(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Tue 7 October 2025 20:00, UK
Neil Young always knew the power of switching things up whenever he played.
Rock and roll was never going to die, but it was definitely going to be on life support if it kept paying lip service to the idols and never bothering to innovate. Young was always there to help people realise what the stakes were whenever they played, and even if he didn’t always agree with where music was going, he knew that it was out of his hands most of the time.
I mean, Young wasn’t about to start complaining when artists began using MTV as a new creative tool. He had more problems with the commercialisation of everything, but if any artist had a good idea and managed to use the music video as their canvas, why try to critique them for wanting to follow their passion? It was always better for him to see what other sounds were out there, but it’s not like every one of them was suited for his sound, either.
Because once he entered the 1980s, Young entered a dark period that made all his records look sad. It’s not that every track on an album like Landing on Water is terrible from back to front, but considering how much the label wanted him to make music that sounded current with the times, a lot of the best parts of the record get buried under the production half the time.
It didn’t get much better when Young reunited with his old buddies in Crosby, Stills, and Nash, either. American Dream was clearly made a good willing gesture towards David Crosby for cleaning up his act, but after having to stay true to his word, a lot of the record feels like something that’s ripped directly out of a cheesy parody of what 1960s counterculture bands sounded like, especially when Graham Nash starts singing about the days of Vietnam in ‘Shadowland’.
For Young, this was a far cry from the kind of movements that he was used to. He was there to make music that had a greater meaning than notes on a page, and even if the rest of the world reacted in fear when punk brought everything back down to Earth, Young knew it was absolutely necessary to have bands like Sex Pistols and The Clash stomp out all the pretentiousness of rock and roll.
Sure, they might have led to a few bands’ careers coming to an end, but Young knew punk made the world a better place, saying, “When the punk thing came along and I heard my friends saying, ‘I hate these people with the pins in their ears.’ I said, ‘Thank God, something got their attention.’” And while people like John Lydon were almost there to provoke everyone, it’s not like Young is wrong, either.
The best rock and roll is the kind that gets a reaction out of someone, and if all the music elicited was a subtle head-nod, that meant things had gone terribly wrong. Rock is supposed to be dangerous, and even if fans weren’t exactly catatonic yet, the kids with safety pins through their noses were more than willing to give the establishment their fair share of shakeups as they built their own legacy.
Even though the golden age of punk ended far too soon after Sex Pistols broke up and The Clash moved on to other ventures, Young had a lot more respect for bands that swing for the fences than those that play it safe. It’s one thing to make the most agreeable piece of music anyone had ever heard, but it’s always nice to hear bands that legitimately sound like they could change the world if they’re prompted to.
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