Fred Neil
Fred Neil

Fred Neil is undoubtedly among the most fascinating figures that American popular music has gifted us with during the Twentieth Century. One of the most brilliant and innovative folk storytellers to emerge from the Greenwich Village scene, endowed with a heart-wrenching baritone voice akin to Johnny Cash, he lived always on the fringes of stardom. Proof of this is the fact that his most famous compositions were brought to the forefront by other artists: "Everybody's Talking", the main theme of the soundtrack for John Schlesinger's "Midnight Cowboy," was performed in that beautiful film by Harry Nilsson, while the magnificent "The Dolphins" for some time shone amidst the precious catalogue of a certain Tim Buckley. It was in the land of dolphins, his native Florida, that Neil returned in the mid-70s, finding his buen retiro in a voluntary and silent retreat as a marine biologist until his death, which happened a few years ago.

Fred Neil released few albums in his short career: this is the best, certainly more multifaceted than the still dazzling debut "Blecker and McDougal" from 1965. A wonderful album from the first to the last note, irradiated by vivid and melancholic ballads, mirrors of a gentle and tormented soul, which would constitute a fundamental archetype in American songwriting: think of the torn version labeled Mark Lanegan of "Ba-de-da."
Fred's peculiarity consisted of inserting intoxicating shards of acid rock and jazz within a solid folk-blues framework: the congeries of effervescent psychedelic essences that animate the immense instrumental "Cynicrustpetefredjohnraga", the soft pace of "Everything Happens" and the astonishing inner dilations of "Sweet Cocaine" abundantly demonstrate this. However, the best Neil was the more intimate and reflective one, capable of opening your heart with a combination of divine voice, harsh and insidious melodies, and poignant lyrics.

The already mentioned "The Dolphins" and "Ba-de-da" distill pure west coast aromas and crystalline reminiscences of Brill Building-inspired pop, while the expressive power of heartfelt and sweet introspections such as "I've Got a Secret," "Farethewell," or "Green Rocky Road" still vibrate with the light of the classics. But it's precisely in the famous "Everybody's Talking" that we find the Fred Neil we most like to imagine: a touching and bare meditation, where the silhouette of a man emerges who, passing through "the falling rain" to reach "where the sun keeps shining", leaves behind a world in which he's always been somewhat alien, to reunite with his beloved dolphins.