- then take a look at Jed and Sun. See? Yeah, I know, don't worry, "Sara's" about the climax with his wife, "Joey", the hustler, but in a quick dose (or maybe that they just begin with the same initials), both portraits are quite melodious to one another; as if Dylan's images are what eventually became of Jed and Sun after time, thirty years prior (or at least we know what kind of woman Dylan falls for). This could be another example of the incident of the sixties in full wedge, but who knows. Yet Young rings them bells when he whispers: And we'll be watching you/no matter what you do/and you can do your part/ by watching others, too...As if to say a lot. Suspicion and fear, for one. A trap. What Sun has to mature into, and what Jed has just fallen into.
And to answer Young in his liner notes when he ponders that "Devil's Sidewalk" is possibly related to Chapter 6 (of The Bible)...I don't know. I don't even know how to use The Bible. But according to those who can, it refers that our sins died with Him when Christ was crucified, yet, if we were to be saved, we shan't live in sin...I can't figure it out either, but in Young's song he abbreviates on the whole jailhouse/Satan housing: the demon of Greendale is alive in the jail. The entire town, in a sense, is incarcerated-- Young's music sets it free.
Also, there's a new bud to Young's songwriting rippling. Take Lennon/McCartney for instance. McCartney would juice up these cute, portraying numbers of the 'oh wee ones' and 'oh girl Jude', heard full scale in something like "Let It Be", which continues to be a weeping song, yet his voice is absent to any of the subliminal barebones (hardship) that shaped the lyrics and life of the song itself (as opposed to when Nick Cave later adopted it). The way McCartney interpreted the world was like Tony Bennett speaking on behalf of the city's poverty, prostitution, wind, and rage with the champagne-cha of CHI-CA-GO/CHI-CA-GO! Tunes like "Eleanor Rigby" or "Yesterday" would be delicate soundtracks to the horoscope of life that would be assigned to all the lonely people down the long and windy road. (Later he'd been telling everyone he was a band on the run...'ol Paul never was too steady on who he was, was he?) But get this: The "Father McKenzie" McCartney commercialized with the "Mother Mary" were the same people that Lennon would always and continue to revolt, strive, and fight for as heroes and missionaries of the world and heart...not dolls for the roxy icon. That there, though, was the formula and collaboration of Lennon/McCartney songwriting-- what made us love it-- a certain key to all eyes of value and creation-- the Walrus was Paul. However, the concept of Greendale is rafters above anything ever before produced stylistically, and unlike his contemporaries, Young is far from being fossilized like most I can think of. What happens here, are the cast and family that Young has chosen to document (the Greens), by singing and unraveling songs in catharsis of their nature, he now has opened up a thousand new facets of expression-- protesting war, dumping on yuppies, saving the world-- told through the truth and mouth of the Greens...but actually more Young. It's clever. He can practically say anything, and safely escapes from the ballet bullet of Lennon's killer Mark Chapman, or as Leonard Cohen put it: all the lousy poets coming around like Charlie Manson.
(Of course, it'd be interesting to see if Todd Rudgren would be still in Chapman's machine at home if, hypothetically, Young were shot at. I doubt it. Instead, Young's assassin might have listened to John Lennon! Hah!! Tomorrow never knows.)
Anyway, gang, I like "Bandit" the most-- the middle. His guitar plucking up in that half starting-up-a-lawn-mower half making-love sort of thing-- dusted by the Crazy Horse wand of a raw, harmonica production. Even Young in his liner notes talks of when Eric Clapton plays his guitar, golly, it just could be anything, and then almost seems surprised of himself as I finish the line and he bites in one more solo curse of possessed electricity. It's so good. The last song is another triumphant design of revelation through megaphone avenues, shouting into the "slogan". So wicked. I ain't fooling, it's a work of art. Bottom dollar. Young has flirted with such joy in the past, but never ironed it as so. Every unfinished symphony seems to be answered with Young's curtains: Grandpa, Grandma, Edith and Earl, Jed and Sun, and then Earth. The living. It's funny...when I first put this album on, it was heard between the junctions of east and central time zone. It's as if I had never listened to it. As though I never wrote anything about it. As if you had never read this, but had heard it all before.
--Carson Arnold - November 6th, 2003
copyright 2003 Carson Arnold
H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews and articles written by Carson Arnold. As an independent writer and musician living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]
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