Neglected performer has awesome talents

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 24

Neglected performer has awesome talents

By

GARTH CARTWRIGHT

Steve Young is one of America’s best-kept secrets. For two decades he’s been writing, singing and playing some of the strongest and most searching music imaginable. His talents are awesome. Yet outside of covers of his songs by Joan Baez, the Eagles, Hank Williams Jr, Wayion Jennings and a host of others he remains disgracefully neglected. Thus the surprise at his arrival in New Zealand earlier this year. Sponsored by the American Information Service to play acoustic concerts in the Pacific Basin he played a handful of unpromoted concerts in Christchurch, Gore, Wellington (he was special guest at the Country Music Awards night) and Auckland.

Young’s career begins in 1969 with the release of “Rock, Salt and Nails.” Recorded in Los Angeles at the same time as the Flying Burrito Brothers were finishing their ground-breaking debut (head Burrito Gram Parsons plays on “R.S. and N.”), it’s possibly the most progressive country record ever. Opening with a dynamic acoustic rendition of Otis Redding's “That’s How Strong My Love Is” it displays Young’s strong baritone voice and skilful guitarpicking among a fine collection of originals and covers.

Young released another four albums throughout the ’7os yet never made an impact as far as shifting units goes. His peers certainly took notice — Wayion Jennings, who partially built his career on Young songs such as “Lonesome, Ornery and Mean,” once jestingly remarked, “He has no earthly idea how great he is. If he gets any better I’ll kill him!” and "He’s the country Bob Dylan.” Still, Young’s not one for resting on his laurels. His albums search through themes, reinterpret songs — The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" becomes in Young’s hands a tragic, campfire lament as ancient and Southern as the Civil War itself — and displays a musical vocabulary of great reach and feeling: hard slide blues can evolve into furious bluegrass picking be-

fore ending on a twangy James Burton rockabilly lick (Young’s played with Burton and Ry Cooder — as equal rather than pupil). Young’s life has been shaped by two very different facets of his Southern background. His Red Indian heritage inspires his values system and attitude to life while the Confederacy fascinates him (“not in the racist sense”) in the same way it fascinated William Faulkner. By expanding these concerns into songs he articulates with poignancy and wry humour an America at once realised yet also of an older, now lost time.

In this sense he’s a contemporary of Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Van Morrison as well as the progressive country axis of Parsons, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt. These days three of Young’s albums have been reissued through Rounder and Edsel (available on import at selected shops) and the increasing popularity of country music in Europe has seen Young earn a substantial following in Europe, so leading to his recording his last album in Sweden (just like Charlie Parker 40 years before). “I never see myself as a country singer per se,” says Young in a gentle Southern burr. “That’s one thing I can do, it’s part of me, but I see a lot more to me than that. I can sing rock ’n’ roll, blues, some of my records

are pretty country, some of my cuts are pure country, no question about it, but I’m not a typical country singer at all, I’m not that mould of person, I’m on a different wavelength.”

Young was born in Georgia, grew up in Texas (where he learned guitar from a black blues guitar player), and began playing music in Alabama before shifting to Los Angeles.

“I grew up listening to gospel, blues, soul, bluegrass, tinpan alley pop and, when I was a young teenager Sun Records came along — the South is a very rich musical place. That was, to me, the only liveable thing about the South.

“The racism was so heavy down there and I’d grown up with black people, had black friends, so I’d had enough of the South, y’know, I wasn’t going to stay in Alabama. There were people who threatened me, I was crazy when I was young and I made sure they didn’t like me.”

The late Gram Parsons was another Georgia boy relocated in the wild flowering of ’6os rock forms in Los Angeles and together he and Young revolutionised country music — paradoxically neither reaped the harvest they had sown although lesser acts have made fortunes through their openings.