https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-son...-had-no-equal/
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-son...-had-no-equal/
“Without parallel”: The songwriter Neil Young said had no equal
Tim Coffman
@timmusic13
Mon 27 January 2025 21:30, UK
No one should go into the world of songwriting thinking it’s a competition. Some of the best tunes ever written have come from the heart rather than trying to outdo someone, and even if there are tunes born out of spite that land on the hit parade, they are never going to have the same staying power as something that shows another side of a person that they leave closed off from the world. Although Neil Young has had many moments when his songs touched the hearts of millions, he knew that he was only walking in the footsteps of those who came before him.
Because listening to Young’s music, there are a lot of singer-songwriters hidden in between the grooves of his record. Everyone could pick up a few cues from Bob Dylan when listening to albums like Harvest, but when ‘Uncle Neil’ picked up his electric guitar and started making raw noise on his records, there were pieces of his sound that were reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’s greatest moments, albeit with a lot less finesse than before.
But that wasn’t Young’s goal throughout his career. If he took the time to emulate his heroes, that would have been fine enough, but from the minute that he struck out on his own after Buffalo Springfield, he was looking to follow his muse and didn’t give a damn what hot new artist was on the top of the charts.
Even though he still had his favourites from the worlds of rock and blues, there was something indelibly human listening to someone like Gordon Lightfoot. Outside of gaining massive attention for songs like ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’, Lightfoot was a fellow Canadian icon who took the basis of what Bob Dylan and made it even more interesting, with many of his songs often being more poetic than Dylan ever could.
Take a song like ‘If You Could Read My Mind,’ for instance. Everyone could mould a great tune out of a couple of chords and a strong melody, but Lightfoot paints the picture of a love decades old in only a few minutes. The world has had enough ‘I love you’ songs, but hearing him talk about how his love leaves him a ghost for his other half who will never be set free is both romantic and heartbreaking all at the same time.
And even with the many tearjerkers Young made, he still felt that no one would ever manage to eclipse what Lightfoot did, saying upon hearing of his death, “I was saddened when I learned today of his passing. Gordon was a great Canadian artist. A songwriter without parallel. His melodies and words were a lesson to all writers interested in his music, as they will continue to be through the ages.”
Despite Young wanting to carve out his own niche in songwriting history, he wasn’t shy of wearing Lightfoot’s influence on his sleeve now and again. He would never directly sample one of his lyrics or anything, but hearing the raw pain on an album like Tonight’s the Night can only come from someone who listened to Lightfoot and learned how to pick up the pieces of their broken heart.
But if there’s one thing that Lightfoot taught anyone, it’s that it was important to be themselves. There have been millions of songwriters trying to be a carbon copy of their heroes, but while there may still be a thousand more copycats climbing the charts, the person behind the songs is the one everyone’s going to relate to.
Neil Young & Gordon Lightfoot - Article-Jan.2025
