Young triumphs

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This column is in disgrace. Last month, with both the deadline and a flight to New York looming, I found myself in the position of the rabbit staring at the headlights of the oncoming lorry. Completely frozen, unable to think, unable to write. I’d been listening to loads of music all month but couldn’t find a word to say about any of it. So I found myself writing about the dead pets of my childhood, filed the copy and caught the plane before anyone could track me down to ask for a rewrite.

My wife gave it a glance just before the taxi arrived to whisk me away. ‘If you were writing a column called “My family and other animals” it would be just the ticket,’ she said. ‘As a column about music it’s an absolute joke.’ My mum wasn’t best pleased about being outed as a serial pet-killer either, but with the resignation of old age she graciously forgave me. ‘I suppose you’ve got to write about something,’ she said. Liz, the saintly arts editor, was made of sterner stuff. I received a brief note from her. ‘Olden but golden…music?? Humph!’ she wrote, to which the only possible reply was: ‘It’s a fair cop, guv.’

So this week I’d better cut to the music, fast, before this column gets its quietus, and in particular to Neil Young, whose music has been a presence and a consolation in my life ever since I first heard his wonderful album, After the Gold Rush, at school in 1970. Back then I particularly loved the combination of his girlie voice and his fuzzily distorted lead guitar, heard to best effect, perhaps, on the earlier LP Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), with its thrilling ten-minute axe work-outs ‘Down by the River’ and ‘Cowgirl in the Sand’.