11. Danger Bird

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Zuma (Reprise, 1975);
composed by Neil Young

According to biographer Jimmy McCullough, Neil Young’s principal guitar is a 1953 Les Paul Goldtop, crudely painted black by a previous owner, with a pickup you can talk through, and a knob that controls the volume not just of the guitar but the output from the amps. The sound it makes is a package: a roar from a flock of flying Maseratis. Crazy Horse’s rudimentary backup is the only way that this reification of raw electricity sounds entirely like itself, full-bodied but mournful – almost folky in its sonorities. This track from the first album they did with Frank Sampedro replacing Danny Whitten sounds like an experiment Neil was never able to entirely reproduce, if the sole official live version is any indication. Incredibly slow, just a pair of three-chord progressions – upward on the verses, downward on the choruses – over which Neil half-shouts about the recent breakdown of his relationship with Carrie Snodgress and some extended metaphor about a flying bird. In and around this unreliable narrative, an elaborate theme and variations is expounded upon the above-referenced guitar, from wobbly choked harmonics in the first few seconds before the band enters to a supernova dropping over the horizon at the fade.

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (on average) during Advent (or the moral equivalent).