Neil Young’s Reagan Era
Shakey’s forgiven. Ronnie, not so much.

Neil Young in the ’80s. It’s a phrase loaded with almost mystical weight, and endless, unanswerable questions. Like, ‘What was he thinking?’ And ‘Seriously, what was he thinking?’ In the exact 10 years between spitting out one ferocious masterpiece (Rust Never Sleeps, in 1979), and saving his reputation with another (Freedom, in 1989), Young undertook one of the most spectacular programs of deconstruction in the history of popular music. Undercooked electronic experiments (Trans); pointless genre exercises (Everybody’s Rockin); the full-on embrace of the era’s reptilian production technology (Landing on Water)—you had to be there. Really.

In the midst of all that, Young also dallied with getting back to the country, permanently, when he released the flat and disappointing Old Ways in 1985. It wasn’t the first time he bedded down with fiddle and pedal steel, but between a much publicized hard-on for Reagan, and his generally reactionary demeanor at the time, Old Ways was kind of nauseating. Funny thing about Reagan: people actually remember him fondly. We’re constantly reminded that the Gipper “made America feel good about itself again,” and I suppose we just have to put up with this kind of 2 + 2 = 5 revisionism in our new, post-real century. But I tend to cling to my own memories of the era, with the El Salvadorian death squads and so forth. Did America feel good about that? Did it even know? Just for fun, here’s a clip of Reagan lying his folksy ass off about Iran-Contra.

In happier news, Neil Young has ventured into his own kind of revisionism with the latest release in his Archive series. New album A Treasure captures Young’s 1984-85 touring band, the International Harvesters, investing the material from Old Ways with all the gusto and joy that the album completely lacked. They look like they’re hopped up on goofballs in this precious clip. “Get Back to the Country” was always a great song screaming for a definitive version, and here it is, at last. Sometimes history actually wins.

The Tyee, June 2011

Note: Here’s the first entry in the comment section for this article. Funny how, in 2023, twelve years after it was published, I can’t argue with any of this: