{"id":186426,"date":"2025-10-03T02:35:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T02:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/186426\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T02:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T02:35:08","slug":"the-tough-feud-neil-young-called-the-best-thing-to-happen-to-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/186426\/","title":{"rendered":"The tough feud Neil Young called “the best thing” to happen to him"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neil<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Thu 2 October 2025 18:15, UK <\/p>\n

When you\u2019re as prolific as Neil Young<\/a> has been throughout his career, not everything is always going to please the army of fans you\u2019ve accrued over the years, and nor is it guaranteed to appease the record companies looking to put out your releases.<\/p>\n

Such is Young\u2019s free-spirited attitude to creating whatever the hell he wants to rather than bowing down to the pressure of higher powers, there are going to be times where you might think that the direction he\u2019s heading in on a record or series or records is a little self-indulgent. However, if you\u2019re not making the records that you want to or having a constant sense of belief in your artistry, then is there any point in becoming invested in the creative process in the first place?<\/p>\n

Young has been accused of this on a number of occasions, but it\u2019s not something that he has concerns about. If anything, he actively enjoys upsetting people who have a restricted set of expectations around his releases, and if they\u2019re always going in hoping for another Harvest-esque record, then they\u2019d better be prepared for a letdown every once in a while.<\/p>\n

In 2003, he teamed up with his Crazy Horse<\/a> bandmates for their first album together in seven years, releasing the ten-song concept album, Greendale. An attempt at creating a musical novel, the record can\u2019t be dismissed as an unambitious entry in Young\u2019s catalogue, but a number of listeners weren\u2019t entirely sold on the idea of an 80-minute album set in the fictional California town of Greendale (not to be confused with the fictional Cumbrian town of Greendale, where Postman Pat is from).<\/p>\n

The mixed reception may have always been inevitable for an album of this nature, but typically, Young didn\u2019t give a fuck about the perception of the record. It was no secret that he\u2019d been subjected to this sort of response in the past, and given the level of confidence he had in his own abilities, he was prepared to be on the receiving end of a few scathing reviews again.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune a few months prior to the album\u2019s release, he even predicted that this would be the reaction to the record, and was quick to dismiss any potential criticism. \u201cGreendale is basically one long song that is meant to be listened to over and over again,\u201d he argued. \u201cIt isn\u2019t a simple thing and there is no quick and profitable way to do something like that. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat would be boring, so I don\u2019t do it. It\u2019s not about selling anything. People who know my music know who I am, and I don\u2019t need the support of large corporations to reach them. And if they come down on me for disagreeing with them, they\u2019ll just make me stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on, comparing the potential situation to the release of his 1983 flop, Everybody\u2019s Rockin\u2019, and the backlash that he received from record label executive David Geffen<\/a> upon its failure. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just like when I got sued for being \u2018non-commercial\u2019,\u201d he claimed. \u201cThat was the best thing to happen to me in that decade.\u201d <\/p>\n

While failure is never normally something that artists tend to look back upon fondly, Young\u2019s assertion that he wasn\u2019t afraid of putting out the records he wanted to make is bold, and if that meant pissing off a few music industry bigwigs in the process, then it was all the better.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Thu 2 October 2025 18:15, UK When you\u2019re as prolific as Neil Young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,30305],"class_list":{"0":"post-186426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-neil-young"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}