RAGGED GLORY: A ROCK AND ROLL EXORCISM

I dunno what kind of black tar was coursing through Neil Young’s head or heart during the 80s but I sure can tell that it cleared the fuck out in 1990.  Like so many others dragged down into the swirling rock and roll cesspool of the 80s, NY churned out a bunch of albums that were all synthesizers and electronic drums and other such vomit during rock and roll’s darkest decade and although he’s since tried to explain that they’re legit pieces of artistic expression, he lies and they are not-- I think the basic story is that it all had something to do with him warring with his record company.  Whatever.

Actually, in 1990 I wasn’t a Neil Yong fan.  My bipolar tastes had led me, as of that time, to intimate relationships with jazz and art rock, balanced by hard and heavy rock and roll and metal.  To me, Neil Young was a guy with a long hippy dippy history followed by all that electronic puke in the 80s-- nothin’ doin’ for me.  One night in 1990, though, I went over to my buddy Mark’s house and he sat me down square in the middle of 2 big-ass speakers, told me to shut the hell up for a change, and unleashed Ragged Glory with the volume turned, as Nigel Tufnel says, “up to 11.”  Forget about plaster crumbling from the walls or ceiling— I thought the whole building, the whole block, the entire flipping city of Chicago was gonna come crashing down but I didn’t care.  I sat, wedged between those 2 big ass speakers, in heaven.  This blissful rock and roll nuke was the Voice of God, raging with love and vengeance all at once.  Whatever crapola had been clogging up Neil’s brain and heart for a decade or so and whatever crapola was clogging up mine at the moment was blasted the hell out by this massive sonic tsunami in a hurry.

Ragged Glory is a therapeutic masterpiece from end to end, with not a single note, word, or sound leaking energy, the experience of listening a visceral spiritual cleansing, leaving the listener with a sense of being tempered, purged, and purified by the rite as the final huge guitar and vocal chords of “Mother Earth” die down.  The guitar, gnashing out as “Country Home” opens, hammering relentlessly through “White Line,” “Love to Burn,” and “Love and Only Love,” wailing and screeching and screaming through “Fuckin’ Up,” bumping and grinding through “Farmer John,” feeding back throughout, and spreading out wide and high and gorgeous as a mountain with a giant orange sun behind it on “Mother Earth” is arguably the most overwhelming electric guitar sound ever captured on record (thanks here to the late David Briggs).  Apparently, Young had the soundstage where they worked on the album set up in the middle of some field in the middle of his property out west so that they could turn up as loud as they wanted, and the neighbors—more than 10 miles away—still complained about the racket.  Awesome— wish I coulda been there.  Neil’s solos-- gouging, slashing, ripping his black Les Paul until you can almost see blood in the sound-- are inspired, inventive, melodic, and elegant, while also completely primal, feral and out of control.  His singing is fiery and ferocious, raw and yet still precise on every track.  Even within the earthquake-heavy sonic palette, the songs are tuneful and get stuck in your head (“I’m thankful for my country home, it gives me peace of mind, somewhere I can walk alone and leave myself behind”).  The guitar riffs are unshakable, and the lyrics carry heavy truths and yet are not heavy handed (“why do I keep fuckin’ uuuuuuuuuuuuuuup?????!!!!”).  The band’s playing—from Ralph Molina’s jackhammering, relentless punishment of the skins, to Billy Talbot’s rumbling bass thunder, to Pancho Sampedro’s crunching, joyous reverence for the foundational rhythm guitar riffs behind Neil’s lead guitar wailing—is tight and sonically unified.  To say that the commentary that Young’s desperate, savage abuse of his guitar adds to the stories he tells (crying, teeth rattling wails weaving in and out as NY narrates that “In the valley of hearts there’s a house full of broken windows, with the lovers inside just a-quarrel all the time”) is profoundly moving doesn’t even come close to capturing the complete impact of this set on the listener.  This is rock and roll as exorcism— painfully, gloriously, raggedly purifying and cleansing.

In many ways Ragged Glory’s elemental purity served to wipe the slate clean for not only NY but rock and roll in general.  Banishing the spectre of its nightmarish near-death in the 1980s, NY was helping rock and roll had shake itself alive again, free itself from the soulless electronic, faux-punk haircut MTV bilious chains it had been shackled to and which had nearly killed it, and resurrect itself again.   With a little help from Reverend Neil, the Rock and Roll Phoenix had risen from its own ashes, and was ready for Nirvana and the rest of the new generation of guitar wielding, pissed off and full of love all at once rock and roll musicians to move it forward.

And Holy Crap 25 years later this record is still savage truth unleashed.  If it don’t leave your eyes rolled back into your head, if it don’t send your body into spasmodic convulsions of therapeutic joy, if it don’t leave you foaming at the mouth with your teeth on fire, pounding on the floor with joy and rage, if this music doesn’t exorcise your fucking demons then Jesus Christ himself couldn’t do so.  Play it loud.  Period.