Song: Harvest Moon
Album: Harvest Moon
Released: October, 1992
Inspiration
is more often than not an unpredictable process. Put too much effort into it and you will
likely be denied. If you don’t try to
some degree though, it won’t come often enough.
Sometimes you have to go out and look for it, and even then, it’s no
guarantee you are going to find it. Still, there can be sources of inspiration
that become fairly reliable over time.
And occasionally, a source can be so reliable it has you going back to
that well again and again.
Bob Dylan
has certainly had his share of inspiration over the course of a brilliant career.
Like all great artists, it probably comes
at him from many directions, and at a far more frequent rate than us ordinary
folk are accustomed to. Off the top of
my head, I’m thinking he’s been inspired by effects as diverse as people
watching, a quiet room, reflections on life experiences , reflection on myth, a
river, the Bible, and riding his motorcycle… this no doubt a small sample
size. With such a vast catalog of
quality songs over his career, however, you’d think by his late 60s that Dylan
would have pretty much tapped out on the variety of ways he could get the creative
juices flowing. But in 2008 while on a
tour stop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dylan was apparently expanding on that variety.
Where was
this new inspiration Dylan was looking for?
It was in Neil Young’s neighborhood and home. Only problem was Neil Young didn’t live there
anymore. Neither did anyone else in his
family. Bob Dylan had tracked down Neil Young’s
childhood home. The family that lived there in 2008 was aware
of the fact, though Dylan was not certain of this until he introduced himself
in their front yard on a Sunday morning.
He then stated why he was there, and asked if he could tour the house. The shocked couple obliged, and to Dylan’s pleasant
surprise they ended up knowing quite a bit about the Young family history at
the time they lived in the house, including which bedroom was Neil’s. Bob Dylan asked if he could see the room, and
it was here he withdrew for a time while staring out the window, according to
the occupants (who were interviewed later by the city newspaper). For Dylan knew (from either conversation,
reading or folklore) this was the window Neil Young had stared out of as a
young man, guitar in hand, gaining his own early inspirations.
Bob Dylan
had done something like this at least once not long before on a European leg of
the same “Never Ending” tour in Liverpool England, visiting the neighborhood of
a young John Lennon (around his Aunt Mimi’s old home). He would do it yet again in Long Branch, New
Jersey the next year, roaming the suburban streets that inspired Springsteen to
write Born To Run (on this occasion
it was at night, in the pouring rain - the venture ending when a suspicious cop
picked him up).
I find all
this fascinating. Bob Dylan has sung
about all these fellow rockers at one time or another (most recently Lennon in
the 2012 song Roll on John) so there
is clearly a connection there worth exploring deeper. But the aspect that fascinates me the most
are these clandestine neighborhood visits.
No pun intended, but this hits home with me; especially the Neil Young
story. Dylan, as usual, was on to
something here.
Here’s the
thing; Neil Young connects the listener to his life experiences better than any
musician I know. Listening to his music,
you can eventually find yourself sucked into his world: Winnipeg, California,
Florida, Toronto, Nashville, his Mom, his Dad, his friends, his lovers, his
music connections, his dog, his neighbors, his cars, his passions, his
views. You can relate to most of it,
which is what makes him such a great artist.
Bob Dylan and Neil Young (and maybe Leonard Cohen) are the only
musicians I know who have kept their creativity intact and thriving into their
70s. Dylan does it one way, and I’ll get
into that more at a later date (once I figure it out!). Neil Young’s way is relatively straightforward
but no less difficult to achieve: He’s
never lost ties with his younger self. He
abandons nothing and no one. It all matters
to him, from his youngest memories to his complex elder thoughts. I believe Dylan needed to see this for
himself when he visited Young’s childhood home.
The reason
this hits home with me is that a primary driving force behind this series is to
flesh out inspiring formative memories of my own through the music I grew up
listening to, and to try to make sense of these memories in the context of the
times. Many of the memories start at the
old homestead in Franklin and in the old neighborhood that surrounded 17 Park
Road. If you had a great upbringing in a
great locale, as I did, the effect of that experience never leaves you. You try
to feed off it the rest of your life… and you frequent that well as often as
you can for inspiration.
‘Harvest
Moon’ is one of those classic albums (from beginning to end) that cover a broad
range of subject matter while never losing that high-quality focus of knowing
what our real priorities should be. I
believe Neil Young pulls this off by once again connecting to that passionate
kid who stared out his bedroom window in Winnipeg, a world of ideas already at
his fingertips. The title track bears
this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVi0UvFu8Yo : A just reward (in more ways than one) for
staying in tune with who you are.
I’ll close
this entry with a few additional thoughts on the relationship between Neil
Young and Bob Dylan, two of a handful of “Mount Rushmore” Rock icons. Young was there to recognize Dylan at his
Atlantic Record 30th Anniversary Tribute (one of the best shows I’ve
ever seen, watching a live simulcast of it at Jeff Straus’ apartment), and was one
of a few musicians to play 2 songs that evening in Madison Square Garden:
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues and
All Along the Watchtower. He came on
right after the Sinead O’Connor out-of-script ranting of Bob Marley’s War, having to bring things back in
order I suppose. It showed, as he
appeared to overreach some (though thanking Dylan for “Bob Fest” was a
highlight). Still a great performance,
but not quite to the amazing level of some of the other performances that night
(Ronnie Wood, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Winter, and Richie Havens all come to
mind).
Bob Dylan
mentions Neil Young in one of his many opus songs, the magnificent, sprawling Highlands (on the 1997 ‘Time Out of Mind’
album – a favorite of mine). When I
heard this when released it was the first time I got the sense that the respect
between these musicians is mutual. Many
musicians honor the guiding force of Bob Dylan.
He does the same for musicians who came before him (bluesmen, folk
heroes, others), but rarely for his contemporaries (he’s like Keith Richards
this way). They really have to earn
it. By 1997, it appeared that Neil Young
had done just that.
Finally, there’s the cover of Bob Dylan and
the Band’s ‘Basement Tapes’. Is Neil
Young in the crowd or not? I believe
so. Many who have discussed this on the
web zero in on the wrong person(s). The
only one it could be is way in the back, behind Richard Manuel; partially blinded
out by the dim basement lighting (he’s a bit more prominent on the inner sleeve
to the left of Rick Danko). Neil’s got
that ‘On the Beach’ look about him (though much of the ‘Basement Tapes’ was performed
in the late 60s at Big Pink in Woodstock, it was not released until 1975). I love this:
One of the most mysterious albums of all time will forever have us
questioning Neil Young’s participation in it (at the very least on the
cover).
On that surreptitious
note, I’ll call it an entry.
-
Pete
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