{"id":166226,"date":"2025-06-07T23:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T23:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/166226\/"},"modified":"2025-06-07T23:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T23:44:09","slug":"the-forgotten-band-neil-young-called-integral-to-the-whole-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/166226\/","title":{"rendered":"The forgotten band Neil Young called “integral to the whole thing”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neil<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 7 June 2025 18:00, UK <\/p>\n

Pop music is a \u2018product\u2019 in the public\u2019s view. The craft behind songs is often forgotten along with the vital contributors as soon as a track hits the radio and transcends honed creativity, becoming something more tangible, with a solid and knowable surface. However, Neil Young<\/a> has always been a star who likes to look beyond that, to dig beneath the surface and find out what\u2019s really going on in the welter of a hit.<\/p>\n

From \u2018Four Strong Winds\u2019 to \u2018Ballad of a Teenage Queen\u2019,\u00a0the folk star\u2019s favourite songs<\/a>\u00a0often have a sense of lore and legend behind them, proving his ire with the commercialism of culture. Throughout his time in the music industry, he has witnessed firsthand how the bigwigs try to meddle with the magic of a band in favour of presenting a more reliable product.<\/p>\n

He claims that executives frequently tried to pry Jim Morrison from The Doors, recognising him as the star, but not realising that it was the relationship he had with his band that emboldened his prowess. In their eyes, that didn\u2019t matter\u2014it was stars who sold songs, not the nebulous nitty-gritty of how they were made.<\/p>\n

One forgotten group of luminaries stands out as evidence of this unfortunate point. The Memphis Horns were a duo consisting of Wayne Jackson on trumpet and Andrew Love on tenor saxophone, who sent Stax Records towards the stratosphere with a hip new sound. They tirelessly honed their craft in the studio, offering up searing melodies with a signature Stax swagger, but more often than not, their contributions were simply thought of as Sam and Dave.<\/p>\n

As Neil Young explained, \u201cThe people on the street don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. They just don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening. They don\u2019t know that the Memphis Horns are responsible for so many great gold records. They don\u2019t know that Wayne Jackson makes up these parts off the top of his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair played with everyone from Otis Redding to the Doobie Brothers and Isaac Hayes. They came up with melodies for Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Stephen Stills to name but three. During the course of their career, they played on over 80 hit singles, and contributed to around 600 albums. That\u2019s technically way more top 40\u2019s than The Beatles ever mustered, but their influence is dwarfed by the gleaming light of sellable stars, rendering them all but forgotten.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may, if you\u2019re a musician type, think, \u2018Well, that\u2019s the Memphis Horns, but you\u2019re not thinking about the guy who came up with it,\u201d Young argues. \u201cThose licks are just as important as anything else on the record. There\u2019s a group, The Memphis Horns, they should be inducted into the Musicians\u2019 Hall of Fame, and first! They have made so many records for so many other people with identifiable hooks, that you can\u2019t disassociate, they\u2019re just integral to the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, they are the music and the stars that they supported were the sales pitch to the public. Granted, that\u2019s an important part of culture too, but Young asserts one side of the coin is more meaningful than the other. \u201cThe greatest honour is to be called a musician,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be a pop star, or a rock \u2018n\u2019 roll star, or a country star, that\u2019s nice, and that\u2019s great, and you get a lot of perks, but the real honour is for another musician to say that they think you\u2019re a good musician and that they like what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

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