Neil Young Message Board and Comments

Hey Austin...give me a break. U tellin me that Neil is rusted out?? Gee 40 years of rusting away aint bad.. Name anyone else other than Dylan and Young who've endured 5 decades of a music industry and has seen tens of thousands of one hit wonders come and go. Get your Bush head out of the sand,man.

Hey Austin Texas.... When does every record that an artist puts out have to be a stellar earth shaking event? The guy put out a record in a few days, got it streaming on the web and then got it into the stores. All in a few days. To me thats pretty damn impressive, it may not be to you, but its a significant undertaking if you know the record business. Like many of his records, he has tested, bent, and broken the rules of the record industry to deliver his product. Forget the political analysis of the record, since its the same as I heard back when "Ohio" came out.....perhaps you may / may not have been around for that event....... As far as NY being "burned out" and not coming back, I would not confuse a song lyric with real life, this guy is as saavy a business person as you'll find and knows when it will be time to give it a rest, that said, he still has about 30 albums worth of material in the Reprise vaults to keep him going long into the future......politically correct or not..... If your career holds up this well, good for you. ND Chicago

hey hey my my at least he has the ball's to spek his mind.We Aussies love Neil Young.Neil's music will never die.

NEIL YOUNG BURNS OUT INTO THE BLACK - NOT COMING BACK "Living WIth War" Neil Young (Reprise) Full disclosure: I think Neil Young is a great songwriter, and a good live performer. But he likes injecting politics into his music, and I think his political views are crap (hey, so did Lynyrd Skynyrd). Neil Young's music career has been punctuated by politically charged songs (<i>Ohio</i>, <i<Southern Man</i>, and <i>Rocking In the Free World</i> became hits). He thinks now is a time to get active again. But sales trends reveal that for today's music fans, politics or protests are not what people care about. Protest songs and anti-Bush or anti-America discussions are ubiquitous on TV news, and that's what people want to escape when they listen to music. So the hippie/Woodstock era protest and politics songs aren't selling anymore. Neil Young has not 'got the word', it seems. He's just released an album full of anti-Iraq-War, and anti-Bush songs. <i>Impeach The President</i> sets the tone, and its lyrics also reveal the cluelessness of liberals. Reprise Records (Young's music publisher) and the rest of the music industry are watching to learn if the trend toward escapist music has ended or reversed. Will music fans will rush out to by political polemics in song formats? No one is holding their breath: most people expect that "Living With War" will flop, placing Neil Young's career at risk -- if not actually ending it. I'll give him credit for integrity -- standing by his convictions. His willingness to put his career on the line is noble, even if it also seems foolish in a commercial sense. Neil Young has been a trendsetter for most of his nearly 40-year music career, so a failed album release at this point (after several other less spectacular, but definite, recent commercial failures) would render him irrelevant and out of touch. But a success would ensure his reputation for decades. It's a chance he's willing to take In 1979 Neil Young wrote "it's better to burn out than to fade away" (or rust out), for <i>Rust Never Sleeps</i>. But he also noted --in the same song-- that, "once you're gone, you can't come back." I think <i>Living with War</i> is Young's burn out, and he will not be coming back. Brian Lynch Austin, TX USA