Neil Young and the Poetics of Energy

William Echard

Description

A provocative, multifaceted look at a rock icon.

Available as an audio book on Audible

"This book uniquely and successfully sustains a cohesive analysis of the work, career, and reception of a single artist. That the artist is Neil Young, one of the most confounding and mysterious of rock stars, is an added bonus. Finally someone will explain what's been going on all these years!" —Daniel Cavicchi, author of Tramps Like Us: Music and Meaning among Springsteen Fans

As a writer in Wired magazine puts it, Neil Young is a "folk-country-grunge dinosaur [who has been] reborn (again) as an Internet-friendly, biodiesel-driven, multimedia machine." In Neil Young and the Poetics of Energy, William Echard stages an encounter between Young's challenging and ever-changing work and current theories of musical meaning—an encounter from which both emerge transformed.

Echard roots his discussion in an extensive review of writings from the rock press as well as his own engagement as a fan and critical theorist. How is it that Neil Young is both a perpetual outsider and critic of rock culture, and also one of its most central icons? And what are the unique properties that have lent his work such expressive force? Echard delves into concepts of musical persona, space, and energy, and in the process illuminates the complex interplay between experience, musical sound, social actors, genres, styles, and traditions.

Readers interested primarily in Neil Young, or rock music in general, will find a new way to think and talk about the subject, and readers interested primarily in musical or cultural theory will find a new way to articulate and apply some of the most exciting current perspectives on meaning, music, and subjectivity.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Words: A Neil Young Reception Primer
2. Unlock the Secrets: Waywardness and the Rock Canon
3. The Liquid Rage: Noise and Improvisation
4. Have You Ever Been Singled Out? Popular Music and Musical Signification
5. You See Your Baby Loves to Dance: Musical Style
6. Will To Love
Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Technique musicale
• Technique musicale
• Techniques musicales
• Music
• Rock
• Musicology
• Theory
• Multiple signal classification
• Popular music
• Genres
• Styles
• Pop Vocal

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9780253028372
• Langue: English

Extrait

Neil Young AND THE POETICS Of ENERGY
Musical Meaning and Interpretation Robert S. Hatten, editor
Profiles in Popular Music Glenn Gass and Jeffrey Magee, editors
Neil Young AND THE POETICS Of ENERGY
William Echard
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders     800-842-6796 Fax orders     812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail     [e-mail]
© 2005 by William Echard
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Echard, William, date- Neil Young and the poetics of energy / William Echard. p. cm. — (Profiles in popular music) (Musical meaning and interpretation) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-21768-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-34581-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Young, Neil—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series. III. Series: Musical meaning and interpretation ML420.Y75E34 2005 782.42166’092—dc22 2004022314
1 2 3 4 5 10 09 08 07 06 05
Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction
1. Words: A Neil Young Reception Primer
2. Unlock the Secrets: Waywardness and the Rock Canon
3. The Liquid Rage: Noise and Improvisation
4. Have You Ever Been Singled Out? Popular Music and Musical Signification
5. You See Your Baby Loves to Dance: Musical Style
6. Will To Love
Notes References Index
Acknowledgments
First, apologies to those I am about to forget. Hopefully I can make it up to you later. Thanks to Lillian for holding down the fort during long writing binges, and also to my parents and everyone else in my family for constant support over the years. Early stages of the research were assisted through a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and also through the collegial and stimulating atmosphere provided by the Graduate Programme in Musicology and Ethnomusicology at York University, Toronto. Thanks to the many people who were at York with me, who have shaped my view of the world and provided material and moral support. They include (but are not limited to) Jonathon Bakan, Sterling Beckwith, Jody Berland, Rob Bowman, Annette Chretien, Genevieve Cimon, Austin Clarkson, Jeff Cupchik, Mike Daley, Beverley Diamond, Annemarie Gallaugher, Doug Gifford, Barbara Godard, Anna Hoefnagels, David Lidov, Charity Marsh, Andra McCartney, Chris McDonald, David Mott, Marcia Ostaschewski, Karen Pegley, Lilian Radovac, Jay Rahn, Trichy Sankaran, Richard Stewardson, Jim Tenney, Matt Vander Woude, Jacqueline Warwick, Melissa West, and Robert Witmer. Thanks also to Paul Bouissac for crucial early intellectual support. After that, the School for Studies in Art and Culture and the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University, Ottawa, have been generous in allowing me extra time to write at crucial moments. Some people at or about Carleton who have had an impact on the shape of this book include Virginia Caputo, Murray Dineen, Chris Faulkner, Geraldine Finn, Mitchell Frank, Barbara Gabriel, Bryan Gillingham, Alan Gillmor, Elaine Keillor, Laura Marks, Charles O’Brien, Allan Ryan, John Shepherd, and Paul Théberge. Thanks also to Keir Keightley and Serge Lacasse for occasional but crucial conversations. Finally, thanks to Gayle Sherwood, Donna Wilson, and Robert Hatten at Indiana University Press for taking an interest in my work and for making the process of publication so smooth.
Neil Young AND THE POETICS Of ENERGY
Introduction
Every one of my records, to me, is like an ongoing autobiography. I can’t write the same book every time. 1
A text just has whatever coherence it happened to acquire during the last roll of the hermeneutic wheel.... What we say [as interpreters] must have some reasonably systematic inferential connections with what we or others have previously said, [but] there is no point at which we can draw a line between what we are talking about and what we are saying about it. 2
In this quotation, and in many other places, Neil Young speaks of change. Yet he does so from a singular perspective, seemingly as a meta-Neil who at different times writes these different selves. Similarly, Rorty does away with absolute truth as a value but immediately replaces it with a concept of community. In other words, as they try to say something about the way new meanings come into existence, both Young and Rorty enact a similar balance between continuity and disjunction. Also, both are a little (and exquisitely) disingenuous. I believe Rorty knows that textual coherence doesn’t “just” happen, and he is acutely aware of the many stories that need to be told about the social dynamics of meaning. Similarly, I would guess that Neil Young knows his impossible-to-pin stance is itself a well-established feature of rock auteurship. His changeability, since it has been a constant and since it is of a kind frequently valorized in the rock culture of the 1960s and 1970s, does much to stabilize his identity.
The construction of selfhood and persona, not only despite but by means of change and contradiction, will be one theme of this book because it has been a continuous theme in Neil Young reception. What does it mean to be an artist who is expected to surprise? What does the existence of such an artist tell us about the stylistic profile of rock music and the identities that may be negotiated there? Another central concern of the book is to fine-tune existing methods of describing the energetic and affective dimensions of musical meaning, again because notions of emotional commitment and intensity are key themes in Neil Young reception. This is an academic book, so a “reasonably systematic” spirit will sometimes get the upper hand. However, this is less a book about Neil Young and more a book which tries to respond to him. When Young speaks of autobiography, I do not think he is inviting us to decode a hidden story. He has, throughout his career, frequently said he wants to avoid being pinned down by interpreters. So I do not intend to try and pin him down, even though I do intend to explore issues raised by his work, to talk about why he has been read in certain ways more frequently than others, to pursue some of the ideological dimensions of his reception history, and to map the key landmarks in his sonic world. However, I hope that by the end of this exercise the terrain appears wider, not more narrow. This is one of many different books that could be written about Neil Young.
Shortly after giving a paper in Seattle that eventually developed into chapter 2 , I discovered a report about the conference on the Internet. Rustles is the self-chosen name for members of the Rust list, the largest and most active online Neil Young discussion forum (more details about the Rust list will be given later). Evidently, a rustie was in the audience for my talk and had this to say:
My two cents: Echard did not reveal any startling conclusions about Neil Young that any one or three rusties couldn’t come to over a pint or a campfire—the difference is that he used a lot of “high brow” language and cited references as one must in order to receive a Ph.D. Still and all, I admire the guy—it’s pretty hip (and it was probably a lot of fun) to write your doctoral thesis about Neil. 3
I cite this response to agree with it, and not just the part about having fun with my dissertation. I don’t want to end up saying things that would seem completely alien to the larger world of people listening to and talking about Neil Young. If anything, I see my work as a kind of response and contribution to the dialogues already entered into by journalists and various other kinds of listeners, academic and otherwise. Of course this is an academic project, and I would defend the highbrow language and references as a tool for putting my work in dialogue with that of other academics. However, I am deeply influenced by the lead of those theorists for whom scholarly work is part of a continuum of music discussion and appreciation that includes fans, music makers, and many others. 4 I try to cite at least as many rock critics as academics, and while I don’t cite as many rusties directly, their ongoing discussion has been a major influence on my work. Although technical in parts, I hope that the spirit of this book is not too far removed from the enthusiasm and desire for dialogue that underlie the discussions taking place daily between fans about music they love. I am both a fan of Neil Young and a critical scholar. I see this work both as a contribution to scholarship and also as an attempt to explicate and expand my intuitions as a native listener. As a result, it is inevitable that parts of the work will be too academic for some fans and other parts too casual for some academics. Rather than attempt a forced reduction to one side or the other, I have decided to leave myself in this intermediate space. I tend to agree with Middleton when he suggests that the scholar-fan is in a unique position to bridge discourses. This is especially true when the study is concerned with questions of perceived expressive intensity and affective response. To discuss such topics, we need to engage with the body, with personal feeling, and with metaphorical styles of interpretation, in which case “the anal