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Trans, Island in the Sun, and the Geffen Years
For Neil Young’s most devoted fans, the eighties were without question a tough time, even when measured against the standards of what he had demanded of them in the past.
For those who preferred the softer sounds of Harvest, or even the frenzied hard rock of Crazy Horse, it was one thing to follow Young’s path into the ditch on albums like Time Fades Away, On the Beach, and Tonight’s the Night. The method to the artistic madness on those albums would certainly reveal itself in the years and decades to come.
But the way Young chose to tax the patience of his fans in the eighties was something else entirely. For the most part, it was just plain hard being a Neil Young fan back then.
The best way to describe his artistic output during the eighties would be to compare the albums released during this period to what you might call a series of vanity projects.
Fans of rock-’n’-roll artists ranging from Paul McCartney to Elvis Costello to Bruce Springsteen will begrudgingly recognize this term all too well. A “vanity project” is when an artist veers off of the more established artistic (and in most cases, the more commercially palatable) path of the familiar sound that the fans know, love, and indeed expect in order to indulge what often turns out to be a brief artistic whim.
Although the results of these so-called vanity projects can be successful, and in some cases even embraced (as was the case when Springsteen chose to record and tour an entire album of Pete Seeger’s vintage folk songs—complete with all the accompanying fiddles and hoe-downs), they are still almost always a shock to the fans at first.
In the case of Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions, the initial surprise eventually gave way to something more like a reluctantly acquired taste, and then a final acceptance for many of his fans. He is Bruce Springsteen, after all. Other examples like Elvis Costello’s album of classical chamber music with the Brodsky Quartet (or roughly about two-thirds of Joe Jackson’s entire catalog, for that matter) wear off far less easily.
Bands like Radiohead, on the other hand, have built their entire careers on this type of artistic indulgence. Much as some Radiohead fans are actually still waiting for that follow-up to The Bends or OK Computer (neither of which are probably coming anytime soon, by the way), in this case, the more devoted followers of the group actually expect something different with every release. Many of these fans are in fact disappointed when they don’t get something that radical.
To many fans, Young’s so-called Geffen Years during the eighties represent something like a series of these vanity projects on steroids. For even more of them—especially those who were actually devoted enough to stick it out through all of his bizarre experimental excursions into rockabilly, country, blues, and the rest—it must have also seemed like the artist had at least temporarily lost his mind.
Never mind the wondering amongst these long-suffering fans about how long, if ever, it might take for him to actually make a “Neil Young album” again. David Geffen wondered the same thing, so much so that he eventually made it the basis of a lawsuit against the artist. Even so, you still had to wonder if there would be enough Neil Young fans left after all of the eighties weirdness to actually still care.
Young’s closest peer as the greatest American songwriter rock music has ever produced, Bob Dylan, was already making his own series of less than stellar records at about the same time—albums that for the most part remain forgotten today, as they probably should be. The thing about such forgettable albums as Empire Burlesque, though, is that even if they may have been bad Bob Dylan albums, at least they were still somewhat recognizable as being actual Bob Dylan albums.
As for Neil Young?
Again, let’s just say that it was tough being a Neil Young fan in the eighties.
A New Design
The album that most often comes to mind as signifying Young’s lost decade in the eighties is 1982’s Trans.
At the time that it was released, the computerized syntho-pop of Trans was such a shock to fans both of Young and of rock ’n’ roll in general that a significant number of them simply refused to give it a chance. It remains one of only a handful of Neil Young albums that have never been issued in America on compact disc (it is, however, readily available as a Japanese import). Critics of the day who were normally quick to sing the praises of Young, likewise unanimously turned their noses upward in their reviews for publications like Rolling Stone.
Interestingly, in the decades since it was first universally panned, the album has enjoyed something of a popular and critical renaissance. In articles like “Defending the Trick of Disaster: Neil Young’s ‘Trans’ Reconsidered ” (for Pop Matters), modern-day Trans apologists like Zach Schonfeld have become as quick to defend the album as their eighties counterparts were to dismiss it.
In his own very well thought-out defense of Trans, Schonfeld writes: “Though steeped in cold, processed synths and mechanical textures, Trans is far from emotionless. Pay attention and you’ll find some of the most personal and chilling music Young ever recorded, its emotional core endlessly belied (but never undermined) by the icy, Kraftwerk-style exterior.”
A decent argument can also be made that Trans has had a lasting influence on subsequent generations of rock musicians. It isn’t a stretch, for example, to draw a direct line between Trans and the cool, electronic minimalist rock of Radiohead on albums like Kid A, Amnesiac, and The King of Limbs.
In particular, there are striking similarities between the way Thom Yorke uses his high-pitched, haunting falsetto as an instrument complementing Radiohead’s densely layered textures, and the way Young’s electronically altered vocals on songs like “Transformer Man” convey the same sense of emotionally detached ambience.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Radiohead occasionally will weave in a few lines of Young’s classic “After the Gold Rush” during live performances of the Kid A track “Everything in Its Right Place.”
We R in Control, We R in Control
Of all the genre-hopping wackiness that Neil Young became infamous for during the eighties, though, there are certainly any number of examples one could point toward as being less sincere, more misguided efforts than Trans (Everybody’s Rockin’, anyone?).
But Trans alone remains the most visible reminder from that strangest of periods in Young’s long career. Fairly or otherwise, the album that marked his brief flirtation with a Kraftwerk-influenced, synthesized brand of rock continues to be a flashpoint in the so-called eighties debate even now.
Even so, the album performed much better on the Billboard charts at the time than you might expect, peaking at a rather respectable #19. The fact that this happened despite a lack of any real support, either on radio or from the record company (even though the album represented his Geffen Records debut), has to be considered somewhat remarkable in retrospect.
The fact is, the techno-pop-flavored sounds of Young’s then newly synthesized music would have fit right in with MTV’s playlist at the time—heavy on videos from British syntho-pop acts like Soft Cell and Duran Duran as it was.
Still, Geffen refused to bankroll a video for Trans, even though Young offered to match the estimated $250,000 budget with his own money. The fact that the album still sold as well as it did was most likely due more to the curiosity factor than anything else.
Young’s concept for the Trans video involved a hospital filled with robotic workers trying to get a baby to push a button, which of course was a metaphor for Young’s own search for a communications breakthrough with Ben.
“That’s what the record’s about,” Young told Jimmy McDonough in the biography Shakey. “If you listen to all the mechanized voices, if you read the lyrics, listen to the voices, it’s clear that it’s the beginning of my search for a way for a nonoral person, a severely physically handicapped nonoral person, to find some sort of interface for communication.”
While Trans will never be mistaken for a classic Neil Young album on the same level as Tonight’s the Night or Rust Never Sleeps, it has developed more than its fair share of fans in the years since it first shocked the music world back in 1982. As such, it holds up surprisingly well today.
Island in the Sun
Trans is an uneven album to be sure, owing mostly to its mixing of the electronically enhanced songs and all of their accompanying vocoders and synclaviers, and the much mellower-sounding leftover tracks from an aborted album recorded in Hawaii called Island in the Sun.
Young himself once described Island in the Sun as a collection of material further exploring his obsession with Indian culture (“Like an Inca”) and his more mellow-sounding, tropical “water songs” (“A Little Thing Called Love”). On songs like the latter, the description mostly fits, since the leftover songs from the Hawaii sessions are also uncharacteristically watered down by the studio technology of the day.
Geffen ended up rejecting Island in the Sun altogether (it was supposed to be Young’s debut album for the label) in favor of the far more left-of-field Trans project, which had by now expanded from an initially planned E.P. into a full-blown album.
In retrospect, this has to be considered somewhat ironic, since the former was probably the closest thing to the commercial album of more traditional “Neil Young” music that the label head had so publicly salivated for. Although the songs from the unreleased Island in the Sun (at least the ones that have been heard) are largely forgettable, they are still much closer to the more commercially palatable “Neil Young sound” cited by Geffen in his breach of contract lawsuit against the artist for refusing to make “Neil Young records.”
Two of these songs, the lightweight pop of “Little Thing Called Love” and the slightly heavier-sounding “Like an Inca,” bookend the otherwise electro-pop-heavy Trans album, making it almost seem like Young was still hedging his bets with this strange new musical direction.
By bookending Trans with more traditional-sounding songs, Neil Young actually seemed to be hiding the more heavily electronic-sounding tracks in the middle of this album.
Said the Condor to the Praying Mantis
Without question, Trans is one of the most controversial albums in the history of an artist with an already long record of making controversial albums. It is an album that even today divides Neil Young fans right down the middle.
Mostly, you either love it or you hate it. What is clear today, however, is that Trans was also a pivotal album in his career. The startling shift in musical direction—however briefly it lasted—and its equally stunning rejection by fans undoubtedly exercised a strong influence on Neil Young’s career direction, for better or for worse, for many years to come.
The leftover songs from Island in the Sun remain the weakest tracks of the record. “Like an Inca” in particular becomes something of an afterthought, once it is stacked up against the much more powerful “Hitchhiker” version of the song that was eventually released on 2010’s excellent Le Noise.
The album also has its share of goofier moments—the mechanized treatment of Young’s Buffalo Springfield classic “Mr. Soul” comes most immediately to mind here. But for every misstep on the album, you’ll also find more than a few keepers.
Once you can get past the barely recognizable voice of Neil Young channeled through a vocoder, “Sample and Hold” continues to stand up as one of his better-sounding rockers from the eighties (especially on the blazing live version heard on the now hard-to-find Live in Berlin DVD).
Promotional poster for Neil Young’s 1982 debut album for Geffen Records, Trans. The Kraftwerk-influenced synth-pop of this album divided Neil Young’s fans right down the middle and signaled the beginning of his infamous, genre-hopping, “lost eighties” period.
The guitar parts here sound a bit more restrained than they do on more traditional, extended Neil Young barn burners like “Cowgirl in the Sand.” But in their own way, they are just as powerful.
The solos here come in short, staccato bursts that stand in sharp contrast to the more drawn-out jamming of Young’s better-known work with Crazy Horse. Even so, it is hard to imagine that if “Sample and Hold” were placed on a latter-day album like Ragged Glory, for example (with the amps turned up a notch or two), the song would not be the least bit out of place.
As one of the better, mostly undiscovered rockers in the Neil Young canon, “Sample and Hold” more than holds up today.
Power in Your Hand, Transformer Man
The other most misunderstood thing about Trans (at least at the time) was the way that, unbeknownst to the general public, the lyrics were so directly influenced by Neil Young’s family situation and the health crisis hanging over his son, Ben.
If there is an overall lyrical theme to the album, it is certainly Young’s ongoing search for a communications breakthrough for his severely handicapped son. Many of the lyrics of the songs from Trans serve as a metaphor for Neil Young’s search, and none more so than “Transformer Man.”
Listening to the lyrics of “Transformer Man” now—channeled through the vocoder treatments as they are—you can hear both the stark loneliness felt by a son trapped by the limitations of his own brain and body, and the love of a father searching desperately for that ever elusive answer.
When Neil’s voice is run through the vocoder on this song, it takes on an eerily detached quality that at least one reviewer referred to as otherworldly. The description fits. On “Transformer Man,” Young’s voice sounds like something channeled from the furthest reaches of outer space.
Taken in the proper context that we as listeners can understand now all these years later, Ben Young was clearly the “Transformer Man” that Neil Young was referring to in lyrics like these: “Transformer man, Transformer Man … Every morning when I look into your eyes/I feel electrified by you. Oh yes.”
Ten years later, Young would resurrect this song on a beautifully stripped-down acoustic version for MTV’s then popular Unplugged series. This performance, which can be heard on his 1993 Unplugged album and DVD, reveals one of his most hauntingly beautiful songs, once removed from the admittedly distracting electronics of the Trans version.
“Transformer Man” may very well be one of Young’s most underrated songs. It is certainly one of his loveliest.
When He Turns the Floodlights On Each Night, of Course the Herd Looks Perfect!
The release of Trans also coincided with Young’s public reemergence as a touring artist.
On paper at least, the Trans tour was designed to be a massive spectacle on the same scale as similar undertakings by rock-’n’-roll legends from the classic rock era like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. In terms of execution, it proved to be anything but.
Inspired by a Rolling Stones stadium extravaganza he had witnessed on that band’s 1981 Tattoo You tour, Young’s return to the concert stage—at least in his mind—was designed not only as his coming out party, but as his own way of proving that he was in the same leagues as the big boys.
To that end, he hired Woodstock veteran Chip Monck to stage the sort of elaborate production spectacle that would blow the rest of his fellow sixties and seventies rock legends clean out of the water. Unfortunately, this ultimately proved to be a bad idea.
As an artist, Young obviously falls into the same legendary category as people like the Stones, of course. But let’s face it, as a performer Neil Young is no Mick Jagger or Robert Plant. He may well be one of the greatest songwriters rock ’n’ roll has ever produced, and he is certainly no slouch as a guitarist either. But when one thinks of Neil Young the artist, showmanship isn’t likely to rank high on a list of his more notable attributes.
Looking back now on existing video documents of the European shows from the Trans tour, what one sees is an artist who is not really matched up to the big show atmosphere at all. Seeing Young all dressed up in the ridiculous eighties new wave rock attire of the day is actually quite humorous now—especially when his stylish new wave tie gets tangled up in his guitar during the solo on “Like a Hurricane.” This is actually one of the funnier things that can be seen on the now hard-to-find Live in Berlin video.
But there were numerous other factors that doomed the Trans tour right from the start.
Although the set list was equally balanced to reflect all aspects of Young’s career, the audiences mostly sat there stunned. The crowds responded favorably to the rockers like “Cinnamon Girl,” of course, as well as the folkier, more familiar material like “Old Man.”
But they also sat on their hands in silence during the much more alien-sounding new songs from the then still unreleased Trans.
For this biggest of Neil Young tours, the band—an all-star lineup consisting of players from all of his greatest albums like Ben Keith and Nils Lofgren—were likewise top-notch. At least they were when players like Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer actually decided to show up sober. After an incident of heavy drinking that resulted in Young physically attacking Palmer in a hotel room after one show, Palmer was fired from the tour, only to later be rehired.
Another factor that doomed the Trans tour of Europe from the start was the staging.
Viewing the ramps that ran into the crowd today on existing documents like the Live in Berlin DVD, one can see an early precedent for the now standard multilevel staging of present-day stadium tours by superstar bands like U2.
But at the time, the logistics of transporting this equipment from city to city proved to be near impossible. These impracticalities, as well as Young somewhat overplaying his hand by booking shows in oversized venues he simply couldn’t fill, only further compounded the nightmares of producing a stadium-sized show like the Trans tour. Once all of these factors were figured into the overall equation, it became abundantly clear that Young had a gigantic loser on his hands.
By the time the Trans tour made it back to the States, things became scaled back to a series of shows featuring a mostly acoustic evening with Young, along with a few leftover twists from the European shows like the big screens used for the Trans TV segments. Hosted by emcee Dan Clear (played by actor Newell Alexander), the video bits played between sets, and included live-action shots from the crowd and backstage.
But things were about to get even weirder as Young still had one surprise left up his sleeve. The world was about to meet the Shocking Pinks.