As a major Neil Young Fan, its hard to understand how I missed Zuma all these years.
Up at a friend's cabin this past weekend, someone put the record on and I was struck by the raw organic feel of the record, akin to Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, one of my favorite Young albums and the debut of Crazy Horse.
Zuma was released in 1975, just after his so called "Doom Trilogy", a dark and depressing trio of albums put out on the heels of the mass success of Harvest.
Time Fades Away, On the Beach, and Tonight's The Night, embodied Young's reaction to sudden success coupled with the loss of his compadre Danny Whitten to Heroin addiction. To my taste, Young's music is at its best on the dark side, and On The Beach, which Young claims not to have listened to once since its release, is one of the greatest "music to slit your wrists by" albums of all time. I go back to it again and again.
In contrast, Zuma is more upbeat, just a bit though. Here's my favorite track, Barstool Blues, pretty much a treasure map songwriting blue print for Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy to dig up twenty years later.
Barstool Blues
2 comments:
Wow - you never listened to it much? Glad you found it!
Also, for the record, i have heard it cited as the worst record album cover of all time. I think the story is Neil found an artist to paint a cover for it, and the guy sketched out a very crude version ... and Neil said: Let's just use that.
... and you are 100% correct about On The Beach.
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