There's a word to describe Neil Young: curmudgeon. Uncle Neil is like your original Angry Old Man. He's pissed off with the State of Things, and he doesn't care who knows it. At least, he is these days. Time was when he produced whimsical hippy-type odes like Old Man, Heart of Gold and After the Goldrush. Then the seventies got a bit ugly, and he began to see the dark side. Albums like "Tonight's the Night" and the great, great "Live Rust" showcase his gradual descent into chronicling the essential nastiness of man: "There's colors on the street/Red, white, and blue/People shuffling their feet/People sleeping in their shoes/There's a warning sign in the road ahead/There's a lot of people saying we'd be better off dead/Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them/So I try to forget them any way I can." He's not afraid to address The Issues and climb on that soapbox to make us listen and think, and for that he should be a Canadian National Monument.
Get well soon, Neil.
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