Hitchhiker (2017)

One of Neil Young’s enduring practices is to record during full moons. He says he feels the energy when the moon cycles change. Perhaps not every album was made this way, but it was certainly a practice in 1976 when he and David Briggs headed down to Indigo Ranch in Malibu, California for an epic session. He talks about it in a radio interview when Hitchhiker was released in 2017. For this particular session, August 11, 1976, they were joined by friend Dean Stockwell, the actor from Topanga Canyon who is best known to the world as Al from Quantum Leap, but who Neil fans know as the man who wrote the long lost screenplay for After the Gold Rush. It was a magical night and my favorite quote comes from Briggs:

He'd turn to me and go, 'Guess I’ll turn on the tap'—and then out came 'Powderfinger,' 'Pocahontas,' 'Out of the Blue,' 'Ride My Llama.' Two days, a day. I'm not talkin' about sittin' down with a pen and paper, I'm talkin' about pickin' up a guitar, sittin' there and lookin' me in the face and in twenty minutes—'Pocahontas.' (David Briggs to Jimmy McDonough, Shakey)

There’s some debate amongst fans about where or not this really was a long lost album. The official story upon it’s release in 2017 was that he took it to the studio and they said it sounded more like a demo tape than an album, so Neil broke it up, put songs on different albums, rerecorded some, overdubbed some, etc. But unlike Chrome Dreams, Oceanside/Countryside or Times Square, there’s no contemporaneous evidence this was an intended album. To my ears, it sounds like a perfect album from someone in the grip of their most creative period. Songs were just flowing out of him at this time. I also believe that Neil doesn’t record just to record. He’s always recording with the intent to release it. It just depends on if the takes are good to his ears or not. This is another what if scenario in his history. If this album had been released, Rust Never Sleeps would have been vastly different, for instance.

“You ready, Briggs?” Neil calls to the producer in the control room just before launching into the naked beauty of an acoustic “Pocahontas,” one of his most masterful performances to my ears. What’s astonishing about this is that it’s the exact same performance as the version on Rust Never Sleeps, but without the vocal and sound effect overdubs. I don’t know why he messed with it this way, but it robs the original of it’s sadness and seriousness. Perhaps he wanted to lighten it up a little. It’s such a beautiful song and his vocal is so tragic, I think the sparseness of the Hitchhiker version suits the song best. It’s hard for me to listen to any other version these days (although the Crazy Horse version from Dume is the best alternate universe version to me, followed by this Beck performance despite the minor flub toward the end).

Likewise, this has become my favorite version of “Powderfinger.” Don’t get me wrong a full Crazy Horse rendition of “Powderfinger” is gorgeous and among their best concert moments, usually. However, quiet performance is devastating. I hear Neil’s emotion more this way, as the song becomes more of a tragedy than the somewhat Dukes of Hazard feel of electric versions. I’ve heard a lot of speculation about what’s going on in this song and it’s always felt clear to me that the boat coming for this poor sap is a police boat and they are raiding a moonshiner family in the swamp. “White boat,” “big red beacon” (lights), “numbers on the side” (the boat’s registration), “red meant run” (lights, again), etc. So this young kid is left alone while his family is all away and he’s confronted with the law. He has a lot to live up to and prove, despite his father’s advice to run. It’s a damn tragedy, not a heroic shootout. You get that in this performance a lot more than in the blistering guitar workouts of the electric versions commonly heard.

“Captain Kennedy” would go on to appear as is on four years later on Hawks & Doves, a fairly spotty album, of which this is song is a clear highlight. I love Neil’s picking style here. Keeping with the theme, it’s somewhat sad, being the tale of how war effects a mariner. One of the previously unreleased songs on Hitchhiker starts with a giggling Neil beckoning someone in (Briggs? Stockwell? maybe a joint?) before launching into a simply gorgeous song called “Hawaii.” He tried this song with Crazy Horse during the Zuma sessions (also on Dume). I like this version just as much, perhaps giving the edge to this somewhat eerie take. The other unreleased gem from this album is “Give Me Strength,” a plaintive love song that incredibly never found a home on a studio album. How could this song be without a home for 40 years? He would play it on tour, but it remained unreleased until 2017.

Another Rust Never Sleeps prototype comes with the truly strange “Ride My Llama,” a song with aliens and drugs. I’ve never been a big fan of this song, but it fits in this album’s tone well enough that I don’t bump on it. I respect the sci-fi-ness of it, but it’s also a bit too goofy to see as anything other than a hippie’s pot-infused dream recollection. Interestingly, Neil would go on to record “Hitchhiker” for Le Noise in 2010. Given that it’s a history of Neil doing drugs and how impairing and destructive his experiences were, I can believe there’s a reason why it sat unreleased for a long time. Also, 2010 is just before he wroteWaging Heavy Peace, which revealed he had been sober for awhile. The effect of drugs on his artistry and his marriage are heavy in this song.

“Campaigner” is one of the few unreleased songs that had appeared on his 1977 Decade package, although in a slightly edited version. The song finds sympathy for Richard Nixon when it was announced his wife Pat had suffered a stroke. This is a typically nuanced view of humanity that Neil expresses.

No matter how bad his ideals were or how he mishandled the trust of the country, he is still a human being. (interview with Bill Flanagan, 1985)

Is it any wonder that he follows this song with “Human Highway,” a song entirely about treating people kindly? This song, of course, was recorded again for Comes a Time. I like that version a lot, but again there’s something so personal and genuine about just Neil and his guitar expressing this thoughts. Hitchhiker closes with a solo piano rendition of “The Old Country Waltz,” a song redone with the Horse and the Bullets for American Stars ‘n’ Bars in 1977. It’s a great way to end the album, as it feels like a majestic send off. Of course, the send off is for a breakup, which Neil describes vividly as “the day that the two of us died.” Wow, what a way to describe a breakup.

At just under 34 minutes, this is not a long album, but it packs a punch. It’s rare that we get studio recordings of a fragile sounding Neil. He seems more comfortable solo in live settings. You can tell by how these songs were parceled out, overdubbed, or re-recorded with bands. Put all together like this, though, it packs a punch. And if the official account is accurate and this was all done in one night? An astounding artistic achievement.

Top 3:

1. Pocahontas
2. Hawaii
3. Powderfinger

Cut song: Ride My Llama

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