KEEPING IT NEIL

Glastonbury headliner and contrarian-in-chief Neil Young may have just given us the first Maga anthem. Stevie Chick explores the life of the godfather of grunge, his ominous rock augury and his new unreleased album from the Seventies

- 

Days before Donald Trump began his second reign of error, a new track surfaced that captured the spirit of this ominous moment in history, its chorus warning: “Big change is coming/ Coming right home to you.” This urgent salvo isn’t the work of some young punk firebrand or righteous rap soothsayer, but instead a man with more than six decades in the game.

For that is Neil Young there, stomping with purpose through the snow in the music video, his bulky figure, wild eyes and icewhite lambchops making him resemble a haphazardly shaven bear. “Could be bad and it could be great,” he adds, of that titular “Big Change” – though given the song’s visions of “big drums drumming/ heading up the wrong parade”, the news doesn’t sound promising.

Cometh the hour, cometh the Crazy Horseman. Neil Young has traced his own wayward, ragged and glorious path for more than 60 years. Disdainful of fame and, sometimes, his dearest friends and bandmates, in blind allegiance to his beliefs in that moment (and that moment alone), he has split successful groups at their peak and jack-knifed in unexpected creative directions (and been sued for it). He withdrew his music from Spotify for two years to protest Joe Rogan “spreading fake information about vaccines” and – on his aptly named webpage The Times Contrarian briefly announced he was boycotting this year’s Glastonbury, which he is scheduled to headline, because the BBC’s involvement made the festival “a corporate turn-off”.

Somewhat baffling, that last one. But it confirms the mulish nature that has won him the admiration of generations of kindred iconoclasts, from Devo to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, for whom his integrity and relevance are inextinguishable.