Neil Young has worked with Rick James in the Mynah Birds and David Cros­by, Steven Stills, and Gra­ham Nash in CSNY. He’s record­ed every­thing from tear­jerk­ing piano bal­lads to bril­liant­ly mean­der­ing psych rock to folk, coun­try, and ear­ly 80s elec­tron­ic. He per­fect­ed the spon­ta­neous sound of albums record­ed live and loose in a barn, but he is metic­u­lous about tech­nol­o­gy and sound qual­i­ty. He’s a super­star and self-described “rich hip­pie” who has near-uni­ver­sal cred­i­bil­i­ty with indie artists. He is both “a hip­pie icon but also the god­fa­ther of grunge,” says the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Young’s many seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions only strength­en his musi­cal integri­ty. The shag­gy Cana­di­an singer, song­writer, gui­tarist, and leader of Buf­fa­lo Spring­field and Crazy Horse has made films under the pseu­do­nym “Bernard Shakey,” record­ed sound­tracks for acclaimed films, and inspired far more than the sig­na­ture Seat­tle sound, though Pearl Jam and Nir­vana both acknowl­edged their debt.

The Vel­vet Under­ground may get much of the cred­it for the son­ic qual­i­ties of indie and alter­na­tive rock, but Young deserves more than a lit­tle recog­ni­tion for influ­enc­ing not only Kurt Cobain but also the likes of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Son­ic Youth’s Kim Gor­don, and Pave­men­t’s Stephen Malk­mus.

It’s a hell of a rock and roll resume, to have achieved last­ing, sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on mod­ern folk, coun­try, and indie rock, just to name the most obvi­ous gen­res Young has touched, in a career show­cas­ing some of the most emo­tion­al­ly hon­est music ever cap­tured on record. Despite the sham­bling, seem­ing­ly out-of-con­trol nature of much of his out­put, it’s a very care­ful­ly craft­ed show­case. The 1979 live album Rust Nev­er Sleeps, for exam­ple, func­tions as both a sum­ma­tion of his musi­cal out­put up to that point and a meta­com­men­tary on the many—or well, the two—sides of Neil Young.

On one side, mel­low, moody, solo acoustic folk, on the oth­er, rau­cous, dis­tort­ed rock and roll, cour­tesy of Crazy Horse. Book­end­ing the record, the mir­ror image songs “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” tracks that apply the two dif­fer­ent treat­ments to sim­i­lar lyrics and arrange­ments, inte­grat­ing the two sides of Young, which Poly­phon­ic rough­ly divides into his acoustic Cana­di­an pas­toral side—warbling home­sick bal­lads full of ref­er­ences to Ontario and oth­er points north—and his Amer­i­can side: raw, edgy, full of right­eous polit­i­cal indig­na­tion in songs like “Ohio, “South­ern Man,” “Alaba­ma,” and “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Those who love Neil Young need no fur­ther induce­ment to embrace his con­tra­dic­tions, even when his work is uneven. The ten­sion between them keeps fans hang­ing on, know­ing full well that his less suc­cess­ful efforts are paths on the way to yet more bril­liant restate­ments of his major themes and minor chords. Those less famil­iar, or less appre­cia­tive, of Neil Young’s for­mi­da­ble lega­cy may find they’ve under­es­ti­mat­ed him after watch­ing this whirl­wind tour through his tire­less cru­sade against musi­cal com­pla­cen­cy, war, racism, and envi­ron­ment destruc­tion, and the rust that has crept over so many of his con­tem­po­raries.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Neil Young & Rick James Cre­at­ed the 60’s Motown Band, The Mynah Birds

Neil Young Per­forms Clas­sic Songs in 1971 Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

Neil Young’s Film “Le Noise” Debuts Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When Led Zep­pelin appeared in late 1968, they already had the mak­ings of a super­group, so to speak, though only found­ing mem­ber Jim­my Page was a famous rock star. Four equal­ly tal­ent­ed and sea­soned musi­cians, each inte­gral to the band’s sound. But it might have been oth­er­wise. Page first intend­ed to cre­ate a lit­er­al super­group, join­ing his fel­low for­mer Yard­bird Jeff Beck and The Who’s Kei­th Moon and John Entwistle.

Who knows what might have come of it? Moon sup­pos­ed­ly quipped that it would go down like a lead bal­loon, inspir­ing the name of the band that was to come. This his­to­ry makes all the more poignant the fact that Moon’s last onstage per­for­mance before his death was with Led Zep­pelin.

Moon joined the band dur­ing the L.A. stop of their 1977 tour to ram­ble drunk­en­ly into the micro­phone and sit in on a drum and tam­bourine with John Bon­ham dur­ing a near­ly 20-minute drum solo on “Moby Dick.”

Moon also joined the band dur­ing the two-song encore of “Whole Lot­ta Love” and “Rock & Roll.” See parts of those per­for­mances at the top in audi­ence footage. His brief moments behind John Bonham’s drums can­not be con­sid­ered rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what a hypo­thet­i­cal Kei­th Moon-backed Led Zep­pelin might sound like. Not only was he play­ing anoth­er drummer’s kit—a sig­nif­i­cant hand­i­cap for Moon—but also, the Kei­th Moon of 1977 was not the Kei­th Moon of 1968. These doc­u­ments of rock his­to­ry can’t tell us what might have been, only, for a brief moment, what was.

Moon has been regard­ed as one of the great­est drum­mers in rock for his huge musi­cal per­son­al­i­ty. “No drum­mer in a true rock & roll band has ever been given—has ever seized, perhaps—so much space and pres­ence,” wrote Greil Mar­cus in trib­ute when Moon died the year after his Led Zep­pelin cameo. Moon, “as Jon Lan­dau point­ed out years ago… played the parts con­ven­tion­al­ly giv­en over to the lead gui­tar.” Moon called him­self, with typ­i­cal sar­casm, “the best Kei­th Moon-type drum­mer,” an insight into just how sin­gu­lar his play­ing was. His total lack of restraint fit The Who per­fect­ly.

But his­to­ry would decree that Bon­ham become the ide­al Led Zep­pelin-type drum­mer. He played lead parts as well, but nev­er at the expense of rhythm. The pit­fall of a supergroup—or a group of equal­ly superb musicians—is that every­one can tend to over­play. Bon­ham was a superb musi­cian, but also a drum­mer who knew exact­ly how to accom­mo­date oth­ers’ virtuosity—building spa­cious rhyth­mic struc­tures that held togeth­er the bom­bast of Plant and Page in a coher­ent whole. Bon­ham could fol­low Page’s riffs just as often as he could deploy his own thun­der­ing hooks.

Kei­th Moon was at his best play­ing Kei­th Moon, sound­ing “as if he came out of nowhere to take over the world,” wrote Mar­cus. The Who’s “best sin­gles and album tracks not only fea­tured Moon, they were built around him,” Entwistle and Town­shend pro­vid­ing struc­ture while Moon sup­plied the fiery core. Hear him at his incan­des­cent best in the iso­lat­ed drum track for “Wont’ Get Fooled Again” above and read more about what made him so indeli­bly unique in Mar­cus’ eulo­gy for “the best drum­mer in the his­to­ry of rock ‘n roll.” Lis­ten to a full audi­ence audio record­ing of that 1977 con­cert just below.

via Jam­Base

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Watch/Hear Led Zeppelin’s Ear­li­est Per­for­mances from 1968–69 & Cel­e­brate the 50th Anniver­sary of the Band’s Birth

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Harp gui­tars have been around since at least the 19th cen­tu­ry, and if you want a good, enthu­si­as­tic, intel­lec­tu­al argu­ment on the exact date of its birth, you’ll find many an orga­nol­o­gist ready to do that. (Here’s a page filled with infor­ma­tion about the sub­ject.) But it was only recent­ly, in 2014, that the Grove Dic­tio­nary of Musi­cal Instru­ments final­ly rec­og­nized the harp gui­tar as its own thing. New- or old-fan­gled as it might be, the harp gui­tar con­tains both the usu­al six strings and fret­ted neck and a neigh­bor­ing series of unstopped open strings. Well known musi­cians who have played them include John McLaugh­lin, David Lind­ley, and Rob­bie Robert­son.

But look up the instru­ment on the ‘net and there’s one name that will pop up before any­body else: 29 year old Cana­di­an Jamie Dupuis. He’s earned mil­lions of views on his YouTube chan­nel for arrang­ing and per­form­ing cov­ers of rock and met­al clas­sics.

He’s cer­tain­ly a fan of Pink Floyd, as you can see above in his cov­er of “Com­fort­ably Numb.” The ring­ing, echo­ing qual­i­ty of the harp guitar’s body suit the song well, as it starts to resem­ble a sort of synth-string wash.

The acoustic-based Floyd songs work as well as you might expect. “Wish You Were Here” for exam­ple.
Dupuis shows his skill with the more exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ics of Dark Side of the Moon. He adds a slide gui­tar and effects to “Time”:

…which works even bet­ter on “Breathe”:

And he brings out the very strange look­ing Dyer Elec­tric Gui­tar Harp for “Wel­come to the Machine,” using some dou­ble-track­ing to give him some solo­ing space.

You can hear all his Floyd cov­ers as a playlist here, and then check out his oth­er Harp Gui­tar cov­ers from Ozzy Osbourne to Tears for Fears here as well as some clas­si­cal arrange­ments.

Oh and yes, he also plays reg­u­lar ol’ acoustic gui­tar and some ban­jo. The man cer­tain­ly knows his way around a fret: enjoy!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” Mov­ing­ly Per­formed by the Six-String Sol­diers, of The Unit­ed States Army Field Band

Dire Straits’ “Sul­tans Of Swing” Played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an Instru­ment Dat­ing Back to the 6th Cen­tu­ry

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.