Has Neil Young just given us the first Maga anthem?

Stevie Chick, The Independent

Days before Donald Trump began his second reign of error, a new track surfaced that captured the spirit of this ominous moment in history, its chorus warning: “Big change is coming Coming right home to you.” This urgent salvo isn’t the work of some young punk firebrand or righteous rap soothsayer; instead it’s by a man with over six decades in the game. For that is Neil Young there, stomping with purpose through the snow in the music video, his bulky figure, wild eyes and ice-white lambchops making him resemble a haphazardly shaven bear. “Could be bad and it could be great,” he adds, of that titular “Big Change” — though given the song’s visions of “big drums drumming heading up the wrong parade”, the news doesn’t sound promising.

Cometh the hour, cometh the Crazy Horseman. Neil Young has traced his own wayward, ragged and glorious path for more than 60 years. Disdainful of fame and, sometimes, of his dearest friends and bandmates, in blind allegiance to his beliefs in that moment (and that moment alone), he has split successful groups at their peak and jack-knifed in unexpected creative directions (and been sued for it). He withdrew his music from Spotify for two years to protest Joe Rogan “spreading fake information about vaccines”, and — on his aptly named webpage, the Times-Contrarian — briefly announced he was boycotting this year’s Glastonbury, which he is scheduled to headline, because the BBC’s involvement made the festival “a corporate turn-off”.

Somewhat baffling, that last one. But it confirms the mulish nature that has won him the admiration of generations of kindred iconoclasts, from Devo to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, for whom his integrity and relevance are inextinguishable. Indeed, so unpredictable is Young that “Big Change” could easily be heard as a Maga anthem, and certainly the visuals of a grizzled Young, flag in hand, stomping away, echo those of the rioters of Jan 6. After all, in the Eighties Young seemed to flirt for a time with support for Reagan, and his politics don’t easily align with any one side; he could perhaps be described as “chaotic liberal”, though his devotion to ecological issues, his intolerance of racism and the threats to sue Trump for using “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his rallies quickly scorch such a theory. But there’s an ambiguity there that is 100 per cent Neil.

Young comes from headstrong stock, his father a newspaperman, his mother a direct descendant of a fighter in the American Revolution. A Canadian native, in 1965 he joined The Mynah Birds, a Toronto garage band fronted by future superfreak Rick James. The band won a contract with Motown only to implode after James — then awol from the US navy — was picked up by the cops. Young purchased a hearse, relocated to Los Angeles and, in April 1966, while stuck in the hearse in traffic on the Sunset Strip, drew the attention of an old acquaintance from Canada, singer-guitarist Stephen Stills. Reaffirming their friendship that night, the duo promptly formed Buffalo Springfield. But the group would prove a combustible ride. Young quit after their first album, over a “belittling” booking on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show; The Byrds’ David Crosby stood in (and for a subsequent performance at 1967’s legendary Monterey Pop Festival). Young rejoined for that year’s Buffalo Springfield Again, before the band imploded once more, this time for good.

He wasn’t on the skids for long. By the dawn of the next decade, Young was rock royalty, having joined old sparring partner Stills, Crosby, and Brit Graham Nash, from post-Merseybeat group The Hollies, in their supergroup. Young lent their chart-pleasing harmonies a razor edge. He remained a maverick among the hippy enclave, obstinately refusing to be filmed during the band’s legendary Woodstock performance. His 1970 solo masterpiece, After the Gold Rush, and chart-topping 1972 follow-up Harvest made Young a solo star, his gauzy country-folk placing him at the vanguard of a wave of singer-songwriters.

He could easily have coasted in this lane for years to come, delivering acoustic panacea to soothe those former hippies who spent the “Me Decade” — as writer Tom Wolfe dubbed the 1970s — surreptitiously devolving into yuppies. But Neil’s a weirdo, and an artist for whom music is more catharsis than career. The drug-related deaths of two close friends, Danny Whitten (guitarist with his regular backing band, Crazy Horse) and roadie Bruce Berry, sent Young into an emotional tailspin that yielded a sequence of challenging, grief-maddened, often fiercely anti-commercial albums navigating this loss. The key chapter in this so-called “ditch trilogy”, Tonight’s the Night, was recorded in 1973, but cold feet saw Young shelve it until 1975. However, this didn’t stop him performing the then unreleased album in full to baffled fans in 1973, promising throughout to play a song they already knew - and doing so by reprising the unheard record’s opening title track as set-closer. He never said he was a crowd-pleaser.