Neil Young - Ordinary Man

Of course, I purchased Chrome Dreams II as soon as it came out on October 23. Well, it’s not easy for me to say it but this record doesn’t deserve 4 out of 5 stars like I can read here and there. Neil Young, with this album, didn’t bring anything new except, maybe…, the last track of the CD, The Way, who is probably his very first real original work since years.
I’m gonna tell you why this album received so much good reviews, it’s only because of one song: Ordinary People. This track is not new. As you all know, it was taped in 1988 and could be heard on several live recordings from that period. Anyone who listened to that song years ago was completely astonished like, for instance, Paul Williams, founder of Crawdaddy, the first ever US Rock Magazine. This is what Paul Williams wrote on Love To Burn (1997 – Omnibus Press, pages 200 and 206) his own study of Neil Young’s music:

“Ordinary People is overwhelming. It staggers the mind. On first listen or first several, it’s all feeling, the feeling of these many words coming at you and of the strange and very confident intelligence that seems to hold all of them, and all this music, together. A hot shower. A just-out-of-reach visionary panorama. You probably don’t hear much of what he’s saying most of the time – just phrases, vivid images, that jump out here and there… This performance is so much about the rhythm and sound of language it could be said to be Neil’s excursion into rap music. Nah, no hip-hop beats. But man, that dude sure lays it down. In addition to Leaves of Grass and Desolation Row and Wichita Vortex Sutra, I can hear this performance as related to John Coltrane’s Meditations or Grandmaster Flash’s The Message. Not that it specifically resembles any of those works. But it is in their league. It shares their ambitious and inspirations and successes.”

Neil Young - Ordinary People on You Tube
Ordinary People – Lyrics analysis here and lyrics via Thrashers Wheat.org
Grandmaster Flash - The Message .mp3 via djcratebug

Neil Young - The Way .mp3 via Said The Gramophone

Bonus, another classic: Neil Young - T-Bone .mp3 from Re-Ac-Tor

Neil Young - Oh Lonesome Me (Don Gibson).mp3 live at Boise, ID, 18 October 2007