Music Writing by Carson Arnold

 


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NEIL YOUNG: SLEEPS WITH SPANGLES

(from the Valley Advocate)

 

If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philosophical & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again. -- William Blake

 

Most people keep their brains between their legs. -- Morrissey

 

Before me are scribbled notes about Neil Young on Neil Young and are from just about every source but Neil Young. Greendale, 2003, his life, the punk music that kept me cranked up thinking about it, and I still don't know what any of it means. As I write this, Young will be playing his final concert roughly forty miles away in Amherst, Massachusetts. In order to attend this show, I'll either have to find a car, hop a ride from someone who's going, or hitchhike the distance and sleep wherever the March night allows. I've considered all these options thoroughly and have decided to stay home and listen to Greendale during the time. It's the only thing to do, which is becoming a habit. Moreover, I can't afford the 50 bucks that's required, nor could I afford the some 110 bucks it cost to see Young's acoustic performance in Belgium, nor the CSNY reunion grossing 42.1 million in just 40 dates. I am a lost fan.

 

Bottom line: Neil Young's ticket prices are too high and I'm tired of it. We're tired of it. Tired of hearing what a beautiful sub-culture the sixties was, but in order to see any of the present figures today (The Stones, Dylan, Young, Van), tickets average a hundred bucks by venues sponsored by large tycoon corporations. Tired of how these are the same moguls who fund the artists' so-called "free anthems." Tired of my generation paying fifteen bucks for some narcissistic album and over triple that for a live act. Tired of then getting scolded for using tools like Napster to download it. Tired of being resorted to dumb metal shows which are the only venue that vouches a reasonable price for kids who wanna, duh, rock, and tired of any subterranean genre that hides from questioning these very issues. Am I a naive slacker? Are they hypocritical baby-boomers? Etc.

 

I wouldn't say any of this, however, if I didn't love Young's Greendale.  You may remember I spent a week last October writing a review, declaring it one of his top-five albums where it continues to remain. Some either loved his American rock-opera using The Greens, a fictitious family on the edge of the heartland, as an example of modern crisis, while others saw it as elder voyeurism with plenty of global-warming and ecological left-wing cliches. It seemed to compromise a certain empathy in his fans-- from the sixties parents to their "Godfather" of Grunge kids-- as if to say, "We're all alive, Neil, and who knows how."

 

But I never saw Greendale as left-wing, nor Young as any liberal protagonist in the plot. In fact, you could say a lot of it was conservative to almost an arch-visionary degree-- perhaps anti-Bush but certainly showed signs of a more united proletariat (non-hippie) which reminded me of Young's old salute to Reagan (both "U.S.A" agitators in their own way; Reagan, christ, from Hollywood, Young from 50's radio, and now: film). Politically, it wasn't even democratic, for even the most intense "concept albums"-- from The Who's Tommy to Handel's Judas Maccabaeus to Zappa's Uncle Meat-- were loosely based on aspects of commercial reverie, as though the wheels will continue to turn so the music can continue to rebel (and top the charts and get laid, etc.). With Greendale, it was far more archaic; a cop was shot in the face, the Feds were thugs, and the mountain-girl heroine of the story, Sun Green, ran off to Alaska where no one knows if she lived or died. And it took itself seriously. Young introduced The Greens not as the new American family, or as a repressed suburbia, but as a working-class "structure" on the verge of economical extinction.

 

The characters were Vietnam vets, stoners, people who woke up at dawn and read the paper with the view of a junkyard. It was like Grapes of Wrath meets The Deer Hunter tumbling into the cryptic rock 'n roll. The spirit of the record didn't seem to stress any radicalism or demonstration, and was more of a native "wisdom" for the face of the 21st century, hitting home on the post-9/11 siege (which people forget was similar to Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk). Not Save the Whales, but rather Moby Dick, concerned with social reform, territorial injustice, and mother earth, which never accused any names in Washington, but narrated it through the rural struggle of The Greens. The victims.

 

Here's where my problem falls in. Neil Young hit the road where his Greendale tour was mostly sponsored by Clear Channel. Like a lot of "legends" (REM faced a similar situation with Ticketmaster) the argument is that they're expanding their "message" by using the "system." My answer? Fuck that, if you're half the iconic, rebel rocker you claim in your stupid albums (which they become), then why not show a principle of it in goddamn "real life," and stop succumbing to every fat-daddy that bounces your way.

 

Clear Channel are the same folks who suggested a national "don't-play-on-radio" blacklist of 150 songs, ranging from Dylan to hip-hop (apparently even banning Young's "Old Man" when the Old Man of the Mountain fell in N.H; dubbed as an act of terrorism). They're a conglomerate who've gobbled up the airwaves, concerts, billboards, all in a corporate monopoly of big-business that have been linked with the government (based in Texas, C.C.'s chairman L. Lowry Mays' family were former employees in "investment banking" tied with Texan oil companies. All close friends with Bush, C.C.'s other chairman, Tom Hicks, bought the Texas Rangers in '98 boosting Bush to the millions; one of his many lobbyists before "presidency," where Bush has since taken C.C. executives like Julius Caesar on trips to Africa). As Neil Young concludes his last date on March 21st (part of an extended tour), this has been, so to speak, his piggy-bank.

 

It happened silently. The story is simple, yet it continues to amaze me how many people aren't familiar with it, as if it's tedious or unimportant-- as if instead listening to "Heart of Gold" and analyzing that to death will amount to one iota in the long run. It's old, yeah, but I'm gonna tell it anyway. '96. The year of rap/rock, the internet, the Pam & Tommy video, and Congress discreetly passing The Telecommunications Act, allowing Clear Channel, a growing entertainment biz, to swap up any airwave they desired across the country. Circa February 1st, the week they voted the bill, our number 1 album was Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill. A year later: the Titanic soundtrack-- in '98: same thing-- '99: Britney Spears. Today, C.C. runs over a thousand Top-40 radio stations (60% rock), reaching nearly 70 percent of the land, controlling and censoring what's played by a perpetual "loop" of hit music whose content must conform with the state. The small town station loses its individuality. They are no longer a watt-name, but simply "Clear Channel". Locally picked. Flattened out. The lights turn green.

 

Not only do they own most billboards, but most importantly, in the last few years, they've bought up SFX, the formative concert promoter (which Young was on), now marketing three-quarters of all live venues, hosting anything between a Dylan show to a sports arena (66 million people attended a C.C. event in 2001). In return, ticket prices have rocketed  (despite in '99 when they grossed a high 1.5 billion), and the verve of music has folded into a timid shaft, scared and hesitant, running to online recording and MP3's as an alternative for industrial demise; inhibiting any vital communication that once existed in the concert experience (and tightens locally; when Dylan came to Northampton, Mass. in '03: 80 bucks: the opening bands were paid crumbs). The Rolling Stones can play "Street Fighting Man" and Donald Trump can be in the sky-box. Chuck Berry's watching it at home on pay-for-view...

 

Their mission is in stone. Just in the "radio ban list" after 9/11, it deems C.C. as a think-tank with a preconceived agenda on how to surf and ebb the public (i.e. sick enough to dot "Ruby Tuesday" as questionable; hehe, 9/11 was on a Tuesday). A conspiracy, yes, on the account of it happening and our acceptance. They host pro-war rallies and support conservative talk-radio that's teetered in misogyny, homophobia, and...live pig castrations (er...). Their ideals seem to extend from a right-wing Christian perversion of capitalism. A recent article in Harpers exposed the attitude of the company's leading directors, revealing they believed their franchise was in fact cutting-edge and justified the mortal reason why, like dude, rock 'n roll was created. With the capability to seize anything that gathers profit, or remove anything that threatens to marginalize them (Howard Stern), they've cornered popular-music into a commercial decadence, ruling every step of the way. And counting.

 

They are morons. CLEAR CHANNEL SUCKS AND SO DOES ANYBODY WHO RUNS WITH THEM.

 

Neil Young, too?...I dunno. He's on the same bill with Shania Twain and Dave Matthews. Like them, he's a millionaire, but unlike them, has evolved from decades of brilliant work, cracking into uncharted experiments that makes Dylan look like he's only been singing "Rainy Day Woman" for the past thirty years (did I say that out loud?). He's involved with Farm Aid and hosts benefit concerts like The Bridge School, supporting the mentally disabled (a disability his son Ben has). Buffalo Springfield, Tonight's The Night, David Geffen can sue him for not meeting contract standards and so can his biographers. He can endorse Ronald Reagan during the eighties and get picked up by Sonic Youth soon after...Needless to say, he has unlimited freedom.

 

So why the hell is he on Clear Channel? I've been asking this for a year now, but decided to wait until his tour ended.

 

Okay, it's over, let's start asking. It's not just that he's been teamed up with the company for six years, what gets me is that he had the balls to cut an album-opus of seminal values in Greendale, and then be promoted by a conglomerate (evil-empire). In other words, the show you see tributing Grandpa and Earl Green-- the down & out heroes of the so-called essential-- is funded by the very force that Young is attempting to de-enterprise. Is he a sell-out? Are they his friends? Or is he another sixties relic whose legend surpasses any principle and feeds off that old hand of nostalgia?

 

Prior to his tour last year he received a lot of flack for this partnership. He seemed to understand though, disregarding Clear Channel as if they were supporting him. His message. In an interview with Greg Kot of The Chicago Tribune, he explained, "If you wanted to tour in this country you had to work with Clear Channel." Adding, "People who know my music know who I am, and I don't need the support of large corporations to reach them."

 

Okay, first of all, that doesn't even make sense. You have to use Clear Channel? But you don't? I know your integrity...but first I have to hand over a half week's paycheck to watch it? Later saying, "It's a sound business relationship we have that allows me to play for my audience. I haven't made a decision to react any other way to this, because I feel they bought my house. I feel it's still my house, but they own it. Now what am I gonna do with it? Those concert venues are my house, and they own them all across America. That's where I go. It's like telling the devil he can't go to the jail in 'Greendale'."

 

House? Devil? Reality?? The word here is that Young believes he's pimping the system in order to express his views. This may be true, but what he doesn't understand is that Clear Channel ain't Ed Sullivan. As long as you're on their payroll and filling up their stadiums, they could care less about what shit you say about 'em in the process, because this, in effect, has been the same method they used to climb to the hierarchy they're in now (when they banned John Lennon's "Imagine" after 9/11 and Young performed it on TV, it almost gave the two an equal amount of PR). It also asserts that Young believes an audience who can afford high ticket prices will thus automatically comprehend Greendale. Yet, ideally, he wants "The Greens" to be his audience.

 

With Sylvie Simmons of Mojo: "{Clear Channel doesn't} play my records anyway so I won't have to worry about losing airplay."

 

(I called up a few Vermont Clear Channel stations who proudly informed me they play "Like A Hurricane" or "Rockin' In The Free World" regularly.)

 

Obviously this will get blown out of context soon. I am not after Young, but I am criticizing his current identity, the attitude of the sixties (or the arrogant side of "leftism" where nothing truly gets done because they're so cushioned with biographies and the overall dirge of an "era"), and more or less what's happened to the days when a show relatively cost the "tax" of what a CD does today. (And don't tell me you can't escape big biz when you run with the wolves-- Pearl Jam fought Ticketmaster, which impacted their albums, to me, into a more essential grunge.) It's been a day since I started writing this and the Greendale tour has ended an hour away in Amherst, concluding with "Roll Another Number." Nights before he appeared on Conan O'Brien and compared a chicken farm to the government. In all this, I've waiting for what he told Kot a year ago that: "Clear Channel is going to be very upset with me, very soon...There is a backlash brewing."

 

Did it happened? I began calling up Clear Channel to ask if they really were pissed at Young, but every time I mentioned the word "press" they choked and rushed off the phone. They weren't paranoid. Finally, I reached one assistant who reported she hadn't heard anything. (As a joke, I wrote back asking for free press-passes.)

 

Indeed, did Young's performances dawn on a revolution despite his backing was the very antithesis of it? Did he actually manage to use the machine for his benefit? Ask a fan. I'm a fan. Did he? Ask somebody who's not a fan. The tour started out as an experiment, quickly grooming into a cabaret of actors lip-syncing along to the song-cycle-novel of "Greendale," the town. A screen above tapped out sequences of Young's homemade film, including placid images of John Ashcroft and a sign: "Clear Channel-- Support Our War": later dominated by the familiar kerrang of "Along The Watchtower" and "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" (that he hadn't sung since '92), where the crowd seemed to be most comfortable (Crazy Horse, too). Listening to the 2/19/04 Vancouver bootleg of the extended tour, he forgets the words in "Falling From Above," sips a Guinness, and talks how the The Greens like "biscuits" and "bacon"-- one of his many wild campfire narrations between each song which have a tendency to sound like Billy Bob Thorton in Slingblade:

 

That's Earl Green, he's a Vietnam veteran, he returned to Greendale in '68 kinda shell-shocked. Stayed home for a week or so, didn't wanna come out, then finally came out and went to a bar. Saw this beautiful girl dancing and fell in love with her. Married her. Her name's Edith. And they settled down and a had a little girl named Sun Green...Sun Green's not here right now, she's home doing her homework. She's working on a book-report. It's on a Alaska: Saving The Wilderness, by Sun Green.

 

The crowd reacts as though that's THE last thing the eighteen year old is doing, but applauds the wilderness part. Sun of course is completely different to when she was first introduced on the album's "Double E." What was originally a mountain girl antihero, expanded in 2004 to an onstage actress, playing a blonde eco-rebel dressed in a swat-team/Raquel Welch outfit swinging a megaphone in the air with goth-boots (who one reviewer noted resembled Avril Lavigne). In Young's eyes, she's the future-- not a Woodstock child, but a Seattle trades-riot icon of "Generation Y"-- what he perceives will be the "backlash" (which is funny, because in reality Sun Green would probably be boycotting Young's shows). A guy in the audience yells out for "Powderfinger."

 

In ways, Neil Young is a Neanderthal. A rock 'n roll dinosaur still roaming the earth. Dylan and Leonard Cohen both became extinct ages ago (duh, they've been fossilizing themselves since '75), whereas Young continues to almost prehistorically trek over the land with yesterday's roar, but lacks today's horizon to see what's filling in his prints. Silver and Gold showed this (signs of Grandpa appeared in the album's "Daddy Went Walkin'"). Greendale was not a disillusioned record, but Young's concert racket is. It is absurd. To defend that the tour was Young's way to exploit the powers in a Trojan Horse method, is also screwed up (perfect word) because Greendale itself isn't all that rebellious. Sure, it's plenty political (though its most memorable lyric, "Hey, Mr. Clean, you're dirty now too," is a product which The Jam also sung to in All Mod Cons), but so was his previous Are You Passionate?, which bordered on a beefy patriotism that almost made Bruce Springsteen, for a second, seem like Tom Joad. The stadiums love it.

 

On a side note: I was listening to On The Beach and watching clips of Young during the late sixties (no, I'm not one of those who think he should relive the past), and a friend called, sharing he felt Greendale was totally Americana. Days before, my friend waited in the AM streets of Detroit for three consecutive nights of Dylan, rounding to about 170 bucks, on the rail for a set-list that lasted to Portugal. The American bandwagon seemed to be all over the place here, or at least in the moment I was paying attention. People were lined up on the blacktop waters in woolen mitts to catch their favorite stars of the sixties chime away the tune. Kids maxed out their credit cards for it-- the companies knew this. And all over, still, a strange delight, even if your wallet was empty and your children sold for such an event, that if the singer spoke, he was referring to you.

 

Where Young lost me with the Greendale trip was his multimedia part. The hillbillies became crackers. His new film-- a docu-musical-paradox of The Greens, on and off the stage/played onstage-- seem to relate that it would enhance the record into a further spectrum. Young was ecstatic, even more profound than his past flick work, and was determined at keeping it in a lo-fi, cinema-verite style, claiming he shot his super-8 camera the same way he played the guitar. "I have to go through a lot to make sure people won't perceive it as just a Neil Young record," he told Wired Magazine, "because everybody thinks they know what it is. The challenge is to remind them that they have no idea what the hell that is."

 

He'd go on to say in other interviews that the album's main priority was to judge whether Jed was guilty of killing Carmichael, the cop (which Cypress Hill could answer in a flash). But as Greendale began like a small book (best when solo), it soon grew into a broadway-esque "show" like Oklahoma and Cats put together in a John Deere Convention driven by semi-hippies; the stage filled with token officials and farmers in creased pants chanting "Be The Rain's" verses with clenched fists. It undermined the origin of the album, blowing it up into a plot that only boiled down to the status-quo, where even if Young were to speak out radically against any organization, the people were there to see his new program, if not circus, for the mere spectacle.

 

Looking back, only one thing caught people off guard. As Young, Crazy Horse and the entire fleet of Green characters crawled across the highway, he decided to fuel his fifteen tour buses with bio-desiel (a vegetable-based resource). He tells Indiewire: "The only reason I'm doing this is because it has to do with the kind of things that Greendale stands for. That's where Sun Green is going, and if she can get enough followers that do those kinds of things, it can make a difference."

 

Yeah, Neil, hopefully those kids saved up enough bread to see her in action, too. And it's not like if you weren't on Clear Channel you'd need all those buses, either. Because a simple acoustic show never made a difference. Oh, and by the way, bio-desiel may be eco-friendly, but it cost way more than regular gas does. So tell me how that one works...

 

In the end, I see it as this: The sixties has become a commercial prototype, an industry, where its generation has adopted its figurines for their own vanity and severed any ideal for that, so-called, "dream" to come true. The majority wanna cash-in during the week and still get high on the weekend and invariably think about Jerry Garcia. Greendale, the record, was Superman. The tour and its overall facade was Captain Planet. What I heard as early guerrilla anthems turned out to be a hip environmental record, a subject which I'm sure even Clear Channel wouldn't differ with. Jed's case is left hung, The Greens continue to be harassed by the press, and Sun heads to Alaska with the Feds on her tail. This is what cost 70+ bucks. Young elevates Sun as my generation's messiah, but promotes it with a company accused of modern McCarthyism? Peace and love.

 

On the surface, the whole tour & bang wound down to lighter gas-tanks, Young as a now entrepreneur director, and a film to document the motions. Oh yeah, and how everybody gets bought & sold sooner or later...Everything is weird.

 

Just ask the janitors who had to clean up Greendale.

 

--Carson Arnold - May 17th, 2004

 

copyright 2004 Carson Arnold


 

H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews, articles, and investigations written by Carson Arnold. As a freelance writer for various magazines and liner notes, 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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