Comes a Time for Neil Young

February 24, 2006

I could not have found a better contrast to Citizen Kane than Neil Young’s Heart of Gold, which Emily and I watched today at Tara Theater. There was Neil, moving toward the end of a long career, hunched forward with his guitar in that peculiarly active posture, and singing:

I have my friends
Eternally
We left our tracks in the sound
Some of them
Are with me now
Some of them can’t be found

And if it seemed to you that Neil was feeling right at home up there with all his old friends, well, that sense was reinforced by the cozy home interior backdrop, with fireplace and inviting chairs. His eyes were always finding those of his wife Peggy, whether she stood behind him or by his side. Here was a man who had followed every dream, gotten lost a few times at least, and now was right there where he wanted to be.. in something like a home.

If in Citizen Kane we watch an American who never learnt how to love, whose emptiness fuels restlessness, and who dies without a real friend, then Neil stands there as the image of a man who has felt that restlessness of soul, but who has learned to love and to accept the changes that come with time. And that image could be strangely moving. Emily lost it a little during “Comes a Time”:

Comes a time when you’re driftin’
Comes a time when you settle down
Comes a light feelin’s liftin’
Lift that baby right up off the ground.

And if you imagine us now, thinking about moving and even buying a house, then you can see how “Comes a time” could lift our spirits right up off the ground.

There were certainly alternative endings to Neil’s journey. In fact, no body of work from a contemporary musician is more eloquent about the nature of loss and snuffing the candle out early:

My my, hey hey
Rock and roll is here to stay
It’s better to burn out
Than to fade away
My my , hey hey”

Kurt Cobain used this song in his suicide note, so it in some ways represents the archetypal rock ending: the quick flare and gone.

But Neil had selected the songs for this concert—performed at Ryman Theater in Nashville—from his kinder and gentler strain: Harvest, Comes a Time, and Harvest Moon. If we think of Neil as having a few musical franchises, running concurrently, then this was his country-home franchise. His last album Prairie Wind belongs solidly in that group, with Old Ways from the 80s added as well.

The only time we directly looked into the abyss during this concert was his somewhat darkened rendition of “The Needle and the Damage Done.” On Harvest, that songs seems to look forward to the slashing darker albums of the mid to late 70s.. On the Beach and Tonight’s the Night. Now, some 30 years later, the song fits into this comfortable set as a glance toward the past, a past which included some precipices and alternate endings. Any thought that this note could again dominate his output is dissipated with a smiling look at his wife.