As a general rule, any Neil Young LP should be a solid purchase. There are at least 50 of them, and they mostly fall in one of two categories: folk rock balladry or guitar-heavy psychedelic rock, the latter usually featuring Crazy Horse as a backing band. He is an expert on both styles, and remarkably consistent - the sole exception being his time on Geffen Records (1982-1987). Indeed during this period his work was so inconsistent and unpredictable that the record company sued him for making "unrepresentative" and "uncharacteristic" albums. Those records get such a bad rep that I too avoided buying any of them: I have all 13 LP's that preceded the Geffen contract, as well as the first 8 that followed. Post-2000 my Neil Young collection gets patchy - like I said, most of them are solid but samey. So Mystery Train marks my first approach to the maligned Geffen period. It's the second attempt to anthologize it, after Lucky Thirteen which contained mostly alternate/live mixes. As expected, it doesn't gel that well as an album; besides Neil's voice, each album of the period has a wildly different character: First off, we have Trans (1982), his electronic/synth album which baffled everyone when released. On most of the tracks he used a vocoder device to scramble his vocals, rendering the words incomprehensible. Ηe later provided an explanation, connecting this creative decision with what was happening in his personal life, raising a quadriplegic child lacking the capacity to speak. That inspired the main theme behind Trans, which is communication, or difficulty thereof, hence the vocal distortion. Only one of these vocoder songs is included here: "Transformer Man" which, despite the alien feel you get by the electronic effects, is a rather sweet ballad. "Little Thing Called Love" and "Like an Inca" are two great guitar rockers; especially the latter which, with its 10-minute duration, sounds like "Like A Hurricane" given a typical 80's production. Recorded in 1983, but shelved by Geffen until 1985, Old Ways is the polar opposite of the futuristic Trans; an album of straight up traditional country, complete with fiddles, mandolines, steel guitars, and cameos by country legends. Half of it is included here: upbeat country "California Sunset", blues-influenced "Old Ways", and sappy ballads "My Boy" and "Once an Angel". Willie Nelson adds more authenticity on the Hank Williams-like "Bound For Glory". Old Ways is a passably good country record, but when Young presented it to the company, they initially told him to stick it where the sun don't shine and give them a rock album. Which is what he did, as a fuck-you: Everybody's Rockin' (1983) is rock alright, just not the 80's kind: it's 50's rockabilly, half of it original songs and the other half covers. It's the only one I was familiar with, as a former girlfriend had it on cassette tape and I had listened to it with her a few times; my opinion then and now is that it's pleasant enough but nothing special. The covers are better than the originals, which is why we get 4 of the former and only one new composition, retro rocker "Everybody's Rockin'". Neil's voice doesn't suit these oldies a lot (with the possible exception of Jimmy Reed's "Bright Lights, Big City") but there's otherwise nothing wrong with these covers. The compilers bypass Young's next album for Geffen (Landing On Water, 1986), and only include one track from Life (1988). Featuring Crazy Horse, "Around the World" is an all-out hard rock basher that sounds to me like a predecessor to "Keep On Rockin' In The Free World" - except for the weird synth-dominated chorus, that is. Despite the infamy surrounding the albums anthologized here, they evidently contained some good songs. Certainly there's nothing in this compilation that might be considered embarrassing for the artist. I might even go ahead and buy some of the original LP's, if I find them cheap enough. Until then, this CD will suffice.
**** for Around the World, Like an Inca, Transformer Man
*** for Everybody's Rockin', Little Thing Called Love, Mystery Train, California Sunset, Bright Lights Big City, Bound for Glory, Betty Lou's Got a New Pair of Shoes
** for My Boy, Old Ways, Once an Angel, Rainin' in My Heart
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