With the possible exception of David Bowie, no other artist through the 1970s had instigated as many creative deviations or career pivots as Neil Young.
By the mid-point of the decade 29-year-old Toronto-born Young had achieved notable success both in his own right and as the fourth element in a loose aggregation with Crosby, Stills & Nash, their 1970 ‘Deja Vu‘ set being a defining album of the era.
As a solo artist Young received resounding critical acclaim for his ‘After the Gold Rush‘ collection of the same year which he followed with the huge-selling ‘Harvest‘ L.P. (1972), an album that took his brand of nuanced folk-rock songs, delivered in a distinctive quivering voice, to a vast audience.
Every label that became attached to him, be it ‘singer-songwriter’, ‘country-rocker’, ‘guitar-ace’ or ‘ambiguous auteur’ was applicable yet inadequate as he ploughed a lone furrow that became darker the deeper it went. His next three albums, ‘Time Faces Away‘ (1973), ‘On the Beach‘ (1974) and ‘Tonight’s the Night‘ (1975) – collectively known as the ‘Ditch’ trilogy – having an almost subterranean base level in addressing the dark side of fame.
For Young there was a nightmare dimension to success that manifested in the drug-related deaths of Danny Whitten in 1972 (guitarist in the Crazy Horse ensemble who backed Young on his frenetic late-60s ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere‘ record) and CSNY roadie Bruce Berry, who succumbed to a heroin overdose the following year.
Whitten and Berry were evoked on ‘Tonight’s the Night‘, the austere but utterly compelling album recorded in the aftermath of losing each friend, yet not released until 18 months later – the time frame between recording and issue of the L.P. evidence in itself of the overlapping nature of projects Young was undertaking.
The songs constituting ‘Tonight’s the Night‘ were cut prior to those that appeared on the magnificent, if somewhat melancholic ‘On the Beach‘, Young at the time it was released involved in a CSNY reunion tour that crisscrossed the United States during the summer of 1974.
When the quartet ended their lucrative jaunt through stadiums in North America, tentative plans to finally record a follow-up to ‘Deja Vu‘ dissipated amid familiar tales of clashing egos. But at rehearsals prior to heading out on the road, mikes had been switched on in order capture the Young composition ‘Through My Sails‘ – although given his unpredictable way of working, it was anyone’s guess when or even if it would see the light of day.
Moving on once more from Crosby, Stills and Nash, his focus turned to recording an album of largely acoustic songs whose subject matter reflected his, by now, failing relationship with partner, actress Carrie Snodgrass, their four year union producing a son, Zeke, born in September 1972.
Reuniting with Elliot Mazer, who had produced much of ‘Harvest‘ – by far his best-selling album – Young recorded over twenty songs in a productive six week period as 1974 gave way to the coming year. With the final track listing agreed and the record ready to be pressed, he then made the latest volte-face in a career where already they were not uncommon and shelved the project, (the ‘Homegrown‘ album in its intended form remaining in Young’s vault until 2020). Instead he switched attention back to material cut at sessions in the late summer of 1973 – ‘Tonight’s the Night‘ subsequently issued for public consumption in June 1975.
Like ‘Time Fades Away‘ and ‘On the Beach‘ it was a raw, uncompromising affair that made no concessions to chart reaching plausibility, none of the ‘Ditch’ configuration paying any heed to commercial success as Young pursued matters of grim reality rather than robust royalty cheques.
Despite sales of his albums plummeting since the early-70s Young continued along in single-minded manner and no sooner had ‘Tonight’s the Night’ become his latest mishap in the marketplace (on the other hand it received rapturous reviews), feelers were put out in the direction of Crazy Horse, with whom he had not made an album for six years.
Assembling Billy Talbot (bass) and Ralph Molina (drums) along with Frank Sampedro (rhythm guitar), drafted as replacement for Whitten, the ensuing ‘ZUMA‘ (November 1975) was cut in a little over two months.
While less combative than its immediate predecessor, the production once again avoids any form of gloss, but with a number of tracks recounting his messy break-up with Snodgrass, the album, while containing moments of melancholy, is an epilogue to the ‘Ditch’ trilogy rather than extension.
Proceeding under the working title of ‘My Old Neighborhood‘, sessions for what would prove his seventh album were originally scheduled for Broken Arrow Studios located on the ranch complex in Northern California Young had shared with Snodgrass. But when she and their young son moved out and finding himself beset by unhappy memories, the artist and support cast decamped to a house owned by long-serving co-producer David Briggs near Zuma Beach, Malibu – taking with him a song of weary resignation entitled ‘Pardon My Heart‘ that had been cut at Broken Arrow the previous year, a track which reflected the mood of dejection to have descended upon on Young and by association the homestead.
But the album is not solely reflection of Young’s downbeat demeanor. At various times he sounds buoyant rather than bewildered, cynical opposed to sad. Indeed, the centre piece of this striking nine track collection is not a lament to love in ruins, but the vivid imagery of ‘Cortez the Killer‘ – a seven minute opus depicting the brutal 16th Century colonization of the Aztecs by Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez.
Irrespective of definite historical accuracy within the sweeping, cinematic lyric, it stands as a deeply emotive piece, showcasing not only Young at his most imaginative as a writer but the changed dynamic with Crazy Horse, whose support is more concise than when they last galloped with him.
To this extent they are a model of restraint on sprightly opening track ‘Don’t Cry No Tears‘, a number with distinct overtones of The Byrds, indicative of being a song Young had first performed when a member of Winnipeg hometown band The Squires in 1965.
Building the power-pop melody upon chiming electric guitars, the youthful angst of the lyrics, (‘Well I wonder who’s with her tonight?/And I wonder who’s holding her tight?/But there’s nothing I can say to make him go away‘), now has present day connotations given the recent rupture in his personal life.
There is, however, an abrupt tonal change on ‘Danger Bird‘ the guitars switching in tone from melodic to metallic as Young ruminates on how relations between a couple can turn sour. Fiery electric guitar solos are set against low-key supporting instrumentation, the writer taking himself and his partner to task – he for emotional complacency while she receives accusatory barbs:
‘And we used to be so calm/Now I think about you all day long/(That’s the moment that he cracked)/’Cause you’ve been with another man/(Long ago in the museum with his friends)/There you are and here I am.’
Written with the title ‘L.A. Girls and Ocean Boys‘ when first conceived, ‘Danger Bird‘ is one of his most unsettling and doom-laden works. The anguish in Young’s voice (his singing a combination of desperation and ranting) is supplemented by searing guitar breaks, this song more than any other on the record evoking the stark art work of the sleeve.
Illustrating a naked woman being carried by an oversized bird over mountains and pyramids, in a roughly drawn black and white sketch by artist Jim ‘Sandy’ Mazzeo, it is routinely described as one of the worst sleeves in rock history. In marked contrast to the elaborate packages Led Zeppelin ‘(Physical Graffiti‘) and Elton John (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy‘) had delivered their music in that year, Young, needless to say, was delighted with a drawing that took just 20 minutes to complete.
‘Zuma’s one of my favourite album covers‘, he told biographer Jimmy McDonough. ‘They thought I was nuts at Reprise. It was a concept thing, everything everybody was doing was getting really slick.’
Originally intended for the aborted ‘Homegrown‘ album, tender acoustic guitar ballad ‘Pardon My Heart‘ finds Young in the role of wistful narrator surveying just how sad a domestic situation has become, primarily through a failure to communicate.
Decorated with a shimmering electric guitar solo and Crazy Horse doing a fine turn as backing vocalists, he makes the sombre observation, ‘It’s a sad communication/With little reason to believe/When one isn’t giving/And one pretends to receive.’ But as things move ever closer to a painful conclusion, there is solemn acceptance that parting from one another will be a painful experience:
‘Pardon my heart/If I showed that I cared/But I love you more than moments/We have or have not shared.‘
From this doleful character, Young in ‘Lookin’ for a Love‘ reveals through an up-tempo country-rock offering, he is pinning hopes of future romance on a woman yet to make his acquaintance:
‘Where the sun hits the water and the mountains meet the sand/There’s a beach that I walk along sometimes/And maybe there I’ll meet her/And we’ll start to say ‘hello’/And never stop to think/Of any other time.’
The last track of the album to be cut, recorded at Broken Arrow two months after the main ‘Zuma‘ sessions had been concluded, it suggests Young has reached a more positive frame of mind, although even then the prospect of finding new attachment does not come without words of caution:
‘Looking for a love that’s right for me/I don’t know how long It’s going to be/But I hope I treat her kind/ And don’t mess with her mind/When she starts to see/The darker side of me.’
With sadly enthralling side one closer ‘Barstool Blues‘ he is right back in the midst of his sorrow, expressing drunken despair atop of a tune bearing no little similarity to ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.’
Later revealing he had little recollection of writing it due to alcohol-induced inebriation, Young pitches the song at the very limit of his vocal range, thus intensifying the heartache – the condition of being drunk producing a mix of confusion and painful clarity:
‘If I could hold on to just one thought for long enough to know/Why my mind is moving so fast/And the conversation is slow/ Burn off all the fog/And let the sun through to the snow/Let me see your face again/Before I have to go.‘
The separation from his former lover has cut deep and while the hurt being conveyed is expressed in simple terms, it is no less poignant for that. Young, however, can still find room for gallows humour in his despairing outlook:
‘And I saw you in my nightmares/But I’ll see you in my dreams/And I might live a thousand years/Before I know what that means.’
Yet with the pair of tracks that open side two his apparent vulnerability has vanished, in both ‘Stupid Girl‘ and ‘Drive Home‘ the observations are derisory rather downcast.
The former, replete with terse, forceful guitar lines, amounts to a stinging critique of the women Young and Crazy Horse were encountering on a nightly basis in the bars of Zuma Beach (‘You’re such a beautiful fish/ Floppin’ on the summer sand/Lookin’ for the wave you missed/When another one is close at hand/ You’re such a stupid girl‘). ‘Drive Back‘, with its harsh guitar sound, is effectively continuation of the previous cut, Young interested in fleeting enjoyment rather than romantic entanglement – the sneering sentiment (‘I wanna wake up with no-one around/Drive back to your old town‘), reminiscent of ‘Stay with Me‘ a rollicking 1971 hit for the Faces.
If these two tracks show Young and his Crazy Horse cohorts at their most abrasive, then the lengthy epic ‘Cortez the Killer‘ shows them as a crackling, yet cohesive unit. Throughout ‘Everybody Knows This is Nowhere‘, the last time they appeared on record together, there is a sense the two best known tracks, ‘Down by the River‘ and ‘Cowgirl in the Sand‘ are built on exploratory jams which have no predetermined route. There remains a freeform dimension to ‘Cortez‘ but the structure is more defined, Crazy Horse creating an ominous background ambience in conjuring the impending doom while Young fires off darting guitar solos.
Stating an intention to question the status of icons, (‘What Cortez represented to me is the explorer with two sides, one benevolent, the other utterly ruthless‘ he told Mojo magazine in 1998), Young extols the achievements of the indigenous population, who have no notion of the upheaval about to befall them:
‘Hate was just a legend/And war was never known/The people worked together/And they lifted many stones/And they carried them to the flatlands/But they died along the way/And they built up with their bare hands/What we still can’t do today.’
It would not be a widescreen Neil Young performance without a tangent along the way, the couplet appertaining to estranged lovers (‘And I know she’s living there/And she loves me to this day/I still can’t remember when/Or how I lost my way‘) as applicable to his Broken Arrow ranch as it is to the Aztecs – Young also shrouding the final lines in detached ambiguity when he sings, ‘He came dancing across the water/Cortez, Cortez/What a killer.’
Most artists would have sequenced such a momentous piece as the climatic, closing track, but instead Young rounds things off with the breezy ‘Through My Sails‘, the song captured on tape at the June 1974 pre-tour gathering of CSNY.
With Young taking the lead on acoustic guitar (accompanied by Stills on bass with percussion from Russ Kunkel), the distinctive stacking of the vocal harmonies shape a track that would have sat nicely on any mid-70s album from the group, had they stopped arguing long enough to record one that is.
An ode to finding solace out at sea (‘I’m standing on the shoreline/It’s so fine out there/Leaving with the wind blowing/But love takes care‘), ‘Through My Sails‘ while lyrically no great shakes represents a rare CSNY reunion on record for the time, a fully-fledged resurrection not coming to pass until the ‘American Dream‘ album of 1988.
Back in 1975 ‘Zuma‘ was released to favourable reviews. Renowned New York rock scribe Robert Christgau bestowed an A- rating on his revered A-D ranking system, while Rolling Stone offered a four star (out of five) appraisal and went on to rank it eighth in their ‘Best Albums of the Year’ list, this during 12 months when stiff competition came in the form ‘Blood on the Tracks‘, ‘Born to Run‘, ‘The Who by Numbers‘, Still Crazy After All These Years‘ and his other inclusion ‘Tonight’s the Night‘ – ‘Zuma‘ coming in the highest of Young’s formidable pair of releases by two places.
All that remained was to see where Young would head next, another album with Crazy Horse for the moment was too predictable – they would reunite again in 1978 – and for all the praise heaped upon it, ‘Zuma‘ (reaching 25 on the U.S. charts, but not attaining gold status until 1997) did little to arrest declining sales of his albums. With punk bubbling away just under the mainstream surface that had potential to arouse his curiosity, but in suitably contradictory fashion he threw in his lot with that of old compadre Stills, their connection going back beyond CSNY to seminal mid-60s L.A. folk rockers Buffalo Springfield.
On joining forces they came up with ‘Long May You Run‘ (September 1976). Credited to the Stills-Young Band, it sold well but was roundly panned by the music press – this anomaly just one more to be strewn across the career path of Neil Young.
NEIL YOUNG – ZUMA (Released November 10 1975):
Don’t Cry No Tears/Danger Bird/Pardon My Heart/Lookin’ for a Love/Barstool Blues/Stupid Girl/Drive Back/Cortez the Killer/Through My Sails;
NEIL SAMBROOK is also the author of MONTY’S DOUBLE – an acclaimed thriller available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book:
GreatvReview of Zuma, one of my favorite Neil Young albums
Hello Matt – hope you are well.
Delighted to read you enjoyed my review of ‘Zuma’ – we must be cut from the cloth as my Mum used to say, its one of my favourite Neil Young albums too!
Thanks for your comment – much appreciated.
Stay safe and well
Regards
Neil (Sambrook, not Young!)