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Rating: There is nothing more to say about Neil Young and it will never be said enough, there is a splendid album missing from this list. I take the liberty of leaving you with a personal page, a memory, a certain flavor, for me inseparable from this album.
I remember those evenings, we would leave the hotel in the silence of the valley, with only high peaks above us edging the sky. I cannot describe the magic and the intimacy of those mountainous places and those moments. Only the scent of the Alps is my memory, the sound of the river flowing, nothing else
Like the first movements of a feeling, the words up there acquired an echo, resounding, expanding their reach, their meaning. They went beyond, elegiac and solitary words, beautiful just to utter.
We often spent the darkness on wooden benches, at the edge of the fir woods, sometimes throwing stones into a washhouse, sometimes retracing the daily road. Kilometers rolled fast under our wheels, as much in the cool mornings as in the sunny afternoons. Sometimes we were surprised by large clouds swollen with water and melancholy, and the ascents became more tiring and the descents more treacherous.
Rummaging through memories there was also a guitar accompanying us to the top of the woods, I remember it accompanying impromptu bonfires on small gravel roads. And while old brooms stolen here and there burned, the simple complexity of those places re-proposed itself to us, in all its mountain and nocturnal charm. Proud days spent playing with Neil Young's chords, making summers like winters, Neil Young's music can make us lose the sure path of return, can lose traces of us, making us fall ill with an illness as sweet as it is insidious.
And it was precisely on this handful of songs without briar and without thorn that our dreams were pricked, now scattered and lost like that summer.
I don't want to be less fascinating and banal by defining “Unplugged” this evening by Neil Young, not one of the pearls of the MTV collection, but an immediate and vibrant reflection, that touches the heart, a record stretched halfway between the nocturnal countryside of Harvest Moon and the inner dismay of the upcoming Sleep with Angels.
Neil is alone, accompanied in the shadows by his guitar. Alone, with a small bottle of water and the bare chair, bare and uneasy, like the voice that mends the darkest vicissitudes of Young's experience. It will be like this for half an hour, but time bursts in front of all this, the emotional one flees very fast, the material one stops..
And after The Old Laughing Lady, Mister Soul, Pocahontas, The Needle and the Damage Done and Like a Hurricane, here appear the most trusted friends, who even though they are not certainties, provide more relaxation to the dark charm, which underlies nonetheless the pieces that will follow no less austere.
The nocturnal ballads do not only harbor bucolic reflections, but also long shadows in the night and wind blowing from the North, embarrassing the immature ears of wheat and, now no longer quiet, stirring the soul.
On the streets of that little village I could often see the fleeting figure of Neil Young watching over us, descending with the evening on wooden balconies and simple stones, sometimes sheltered behind a bus stop, sometimes sitting on a fence, other times lying in the grass listening to a fountain…
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Mr. Soul (03:54)
Oh, hello Mr. Soul, I dropped by to pick up a reason
For the thought that I caught that my head is the event of the season
Why in crowds just a trace of my face could seem so pleasin'
I'll cop out to the change, but a stranger is putting the tease on.
I was down on a frown when the messenger brought me a letter
I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her
Any girl in the world could have easily known me better
She said, You're strange, but don't change, and I let her.
In a while will the smile on my face turn to plaster?
Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster
For the race of my head and my face is moving much faster
Is it strange I should change? I don't know, why don't you ask her?
04 Pocahontas (05:05)
Aurora borealis
The icy sky at night
Paddles cut the water
In a long and hurried flight
From the white man to the fields of green
And the homeland we've never seen.
They killed us in our tepee
And they cut our women down
They might have left some babies
Cryin' on the ground
But the firesticks and the wagons come
And the night falls on the setting sun.
They massacred the buffalo
Kitty corner from the bank
The taxis run across my feet
And my eyes have turned to blanks
In my little box at the top of the stairs
With my Indian rug and a pipe to share.
I wish I was a trapper
I would give thousand pelts
To sleep with Pocahontas
And find out how she felt
In the mornin' on the fields of green
In the homeland we've never seen.
And maybe Marlon Brando
Will be there by the fire
We'll sit and talk of Hollywood
And the good things there for hire
And the Astrodome and the first tepee
Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me
Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me
Pocahontas.
05 Stringman (04:01)
You can say the soul is gone
And the feeling is just not there
Not like it was so long ago.
On the empty page before you
You can fill in what you care
Try to make it new before you go.
Take the simple case of the serge
Who can't go back to war
'Cause the hippies tore down everything that he was fighting for.
Or the lovers on the blankets
That the city turned to whores
With memories of green kissed by the sun.
You can say the soul is gone
And close another door
Just be sure that yours is not the one.
And I'm singing for the stringman
Who lately lost his wife
There is no dearer friend of mine
That I know in this life.
On his shoulder rests a violin
For his head where chaos reigns
But his heart can't find a simple way
To live with all those things.
All those things
He's a stringman
A stringman
All those strings to pull
06 Like a Hurricane (04:44)
Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar,
Dancing on the light from star to star.
Far across the moonbeam I know that's who you are,
I saw your brown eyes turning once to fire.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but I'm getting blown away.
I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream,
You could have been anyone to me.
Before that moment you touched my lips
That perfect feeling when time just slips
Away between us on our foggy trip.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but I'm getting blown away.
You are just a dreamer, and I am just a dream.
You could have been anyone to me.
Before that moment you touched my lips
That perfect feeling when time just slips
Away between us on our foggy trip.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but I'm getting blown away.
07 The Needle and the Damage Done (02:52)
I caught you knockin' at my cellar door
I love you, baby, can I have some more
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.
I hit the city and I lost my band
I watched the needle take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.
I sing the song because I love the man
I know that some of you don't understand
Milk-blood to keep from running out.
I've seen the needle and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's like a settin' sun.
11 Unknown Legend (04:46)
She used to work in a diner
Never saw a woman look finer
I used to order just to watch her float across the floor
She grew up in a small town
Never put her roots down
Daddy always kept movin', so she did too.
Somewhere on a desert highway
She rides a Harley-Davidson
Her long blonde hair flyin' in the wind
She's been runnin' half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Collidin' with the very air she breathes
The air she breathes.
You know it ain't easy
You got to hold on
She was an unknown legend in her time
Now she's dressin' two kids
Lookin' for a magic kiss
She gets the far-away look in her eyes.
Somewhere on a desert highway
She rides a Harley-Davidson
Her long blonde hair flyin' in the wind
She's been runnin' half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Collidin' with the very air she breathes
The air she breathes.
13 Long May You Run (05:22)
We've been through some things together
With trunks of memories still to come
We found things to do in stormy weather
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.
Well, it was back in Blind River in 1962
When I last saw you alive
But we missed that shift on the long decline
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.
Maybe The Beach Boys have got you now
With those waves singing "Caroline No"
Rollin' down that empty ocean road
Gettin' to the surf on time.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.
14 From Hank to Hendrix (05:51)
From Hank to Hendrix
I walked these streets with you
Here I am with this old guitar
Doing what I do
I always expected
That you would see me through
I never believed in much
But I believed in you
Can we get it together
Can we still stand side by side
Can we make it last
Like a musical ride
From Marilyn to Madonna
I always loved your smile
Now we're headed for the big divorce
California-style
I found myself singing
Like a long-lost friend
The same thing that makes you live
Can kill you in the end
Can we get it together
Can we still stand side by side
Can we make it last
Like a musical ride
Sometimes it's distorted
Not clear to you
Sometimes the beauty of love
Just comes ringing through
New glass in the window
New leaf on the tree
New distance between us
You and me
Can we get it together
Can we still walk side by side
Can we make it last
Like a musical ride
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