Casey’s Record Review: Neil Young’s Old Ways (1985)

 The eighties must have been a hard time for the classic rock gods of the sixties and seventies. After years of being the arbiters of all that was hip and cool in the culture, they turned into uncool clueless dinosaurs overnight. Listen to pretty much any classic rock artist’s eighties albums and you can hear the excruciating sound of old people desperately trying, and mostly failing, to remain hip.

Which brings us to Neil Young. Contrary to his hippie brethren, I don’t think Neil Young has ever made any attempt to “keep up with the kids”. That being said, it doesn’t make his eighties musical output any less bizarre.

Starting in 1983,Young released a series of weird albums  that saw him changing musical genres about as often as he changed his socks. From synth pop (Trans,1982) to rockabilly (Everybody’s Rockin’,1983) country (Old Ways, 1985), synth metal...maybe? (Landing On Water, 1986) to big band blues (This Note’s For You, 1988).

The constant genre hopping not only confused and alienated his audience but also so infuriated his record company that they sued him for, basically, being too weird.

By the early nineties, after putting out several critically acclaimed albums and being embraced by young bands like Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth, he was being hailed as St.Neil and The Godfather Of Grunge and his weird eighties albums were thought of, if they were thought of at all, as a regrettable period in an otherwise stellar musical career.

I purchased most of these recordings at the time of their release and have periodically gone back and revisited them and must say that most of it is at best forgettable and at worst, just plain awful. The only exception to that last statement being 1985’s Old Ways. 

Filled with the sounds of fiddles, steel guitars and banjos, this was Neil Young’s attempt to crossover to the country charts. To help legitimize him to the country audience, he even duets on a couple of songs with Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

Although it is now seen as just another one of his weird genre experiments, at the time, Neil gave every indication that he was leaving the rock n roll world to become a permanent member of the country music community. He made the rounds on a number country music talk shows, did a full length tour to support the album and, perhaps to help ingratiate himself to conservative leaning country music fans, even made statements supporting President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy initiatives. 

Needless to say his old fans were aghast at all of this, especially his support of Ronald Regan, while the country music establishment didn’t buy the hippie-in-a-cowboy-hat bit. As a result, Old Ways is the worst selling album in Neil Young’s entire catalog.

All that being said, Old Ways is a really good Neil Young record. Despite a lot being made of his use of Nashville studio musicians, the record is not much of a departure from his other acoustic based albums. Think Harvest or Comes A Time with just a little more twang.

Yes, the duet with Willie Nelson, Are There Anymore Real Cowboys and the remake of Gogi Grant’s 1956 hit, The Wayward Wind are a bit corny but the album contains some great original tunes. Bound For Glory, My Boy, Once An Angel and California Sunset can stand with anything on Comes A Time or Harvest Moon and the backing band, a combination of Nashville session heavyweights and some of Neil’s long time collaborators, is stellar.

Old Ways is worth checking out though it can be a little  difficult to find. It’s not available on many of the big streaming services but their are plenty of used cd and vinyl copies around. I actually bought a cassette copy on Amazon. How’s that for old ways?

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