(Credits: Far Out / Reprise Records / Henry Diltz)
No matter what, time rolls on. People age, things fade, and no moment can last forever. At the end of the 1960s, however, there seemed to be mass mourning for that inevitable passage of time. The people were having fun; the hippies, the rockers, the trippers. The music was good, the energy was high, and it seemed that everyone knew they were in the middle of something special. But no matter what, time rolls on – Neil Young was willing to embrace that.
Whether he did or he didn’t, the 1960s would tear itself apart either way. Even still together, there’s this glorified, rose-tinted retrospect when it comes to the 1960s. Some of it is deserved, as that decade alone delivered the world some of the greatest music ever made and introduced some of history’s all-time greatest artists, Neil Young included, as this was the decade that introduced him. But as people at the time desperately tried to cling to the era, trying hard to stop the passing of time to stay right there, the years ticked over somewhat harshly.
A lot has been said about the almost mythical end of the ‘60s, but Joan Didion perhaps said it best. When considering the Manson Family murders, one of the events people deem the emotional end of the decade, she wrote simply, “I remember that no one was surprised.” She writes of this sense that darkness had to be inevitable to mark the end of a decade of hedonism and light, seeing other events like the Altamont Free Festival and deaths there as another enactment of this somewhat karmic force. Things had to move on, and it seemed as though the universe was ensuring that.
But even in a less dramatic way, things always and naturally move and morph. One thing rolls into the next in the same way that traditional folk became blues, became rock and roll, became just rock and so on. At the cusp of the 1970s, rock and roll was in that transitional phase as it turned into something else. In the eyes of Neil Young, there were two artists who represented that.
He was quick off the mark to say it. In 1973, Young declared that not only had a new decade dawned, but a new chapter of music with two new protagonists. “The Sixties are definitely not with us anymore,” he said, adding, “The change into the music of the Seventies is starting to come with people like David Bowie and Lou Reed.” To him, it was the Starman and the Velvet Underground leader who served as the faces of the opening era, representing his predictions for how music would shift and change.
That would make a lot of sense. Bowie would come to represent the more theatrical side of things that would truly thrive in the 1970s: glam rock, new wave, new romantics. He represented the next iteration that rock and roll would take as the seductive melodrama of people like Jim Morrison or Mick Jagger in the ‘60s got a futuristic makeover in the ‘70s when he emerged as an alien frontman.
On the other hand, Lou Reed would come to represent the gloom; punk, post-punk, the new New York scene that would give the world people like Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith. It was the new, darker side that was emerging and would only grow in power, eventually morphing into genres like grunge down the line.
But for Young, it was more about the attitude. “They don’t expect to live more than thirty years, and they don’t care. And they don’t care. They’re in the ’70s,” he said, noting a switch between the optimistic joy of the prior decade and this now darker sense of rebellion.
He was throwing his name behind it, co-signing early on the power these two acts would have while also simply embracing the excitement of a new decade. “What I’m tryin’ to say is these people like Lou Reed and Davie Booie or Bowie, however you pronounce it, those folks—I think they got somethin’ there,” he said, before declaring like a true Reed fan, “Take a walk on the wild side!”
Related Topics
