Neil Young
American Stars'n Bars

Four years have passed since the needle and the damage done, and this time Neil feels the need to get a little drunk and be accompanied by country violins and female voices, preferably those of trusted friend Linda Ronstadt (responsible for the "Harvest" choirs along with James Taylor) and young singer Nicolette Larson, with whom the relationship will be not only professional but also personal. The guiding idea of the album should be the celebration of American saloon life and the exploits of the pioneers, but the Canadian's excessive fraternization with Jack Daniels & friends compromises the execution of the second part of the project, forcing him to draw from his overflowing archive of unpublished compositions, with songs dating back even three years earlier, in order to complete the album in time. The result of this union of compositions teetering between present and past is "American Stars'n Bars," released in 1977 during one of the happiest (or least worst) periods of Young's life, after the storm of the early seventies and before the hurricane of the eighties that would sweep away all his musical certainties and more.

Upon listening, the album strongly highlights its condition as a heterogeneous product of the younghian mind, with a first side composed of bland and tipsy country compositions like "The Old Country Waltz," "Saddle Up The Palomino," and "Bite The Bullet" (the last one slightly more electric), with banal and off-center lyrics, and where only "Hold Back The Tears" is saved, mainly for its melancholic and nostalgic lyrics, and especially "Hey Babe," where the saloon atmospheres are enriched with melancholic nuances that echo the typical mood of some compositions from "After The Gold Rush," for example "Tell Me Why." After a partially disappointing first side of the album, it is in the second part that feelings and melancholy dominate in a series of emotionally K.O. songs. It begins with "Star Of Bethlehem," recorded in November 1974, guitar, harmonica, and voice in the foreground describing the impossible attempt to keep up with the memories of a happy past that creep into the mind and "leave you stripped of all you had". But it is with the next track that the emotional peak of the album, and probably of Neil Young's entire career, is reached: "Will To Love." It's over seven minutes of bitterness for the present, regret for the past, and a desire not to lose the strength to love in the future, entirely played by the Canadian in his private studio after an excess of drugs, alcohol, and melancholy, in May 1976. The piece that follows this masterpiece is another milestone of Young's songbook, "Like A Hurricane," from sessions with the Crazy Horse for the recordings of "Zuma" and made unforgettable by yet another memorable text and the torrential feedback-laden ending, sublimated in the execution of the song present in the film "Rust Never Sleeps." To close the work is the rock-tinged "Homegrown," sharing the same title as an unreleased album by Young recorded in '74, however, not coming from it, being put on tape in November '75. "American Stars'n Bars," not a masterpiece, but surely another example of Neil Young's ability to write songs with the heart before the mind.

Forever Young.