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Ragged Glory and Arc-Weld
As his first album released in the new decade—and his first official recording with Crazy Horse since 1987’s spotty-at-best Life—Ragged Glory is the album most folks cite today as the one that solidified Neil Young’s artistic resurgence in the nineties.
1989’s Freedom had, of course, already set the table the year before (to the point where even now, some fans mistakenly insist that the album was actually released in 1990). Freedom also has the edge in terms of memorable songwriting—there is nothing on Ragged Glory that comes anywhere near the status of “Rockin’ in the Free World,” being a universally recognized song.
But when it comes to the sort of reckless and joyously rocking abandon that fans have come to expect from the records he sporadically makes with his greatest band, 1990’s Ragged Glory was the best Neil Young and Crazy Horse album in many a moon. Ragged Glory rocks with every bit of the intensity of the loudest material on Rust Never Sleeps. It also recaptures the free-form, improvisational spirit of Young’s very first album with the Horse—the 1969 classic Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
Like that album’s two most memorable songs, “Down by the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” Ragged Glory’s center lies with a pair of lengthy tracks that serve as launchpads for some of Young’s most incendiary guitar playing in years. “Love and Only Love” and “Love to Burn” are noteworthy entries in the Neil Young canon not so much because of their lyrics (although the latter contains such uncommonly personal lines as “where ya taking my kid?” and “why’d ya ruin my life?”), as they are for the blazing—and long—guitar solos that take place in between them.
In retrospect, it’s amazing that these ten-minute-plus guitar opuses haven’t become more of a permanent fixture in those concerts where Young decides to turn the amps up to eleven with the Horse. There is little doubt they would fit right into that particular mix. The fact is, although Ragged Glory’s two “Love” songs are somewhat lesser known, either one could fill the “Hurricane” or “Cortez” spots in a set list for a Crazy Horse show quite nicely.
Dogs That Lick and Dogs That Bite
Taking the Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere analogy a bit further, “Fuckin’ Up” likewise fills the “Cinnamon Girl” spot as Ragged Glory’s most perfectly constructed blast of FM ready rock (even though it never had a chance at airplay for obvious reasons).
On the two videos for the song that appear on the now rare, five-song Ragged Glory VHS video album, just about the only thing separating “Fuckin’ Up” from a chunky slice of AC/DC-styled hard-rock stupidity is the lingering feedback at the end (something Young would devote an entire album to a short time later—but more on that in a minute).
Like the other videos on the long out-of-print Ragged Glory VHS, “Fuckin’ Up’ appears to take place in the barn where the song was recorded. In the Julien Temple–directed clip, Young is particularly animated—he screams the lyrics at everything from his reflection in the mirror to the inside of a dirty old toilet bowl. The other version of “Fuckin’ Up,” directed by Rusty Cundieff, concentrates more on the rest of the band, while a small crowd is served drinks in a makeshift bar below the stage. The loose video storyline centers mainly on a busty Jessica Hahn lookalike who gets a drink strategically spilled on her while a subtitle reads “this band is fucking amazing.” Truly priceless.
In addition to the two clips for “Fuckin’ Up,” the five-song Ragged Glory video includes “Mansion on the Hill,” “Over and Over,” and Young’s perfectly lascivious cover of the garage classic “Farmer John.” The latter is particularly hilarious, and features a very funny cameo spot from guitar tech Larry Cragg, who gets in the faces of skirt-chasing band members as a pitchfork-wielding Farmer John.
“Fuckin’ Up” is easily the most radio-friendly song on Ragged Glory, at least once you get past the obvious problem with actually getting it played due to the lyrics. Aside from that, “Fuckin’ Up” also ranks as one of the funniest Neil Young songs ever.
But either “Mansion on the Hill” or “Farmer John” could have just as easily been radio singles on a perfect Neil Young and Crazy Horse album.
Which are just two more reasons why Ragged Glory qualifies as being exactly that.
In the Valley of Hearts, There’s a House Full of Broken Windows
Before Ragged Glory could become that album, however, there were some considerable obstacles to overcome. First off, there was the none-too-easy task of getting back together with Crazy Horse, not to mention with the only man who could honestly produce such a record, David Briggs. With the bruised egos and hurt feelings that were surely felt all around since the last time he had left his former partners in crime (save for Poncho Sampedro) lying in the proverbial lurch, this had to represent quite a balancing act for Young.
As much as all the parties involved had to be chomping at the bit at the chance to work once again with the newly anointed “Godfather of Grunge,” this would require the notorious control freak Young to act in the sort of diplomatic role that he was quite unaccustomed to. Diplomacy has never been one of his strong suits, or at least it hadn’t been in any previous dealings up to that point.
In the beginning, he would promise Briggs and Crazy Horse everything they asked.
This most notably included a change of recording locale from the Broken Arrow Ranch, where Briggs in particular rightfully felt that Young was distracted by side interests like the Archives project and his growing passion (renewed from childhood) for Lionel model trains.
In the end, Young somewhat predictably reneged on most of these promises. Most significantly, Ragged Glory was recorded primarily live in the equipment barn at Broken Arrow after all (although Briggs won a small victory when Young agreed to have the album mixed at Indigo Ranch in Malibu).
However, Young did deliver on one crucial point—and that was his promise to Briggs, Billy Talbot, and Ralph Molina to just let the Horse be the Horse. This allowed much-maligned drummer Molina in particular to shine. Once removed from the weird drum sounds of Young’s eighties productions with Niko Bolas, Molina’s drumming on Ragged Glory turned out to be some of the most solid of his entire career.
By the time it was all over, Briggs would be gone (again), the Horse would be predictably at each other’s throats, and Neil Young’s hearing would be left severely damaged. Both Briggs and Crazy Horse would eventually be back, of course. Young’s hearing, unfortunately, would not. As much as he was able to overcome earlier bouts with polio and epilepsy, years of cranking up the amps far beyond levels considered tolerable to the rest of us humans had finally caught up with him.
Even so, this would not stop Young from embarking on the single loudest tour of his entire career.
Try to Not Spook the Horse
One of the weirder but oddly endearing tracks to emerge from the Ragged Glory sessions is “Don’t Spook the Horse,” a seven-minute train wreck of a song that showed up as a B-side to the CD single of “Mansion on the Hill.”
The song, said to be inspired when Crazy Horse “played like shit” after Briggs showed up unannounced at one of the sessions, is a glorious mess for which Young is said to have recorded his parts, quite literally, with one foot in a bucket of horse shit.
Young himself has said that “Don’t Spook the Horse” is a response to critics of Crazy Horse’s more notoriously looser, sloppier-sounding grooves. As such, it basically reads as a laundry list of all the reasons why it is ill advised to “Spook the Horse.” Based on the song—which quite understandably has never enjoyed a wider, more commercial release—we find it hard not to disagree.
The CD single of “Mansion on the Hill” is today a bit of a collector’s item, largely due to the inclusion of “Don’t Spook the Horse” as its B-side.
Hounds That Howl Through the Night
For the huge tour booked to support Ragged Glory, Neil Young and Crazy Horse found themselves playing sold-out arenas for the first time since the seventies. For support acts, the tour also wisely chose to capitalize on Young’s increasing “indie cred” within the alternative rock community by booking such respected young alt-rock noisemakers as Social Distortion and Sonic Youth (the still rising Nirvana were also approached—by Sonic Youth—for a spot on the tour, but for unknown reasons turned down the gig).
On paper at least, this mix of young cutting-edge bands with a newly cool again legend like Neil Young seemed to be a great idea, and as a PR move it was.
In execution, however, the results were decidedly mixed. Much of Young’s older fan base—as thrilled as they were to see their hero back with Crazy Horse and seemingly at the top of his game again after the strangeness of the eighties—still were somewhat nonplussed by the brasher, more abrasive sounds of the youngsters.
There were also complaints about the sound from openers like Sonic Youth, whose Kim Gordon has since gone so far as to suggest that they were getting sabotaged by Young’s crew—and in particular by engineer Tim Mulligan—during sound checks.
As he does every year, Neil Young headlined the 1994 Bridge School Benefit show at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.
Courtesy of Tom Therme collection
The show I personally witnessed on the Ragged Glory tour in Seattle largely supports this allegation. As loud as Sonic Youth can be live, their noise making barely registered a whisper in the sold-out Seattle Center Coliseum. There have also been complaints over the years that the star of the show himself was conveniently inaccessible to the opening bands on the tour (although in fairness, Sonic Youth have gone on record as saying that Young did take their side over the sound check problems with Mulligan)
In spite of all this, as well as the usual infighting amongst band members that come as natural to Neil Young and Crazy Horse as feedback, the shows themselves were knockouts. Young was playing some of the loudest, fiercest-sounding guitar of his rock-’n’-roll life, and the notoriously “on” or “off” Crazy Horse were definitely in an “on” mode for more of the shows than not.
A few of the old props from the Rust Never Sleeps days were also brought back for the concerts—including those huge oversized Fender amp mockups (which actually hid Young’s own customized P.A.). But the shows were largely no-frills affairs devoid of the theatrics of his previous forays into arena rock territory. For the most part, the Ragged Glory tour just featured Neil Young and Crazy Horse playing their asses off.
An ad for Weld, the live three-CD Neil Young and Crazy Horse album from the Ragged Glory tour. A three-disc version of this album, Arc-Weld, was also released with the third disc consisting of nothing but feedback.
The Ragged Glory tour kicked off at right about the same time Young learned that his mother, the notoriously cantankerous Rassy Young, had passed away.
Feisty as ever right up until the end, Rassy’s death seemed to stir something deep within Young’s own sense of artistic restlessness. Along with the first Gulf War (which he vehemently opposed, breaking away from his brief eighties flirtation with right-wing Republican politics in doing so), it is these two events that seemed to most fuel the incendiary performances of the Ragged Glory shows.
A live album from the tour was an obvious no-brainer.
A Spirit Came to Me and Said You Gotta Move to Start
Weld, the two-disc live collection from the Ragged Glory tour released in October 1991 (along with its expanded three-disc companion Arc-Weld), certainly captures the essence—not to mention the sheer bone-rattling volume—of the Ragged Glory shows well enough. As an overall live document, Weld is a magnificent snapshot of all the sound and fury of that amazing and historic tour.
Still, the album is not without its flaws.
On the CD version, these largely come down to the sound mixing. After completing a seemingly perfect mix for the album, David Briggs famously threw up his hands and left in disgust when Young still wasn’t satisfied with the results. Briggs’s abrupt departure left Young and Billy Talbot to complete the task, which they proceeded to mix into the ground, resulting in the bass-heavy murk heard on the CD release.
In its final form—and despite the less-than-perfect mixing job—Weld still stands as a decent enough live album. If nothing else, it is certainly Young’s loudest. Still, the bass heavy mix mars what could have been a perfect concert document, as do repeat appearances of concert warhorses like “Cortez” and “Hurricane” that add little to the live versions first heard on Live Rust a decade prior.
Fortunately, the original David Briggs mix of the tapes survived, and—if you can find it today—can be heard on the accompanying Weld video document. Here, the sound is much brighter, and in many ways Larry “L.A.” Johnson’s concert film is a much better, more uniquely organic snapshot of all the (pardon the pun) “ragged glory” of a great Neil Young and Crazy Horse concert. Johnson’s minimally shot footage adds considerable impact to Young’s performance of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” for one thing, as the screen shots from the Gulf War hammer that song’s antiwar message home.
But the real stars of this video are the members of the audience.
Where shots of fans in the crowd often tend to be irritating in concert videos (especially from this period before modern technology changed the rules of the game), here they are quite entertaining.
You’ve got eighties headband guy playing the air drums. Balding Chinese hippie dude flails his arms wildly. And of course there’s the nerdy African American chick with the buck teeth in the front row, who knows the words to every single song. Definitely my kind of gal.
If there ever was a more perfect picture of the broad cross section of fans making up a rock concert audience in the early nineties, then by all means sign me up to see it. Sadly, the Weld concert film—like so many of Young’s vintage videos—has long since been relegated to the out-of-print status of a now overpriced collector’s item.
The Weld concert film is one of those items from those long-lost “Archives” that literally screams to be brought back. Are you listening, Neil?
But what makes Weld the most unique concert document of Neil Young’s career is without a doubt the Arc disc that can be found on the likewise now rare three-disc edition of the album. Reportedly conceived as the result of a suggestion by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Arc is a thirty-five-minute montage of nonstop feedback from the shows. This also made for one of the coolest promotional items ever in the form of the promo-only “Arc: The Single.”
It is to this day one of the most prized possessions in my own record collection.
Arc-Weld—especially on the now rare video mix—to this day stands as perhaps the single best document of Neil Young and Crazy Horse doing what they do best, which is shaking the basketball arenas of America to their very foundation.
However, with both Crazy Horse and David Briggs gone for the time being, and with his own ears by now irreparably damaged, Young was about to embark on a very different direction for his next record. By this time, unexpectedly shifting gears had become as natural for him as the way a chameleon changes its colors.
Laminated all access backstage pass from Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s Ragged Glory tour.
Even so, few expected that Young was finally going to make the long-awaited sequel to his biggest hit.