So Neil Young was afflicted with exposure to polio as a young boy. And the curious thing is how the resulting epilepsy affected use of one hand, and as a result, what Young can feel, and how he had to adapt his guitar playing. I pretty much learned guitar mimicking Neil Young and half a dozen other guitarists / vocalists mainly from the 70s and 80s.
Excerpt from article I read:
Neil Young is not like the rest of us; he’s literally wired in a different way. His epilepsy produced brief disturbances in the electrical function of his brain and some argue that the disease led Young to his unique relationship with electricity and the guitar (although Young isn’t so sure of that). He can literally hear and feel the difference in watts coming out of the speakers, so much that he can tell his guitar tech Larry Cragg exactly how many volts are pumping through the walls.
This heightened awareness and ability to control and work with electricity along with the debilitating affects of polio have helped define Young’s raw, heavily distorted guitar style.
“There’s some musicians [that get it] – Jimi [Hendrix] knew what he was doing – but some guitar players don’t understand that aspect of it. They don’t want to,” explains Young. “First of all, they have two hands that work really well, and so they can do all this by themselves. They don’t need the help of something else, but I do. I need the help of power. I need to have that resonance. I need to have that availability of a space between me and the source, and ****ing with that – bending notes and doing things to make the sounds happen. It’s more physical, so I enjoy that. But, it’s unpredictable and sometimes has edgy, bottomless or shallow results.”
Violence. Anger. Frustration. Chaos. Volume. These are the cornerstones of Young’s electric guitar playing. He’s one of the greatest songwriters to have ever lived and his success has been partly based on his unique, high- pitched, whining voice. But, without the guitar, Young would never be the Dionysian rock god we love. He balances perfect song structure with messy, expansive, free-flowing jams as he funnels his emotions through his guitar. It’s as if all the years of physical and emotional struggle are being reconciled through his instrument. It’s this high-wire balancing act that allows Young to transcend styles and genres – from the solo acoustic, tender country rock that permeates his career to the electronica influence found on 1982’s Trans to the full-bore guitar meltdowns that fans of Crazy Horse obsess over – it’s all Neil Young.
“It’s a marriage of all kinds of things. The emotion in the song has got to be – you gotta have a feeling about what you’re singing, and then when you’re finished singing, then you play,” smiles Young from across the table. “Then, there’s no rules; you can do whatever you want. Sometimes the notes don’t matter. Sometimes just noise is required. Sometimes it has to explode, deconstruct. It’s not an exercise in technical prowess or anything like that, because I’m not really very good. But, I can really beat the shit out of it if I feel like it, and I can be melodic and gentle if I feel like. Between those two extremes, if you have a song that means something to you, all those things kind of fit together and you never know what’s going to happen.”
Two of my Neil favs that illustrate his point on guitar versatility - Harvest Moon was video'd at the famous Mountain House Restaurant & Bar, Woodside Cali. Cool using a broom for percussion.
Excerpt from article I read:
Neil Young is not like the rest of us; he’s literally wired in a different way. His epilepsy produced brief disturbances in the electrical function of his brain and some argue that the disease led Young to his unique relationship with electricity and the guitar (although Young isn’t so sure of that). He can literally hear and feel the difference in watts coming out of the speakers, so much that he can tell his guitar tech Larry Cragg exactly how many volts are pumping through the walls.
This heightened awareness and ability to control and work with electricity along with the debilitating affects of polio have helped define Young’s raw, heavily distorted guitar style.
“There’s some musicians [that get it] – Jimi [Hendrix] knew what he was doing – but some guitar players don’t understand that aspect of it. They don’t want to,” explains Young. “First of all, they have two hands that work really well, and so they can do all this by themselves. They don’t need the help of something else, but I do. I need the help of power. I need to have that resonance. I need to have that availability of a space between me and the source, and ****ing with that – bending notes and doing things to make the sounds happen. It’s more physical, so I enjoy that. But, it’s unpredictable and sometimes has edgy, bottomless or shallow results.”
Violence. Anger. Frustration. Chaos. Volume. These are the cornerstones of Young’s electric guitar playing. He’s one of the greatest songwriters to have ever lived and his success has been partly based on his unique, high- pitched, whining voice. But, without the guitar, Young would never be the Dionysian rock god we love. He balances perfect song structure with messy, expansive, free-flowing jams as he funnels his emotions through his guitar. It’s as if all the years of physical and emotional struggle are being reconciled through his instrument. It’s this high-wire balancing act that allows Young to transcend styles and genres – from the solo acoustic, tender country rock that permeates his career to the electronica influence found on 1982’s Trans to the full-bore guitar meltdowns that fans of Crazy Horse obsess over – it’s all Neil Young.
“It’s a marriage of all kinds of things. The emotion in the song has got to be – you gotta have a feeling about what you’re singing, and then when you’re finished singing, then you play,” smiles Young from across the table. “Then, there’s no rules; you can do whatever you want. Sometimes the notes don’t matter. Sometimes just noise is required. Sometimes it has to explode, deconstruct. It’s not an exercise in technical prowess or anything like that, because I’m not really very good. But, I can really beat the shit out of it if I feel like it, and I can be melodic and gentle if I feel like. Between those two extremes, if you have a song that means something to you, all those things kind of fit together and you never know what’s going to happen.”
Two of my Neil favs that illustrate his point on guitar versatility - Harvest Moon was video'd at the famous Mountain House Restaurant & Bar, Woodside Cali. Cool using a broom for percussion.
