The Geffen Years: How Neil Young Followed His Muse In The 80s – uDiscover Music

Like many of the grunge musicians he went on to inspire, Neil Young has a conflicted relationship with his own success. Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch, he wrote in the liner notes to 1977s greatest-hits album, Decade. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there. The three albums Young released after Heart Of Gold contain some of the darkest and most visceral songs he ever laid to tape, but the 80s were a rough ride for entirely different reasons, when Young released a string of experimental albums for Geffen Records.

In 1982, Young left his longtime label, Reprise, to join his friend David Geffens new, eponymous imprint. The five albums he released for Geffen are easily the most experimental in his discography, with Young swerving from one musical lane to the next. Yet theres a lot to appreciate across these records, and their best moments serve as a reminder that while Young could be unpredictable in the studio, he was never uninspired.

Listen to the best of Neil Youngs Geffen Albums on Spotify and Apple Music.

You could write a short book unpacking Trans backstory, but, in brief: Youngs son Ben was born with cerebral palsy, which left him unable to speak (among other things) and required him to spend nearly two years in therapy. Intrigued by the idea that his son could learn to communicate through technology and inspired by bands like Devo and Kraftwerk Young threw himself into a synthetic new sound, laying Synclavier overdubs on top of rock instrumentation and singing through a vocoder to symbolise his attempts to communicate with his son. The result is an album that sounds at once glossy and corroded, like a clear topcoat applied to a machine that has already rusted through.

Initially seen as a misstep at the time of its release, on 29 December 1982, Trans has aged beautifully so much so that it no longer makes sense to call it an underrated gem. Its more raucous cuts, like We R In Control and Computer Cowboy (AKA Syscrusher), offer the same satisfying crunch as any Crazy Horse jam, while another song, Sample And Hold, splits the difference between Crazy Horse and Daft Punk. Even through a vocoder, Youngs plaintive tenor loses none of its emotive power, expressing the yearning at the heart of Transformer Man and Mr Soul.

On the whole, Trans is an album about how technology was going to change and has changed the world we live in. But its Little Thing Called Love and Hold Onto Your Love, two of three holdovers from a scrapped project named Island In The Sun, that go back to Youngs therapy sessions with his son, as well as a theme hes been writing about for his entire career: the power of love above all else.Must hear: Transformer Man

While listeners and critics scratched their heads in response to Trans, the higher-ups at Geffen wrung their hands. In an attempt to get their musical maverick back on track, they stipulated that Youngs next release be a rocknroll album. The album they got, Everybodys Rockin, was in fact a rockabilly album, complete with the rich reverb and backing vocals that characterised the genre in the 50s, and was cut in a little over a month with a group of players Young christened The Shocking Pinks.

Taken on its own terms, Everybodys Rockin is a fun blast from the past. Young faithfully recreates the rockabilly sound, and songs like the title track and Kinda Fonda Wanda would sound right at home on a jukebox. He and The Shocking Pinks also try their hand at a few covers most notably Junior Parkers Mystery Train, a song made famous by the original king of rocknroll, Elvis Presley.Must hear: Everybodys Rockin

Young had a version of Old Ways ready to go in 1983 but was forced to put it on hold in favour of his rocknroll album. He returned to the studio to make some adjustments to the record, adding some new songs and bringing in country music legends Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to sing along, before finally releasing the album on 12 August 1985.

While Young had recorded several albums in a country-rock style before (Harvest, Comes A Time, Hawks & Doves), Old Ways was (and remains) his furthest foray into pure country music and he didnt do it halfway, embellishing these songs with fiddles and even a Jews harp (the bouncy instrument you hear on Get Back To The Country.

As with Everybodys Rockin, the most compelling reason to listen to Old Ways is to hear Young throw himself headlong into a genre he isnt known for. There are a few moments where he wanders a bit too far into melodramatic, string-laden territory, but then there are also some truly lovely moments, like Are There Any More Real Cowboys?, an ode to country families and the working men who support them (Not the one/Thats snorting cocaine/When the honky-tonks all closed/But the one/That prays for more rain), and Bound For Glory, in which two lonely travellers find love on the road. Lets put it this way: if youve got a friend who loves country music and has never heard Neil Young, this wouldnt be a bad introduction.Must hear: Are There Any More Real Cowboys?

Its hard to say what exactly Young was trying to accomplish with Landing On Water, which came out less than a year after Old Ways, on 21 July 1986. On one hand, its the most rock-oriented album that he released on Geffen, rocking even harder than his 1987 reunion with Crazy Horse, Life. But on the other hand, it sometimes feels more robotic and compressed than Trans.

That said, Landing On Water has its highlights. Hippie Dream is a bitter swipe at you guessed it hippie idealism, reserving some of Youngs sharpest barbs for former CSNY bandmate David Crosby (Another flower child/Goes to seed). Touch The Night is an anthemic, crushing number that ends with a guitar solo so thrilling that even the production does little to dampen it. And on Pressure, Young hits the same cold, brittle grooves that Joy Division and Gang Of Four used to build post-punk. It would be fascinating to hear a modern rock band try to bring Landing On Waters retro-futuristic sound into the present.Must hear: Touch The Night

Young had little to do with his trusty backing band, Crazy Horse, in the 80s. They appeared on some parts of Trans, while many of the songs that would appear on Landing On Water were first attempted, unsuccessfully, with the group in 1984. In late 1986, Young brought the Horse on tour again, during which they performed several new songs live. Those songs would form the bulk of Life, released on 6 July 1987 as Youngs final album for Geffen, and his first with Crazy Horse since 1979s Rust Never Sleeps.

After four albums of genre experiments, Life marked Youngs return to no-nonsense rock. All but two songs were recorded in an amphitheatre, and it sounds like it. The material is stronger, too, starting with Mideast Vacation and Long Walk Home, two sobering tracks that address Americas hawkish approach to foreign policy as well as its human cost.

Life has some majestic slow-burners, such as Inca Queen and When Your Lonely Heart Breaks, and some fierce barnburners like Around The World and the pointed Prisoners Of RocknRoll, all of which transcend their 80s production and stand as some of the best songs Young wrote that decade. Its hard to say if anyone in the audience might recognise these songs if Young were to perform them live today, but it would be thrilling to see him dust them off.Must hear: Around The World

Young returned to Reprise in late 1987, but he wasnt quite finished with genre-hopping experimentation. In 1988, he released This Notes For You, in which he put together a new band, The Bluenotes (complete with a horn section), and tried his hand at blues-rock. He wasnt finished with being an anti-commercial crank, either. That albums title track is a vicious takedown of corporate-friendly artists who are all too happy to sign their songs over to advertisers. The songs music video featured a Michael Jackson lookalike with burning hair, which drove Jackson to threaten legal action.

While it would be difficult to argue that Neil Youngs Geffen years saw him at his artistic peak, one can be certain that he was making exactly the kind of music he wanted to. When the label sued him for making music that was uncharacteristic of [his] previous recordings, they had lost sight of what made him a rock legend: his refusal to rest on his artistic laurels, and his willingness to chase his muse down every road it leads him. No doubt Young would have made it easier on himself if hed been willing to pursue a more commercially viable path in the interest of selling more records, but he wouldnt be Neil Young if he did.

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