Neil Young - Comes a Time

I finally got around to reading my last issue of Rolling Stone magazine.  A friend got it for me and never said a word, and it turned out to be the kind of thing I thought I'd hate, but it's a decent magazine most every issue.  My last issue wast the one with Lou Reed on the cover, shortly after he died.  I'm not going to write about a Lou Reed album here.  I haven't (as of this moment) decided what record I'm going to write about.  But first I'm going to paraphrase a quote from the main Lou article.  He said something like this:

Rock music is the one kind of art where you can get directly to a person.  Where the person is alone.  Someone may be listening to your music at 5 AM, all by themselves.

At least that's what I remember and I don't feel like getting up to get it verbatim.  But Lou is dead on, at least so far as I'm concerned.  I like to listen to music with other people, but I'm more than content to do it by myself.  I know I listen to music by myself a lot more than I listen to it with other people, but it's pretty cool how when there's a record that I do find to be the kind of thing I need to hear by myself at 5 AM I can on occasion go to see  that artist with 100 or 100,000 people that may have done the exact same thing.  What other art is like that?  Sure an author can get you to read at 5 AM, but there's never going to be anything other that you absorbing.  There's never the chance for feedback.  I realize that Rock isn't the only music that this is possible with, but Lou struck a chord with me.

I don't know what it is with Neil Young, but damn, he's the kind of guy that I've hung out with at 5 AM with more than once.  Maybe because he has some really mellow but still great stuff, like Comes a Time.  I mean, what a great song!  The violins, the beautiful harmony vocals by Nicolette Larson and the generally mellow, but good outlook.  I mean, at 5 AM you can use a good outlook, especially when you're looking at the second 5 AM in your day.  Look Out for My Love is more of a 5 AM kinda song, I guess.  It's kind of a warning, and it's kind of insistent and weird.

This came out when I was in high school.  Lotta Love made me even tolerate Nicolette Larson's disco-ish version of that song back when sometimes an AM radio was all we had in the car we were in.  I think Neil back then could be melancholy and optimistic at the same time, and I think this album is a really good example of that.  Like everything is kind of going to shit, but at least I've got a friend.  So at least maybe it's not just me, ya know?

I think I used to fall asleep to this a lot.  Especially side two.  I hardly remember it.  I also think that this record has a hole way the fuck off center.  It's pretty wobbly, but Neil is kind of wobbly anyway.  But Peace of Mind sounds pretty messed up.  Maybe I'll get a new one of these, but when push comes to shove, I really don't listen to it all that much.  As much as I think Nicolette really adds a lot to this, I think the record just kind of peters out.  I suppose that's what happens at 5 AM.  Ya just kind of peter out.  And then you end up with something like Motorcycle Mama.