Neil Young and Bob Dylan have been known to write songs about one another.
For instance, Young name-checked Dylan on “Bandit,” from 2003’s Greendale: “You’re invisible; you’ve got too many secrets. Bob Dylan said that – or something like that.” Dylan had earlier sung, “I’m listening to Neil Young; I gotta turn up the sound,” on “Highlands” from 1997’s Time Out of Mind.
But Young admitted he never used to listen to his fellow 1960s rock legend – not because Young doesn’t admire him, but because he feared turning into a mimic.
For Neil Young, there seems to be a constant battle against polluting his muse with too much outside information, with too much of this world’s competitive distractions, with too much of anything else besides his own voice. Instead, Young insists that he strives to stay as in the moment as he can be.
“I really hate things that people work on,” Young said during a talk with Patti Smith via Flavorwire. “There’s nothing about music that should be working on it, nothing about lyrics that should be working on it – trying to be something that you’re not, trying to act like somebody that you think is good.”
A perfect example, Young added, can be found in Bob Dylan, someone whose work Young would rarely actually listen to during his formative years.
“I had to avoid all Dylan records, because I am such a sponge,” Young said. “If I listen to it too much, I would start being that. I knew that that would disturb what I was doing. I admired what he did so much – the lyrics, and the way he sang, and the melodies, and the groove and the band that he played with, especially [the late guitarist Mike] Bloomfield. There were all of these great musicians that supported him. I had to ignore it. I just had to stay away from it.”
Perhaps predictably, this can lead to a lengthy creative process – but one that’s then followed by sudden outbursts of songs. Young only issued one album in 1973-74, for instance, but then put out two in 1975. He also put out a pair of records in 1989, and in 2006. But Young didn’t issue a new album at all between 1996 and 2000, nor from 2010 through a pair of new recordings in 2012.
He’s rarely spent very long away since, but it’s all part of Neil Young’s goal to keep things as organic as possible.
“If a song happens, it happens,” Young says. “If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t matter. That’s why I will write a lot of material, and why I’ll suddenly not write any material – because there is no reason to write it. It has to come to me – and if it doesn’t come to me, I don’t want it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to look for it.”
