Another chance to be lazy and quote something I wrote years ago, in April 2006, around the original release of Living with War.
Even if I didn't like all the results when Neil Young first donned a vocoder and got a synthesiser in 1982, when he put out a rockabilly album months later, followed by a country album, and so on, I liked the fact that he was brave enough to make life difficult for himself. While a lot of people were sniffy about his Greendale album in 2003, I saw him play acoustic versions of the whole album before it came out, and it was astonishing. The point being that, at 57 years old, most people would be looking to rest on past accomplishments, but Neil decided it was time to have a go at narrative performance art.
And now that he's built a reputation for these curve-balls, his record company have finally realised that they can build on this, rather than always being painted as the villains of the piece. So the new myth is that Neil wrote an anti-Bush "metal folk protest album" in a week or so — he got fed up waiting for a younger singer to do it — recorded it in five days at the start of this month, and it will be in digital stores next Wednesday. At 60, he's done it again.
They're leaving no 21st Century promotional stone unturned. Here's the blog, the MySpace profile, the YouTube interview (worthwhile just for the CNN interviewer's question, "there's a song called Let's Impeach the President — what is this song about?" and Neil's predictable response).
As of today [28 April 2006], the full album is streaming from the Neil Young web site, though the buffering of tracks is slowing as more of America wakes up (the double entendre was unintentional and probably wishful [what?!).
… They've given bloggers and MySpace members the tools to promote the album on their sites and pages. Would now be a good time to mention that I'm cited in one of Neil Young's biographies? Granted, it's not one of the more recent (and better-known) biographies, but if you've read Jimmy McDonough's, Johnny Rogan's and Scott Young's, and you still want more, check out David Downing's A Dreamer of Pictures
Hindsight shows that Neil wasn't jumping aboard the social media bandwagon just because that was "the thing to do in marketing" in 2006. It was because he wanted to do something specific for this album: get the album and its message out there to as many people as possible, regardless of whether that means more or fewer sales. A campaign in the true sense.
In my case it meant no sale, at least initially. I listened to the free stream a few times, but read something somewhere that said there would be no CD+DVD version "at this stage" or "with this release" — dropping a heavy hint that another, less rushed, release would be coming later. Typically with Neil, the less rushed release was of the early "raw" mix before the massed choir, which featured on the rushed release, was added. Neil's band is the same one that recorded Eldorado (also the same one that now does most of his tours, slightly augmented, since Crazy Horse seem to have retired), but the songs on this album don't quite quicken the pulse in the same way Eldorado did. If I have a criticism, then, it may be that Living With War is still not quite raw enough.
But the spirit and the cause are still stunning — I wish I had just a fraction of that commitment to following through on where the muse leads you. If you get a chance, do see the film of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young touring the US with the Living With War material
That's not the DVD you get with the album. Instead it's the videos and "making of" documentary material that's on this page. I recommend spending five minutes watching this clip (Windows media version), especially for the choir's reaction when they read the words they're going to sing, and for Neil's humorous account of breaking down in front of his wife when trying to tell her the words to Families.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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