It is a triumphant comeback, which Neil Young celebrates with his band Crazy Horse and the new joint album "Colorado". Everything is different, and yet somehow everything remains the same. What more do we want?!
50 years ago Neil Young, previously celebrated singer and guitarist of the hippie group Buffalo Springfield, founded a completely new musical concept with the trash band Crazy Horse. On the whitecap of virtuosity madness he was simply concerned with energy. The partnership between Young and the band certainly has some holes in it, and yet there are few projects where the old poet is as convincing as with Crazy Horse.
What do you think Neil Young would do if he had another opportunity to start his career from scratch today? Would he follow the same path a second time? This is hard to imagine, because the musical and political topography has changed completely since the 1960s. It's questionable if the current scene would still produce such tough and edgy guys like Neil Young and Bob Dylan. Artists who are not afraid to polarize, who prefer to get lost once too often rather than to keep their ideals behind the scenes, but above all musicians who know how to make themselves heard beyond their songs as well as their clientele.
One of the songs on "Colorado" is called "Rainbow Of Colors". The rainbow is a popular symbol these days to postulate cultural and sexual diversity. In reference to Neil Young, the rainbow could also be a symbol for his frequent colour changes, not only in an artistic but also in a political sense. No other renowned artist has done such a devastating slalom between right and left as the man in search of the heart of gold. That he was one of the most vehement opponents of Richard Nixon's policies did not prevent him from supporting Ronald Reagan's election campaign and siding with George W. Bush. However, he also wanted to chase the latter out of office with "Let's Impeach The President". In the last US election campaign he supported left-winger Bernie Sanders, but allowed Donald Trump, who had been turned down by artists from Eminem to the Rolling Stones to R.E.M., to use his song "Rockin' In The Free World". For more than half a century he has been demanding humanity, but towards his second wife and mother of his children, Pegi, he behaved far from exemplary in this respect when he left her after 36 years.
