Neil Young: The 1980s to Present

Plenty of classic-rock super­stars were tripped up by synthesizers and weird haircuts in the ’80s, but few stumbled as badly as Neil Young. He’d ended the ’70s on a high with Rust Never Sleeps. Then everything went wrong. Young’s life became consumed by tragedy — for starters, his son Ben was born with severe cerebral palsy — and his music went awry for much of the decade. He tried synth-pop, rockabilly and vulgar AOR, only to prove he was hopeless at all of them. “What am I? Stupid?” he snapped of 1983’s disastrous Everybody’s Rockin’. “It was a way of further destroying everything I’d already set up.”

But you can’t write off the old crank. The rise of alternative rock in the late ’80s steered him back on course — Nirvana were among the bands audibly in debt to Young’s work with Crazy Horse. Hailed as the “Godfather of Grunge,” he even made an album with Pearl Jam. Now 60, he’s more predictable than he was, frequently touring with Crosby, Stills & Nash’s hippie revival show, but he still has the ability to make new shapes out of the same three chords: His new album, Living With War, is a choir-backed broadside at the Bush administration.

ESSENTIAL
Freedom
Arc Weld
Sleeps with Angels

GREAT
Ragged Glory
Harvest Moon
Prairie Wind
Living With War

CHECK IT OUT
Hawks & Doves
This Note’s For You
Silver & GoldAre You Passionate?

BE CAREFUL
Re-ac-tor
Trans
Life
Mirror Ball

FOR FANS ONLY
Everybody’s Rockin’
Old Ways
Landing On Water
Broken Arrow