Music Arcades: Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Zuma

A bit of a mixed bag, this. It was, after all, thrown together from the remains of some of Neil's abandoned albums like Homegrown and the original Chrome Dreams. So, there are two throwaway rock-pop songs on each side, a buttock-clenching slice of CSNY (Through my Sails), one oft-forgotten slow-burner (Dangerbird), and one cornerstone classic called Cortez the Killer. But there's not much to say about that jump-cut, time-travel, starry-eyed myth-mongering dreamscape that hasn't already been said.

The really interesting songs for me are Barstool Blues and Pardon My Heart. It helps that Barstool Blues is a genuine hoot, but what I especially like about is the double-entendre reflexivity of the words:

I saw you in my nightmares
But I'll see you in my dreams
And I might l live a thousand years
Before I know what that means

The smart bit is the ambiguous referent of the "that" in the last line. It could mean "I can't work out what it means to see you in my nightmares and in my dreams". But equally it could mean "I can't work out what the fuck I'm on about". Neil has summed up the pure essence of barstool blathering in four tight-but-loose lines.

I think Pardon My Heart is Neil's best love song. It has some of the same doubling back on itself, as well. First he gives a one sided view of a failing relationship — "you brought it all on" — and then he realises that he's guilty of the same accusations he's making — "no, no, no, I don't believe this song." Very meta. Neil Young invents postmodernism in 1975.

I also love the way the song stops and holds it breath three times. The first time, it starts breathing again with an acoustic guitar figure. The second time, it's a mournful electric guitar. And the third time, it's Neil's voice singing the final verse, "Pardon my heart / if I showed that I cared / but I love you more than moments we have or have not shared."

I think Mark Radcliffe commented on the radio a year or two back that Zuma has one of the ugliest album covers ever. It's by Neil's friend Jim Mazzeo. I don't mind it that much myself. We were going to call in on Mazz when we were in Northern California last year, but on the appointed day a couple of us had wearied of driving the twisty roads round those hills. Mazz offered to contribute a portrait of Neil for the 100th issue of the Broken Arrow fanzine, which was a very generous gesture. You can see it on this page: at the time of writing, it's in the right hand column, three rows up, black and white. I'll say what those more closely involved could not: it make the cover of Zuma look positively gifted.