After the Goldrush

Rip It Up, Issue 3, 1 August 1977, Page 10

After the Goldrush

Francis Stark

Neil Young American Stars n’ Bars Reprise Time was .that a Neil Young record was greeted with fervour and anticipation by the hordes of devotees who probably wished that they had been the one to yell out “Helpless!" in ; the middle of Four Way Street. All of that faded a bit about the time

that Neil stopped thinking that buckskin jackets were the secret to convincing country music, or that trading interminable licks with Stephen Stills was the ultimate Rock ’n’ Roll high. Records like Time Fades Away and Tonight's the Night were instrumental in reducing his sales category from superstar to steady seller. The theory is that the whole slide from adulation was carefully planned by Young, as an attempt to avoid the fate which he could see in store for the first generation of L.A. rockers. A fate, which although considerably more lucrative than death, was probably more boring. Instead, Neil Young, like Bob Dylan, the artist whose career his own most closely parallels, has plotted an idiosyncratic path through recent American music. Like Dylan, Young draws heavily on country music as a source: not the bland harmonising of the Eagles, more the boozy gurglings of Hank Williams. Nonetheless, American Stars 'n' Bars is the first unquestionably country record that he has made. It opens with a resurrected cut from 1974, which features none other than Emmylou Harris (from the days when she was little more than the lady who used to sing with Gram Parsons). Called “Star of Bethlehem", the track is pure country, and it sets the tone for the remainder of Side One. By the same token, the first side, composed of more than two years’ worth of outtakes, also contains such oddities as a livingroom opus, "Will to Love", and a heavymetal ballad, “Like a Hurrican". On the former Young carries a passion for the unadulterated perhaps also garnered from Dylan's methods to the extreme of leaving an inordinate amount of tape hiss on

the recording, and also a background 1 noise which sounds convincingly like a log fire crackling in some Laurel Canyon grate. The song itself is downright weird a one man band effort, the likes of which Young hasn't attempted since his debut album, 1 ! dealing with such privaevalities as return to the womb, and the sea, and so on. The second side is more significant, representing Young's current output, and not ,the scrapbook of the first side. Once again the country strain is uppermost, through “Saddle Up the aomi no ", and “Hey Babe" to “Hold Back the Tears", with a scratch outfit called the Bullets added to the standard Crazy Horse rhythm section. Featured among the Bullet is one Linda Ronstadt, who does an admirable job of the back-up vocals. She's no Emmylou, but. . . As on the first side, the quality is uneven, but Young is always in fine voice (for Neil Young, that is) and the strong frameworks of the country music he is working with give his writing a discipline lacking on the less-focused On the Beach. The extent to which Neil Young ; has kept 1 his head ;while all about him have well |and truly lost theirs is I particularly clear on j American Stars 'n' Bars. While his collaborators on the CSN&Y projects have become firmly locked into a ; tight little round of guest-starring on each other’s | solo albums, Young is quite free to produce I two such I completely different projects as the Rock n’ Roll of last year’s Zuma and the country charm of Stars 'n' Bars. Young is doubtless relieved there is no such thing as a Neil Young fan anymore to 5 recommend this record to, but if there was, \ i[woui3sSS9BßEHßfen^n^B