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Sat 29 August 2026 20:00, UK
Nothing that Neil Young ever did was supposed to be by the book.
He didn’t want to be looked at as the typical rockstar that could play some of the greatest songs of all time and stay in one style for the rest of his life, and half of his discography was all about challenging everyone who heard his music, be that the record company, his backing band, or his own audience, whenever he made something a bit weird. He didn’t answer to anyone else but the muse in his head, and while that could get frustrating for some of his bandmates, he could appreciate those who were following the same model that he was.
Because as much as Young liked to make mellow rock and roll every now and again, the last thing he was going to do was make another ‘Heart of Gold’ on every record. He wanted to treat every single project he put out as a new creative endeavour, and while a lot of them were pretty interesting most of the time, there were definitely a few out there like Everybody’s Rockin’ where his fans had to be wondering what the hell he was doing half the time.
But it’s not like Young didn’t realise what he was doing half the time, either. He could even make fun of the things he hated for a laugh most of the time, and that’s what made him so endearing throughout the years. You were getting the most authentic version of him at every turn, which is probably what made him a hero figure in the grunge community years before the genre had a proper name.
People like Eddie Vedder looked up to Young as the kind of person that anyone could love, and given how the 1990s were about stripping things down, Young was already the unintended godfather of the genre. But despite Young being looked at as one of the biggest forebearers of grunge, Tom Petty wasn’t far behind him when it came to making the most earnest rock and roll ever created.
He had his fair share of moments on MTV as well, but Petty never forgot the values that he stood for when he first began making rock and roll. The Heartbreakers wanted to keep the promises that their heroes had when they claimed that rock and roll could change the world, and Young felt that Petty was one of the greatest colleagues that he could have asked for in the business.
For all of the failed experiments that Young went through during the 1980s, he had to commend Petty for being a “tremendous” artist up until the day he died, saying, “Now that Tom is gone, I feel him even more. Tom is a great artist. Not he was. His art is. I met Tom a few times when he played the Bridge School Benefit. He sure left a mark on me. A mark that goes deeper with age. I wish I had gotten to know him better. His life was a lot like mine and I relate.”
Further reading: From The Vault
And while Young did have his fair share of turmoil to work through on his records, he could respect Petty for leaving everything on the table as well. Tonight’s the Night is still one of the most raw confessional albums that Young ever made, but he could see Petty doing the same thing when he made records like Echo and trying to sort through the pieces of his broken heart following his divorce.
Young might not have been able to connect with Petty as much as he wanted to throughout his career, but that only served to remind him of the kind of bright light that the heartland rocker was when he was with us. No one else could possibly replicate that kind of earnestness, and anything that Petty gave you the sense that he couldn’t possibly tell a lie when he had a guitar in his hands.
