Nurse the Hate: Neil Young "Hitchhiker"

I just came into the latest Neil Young archive release “Hitchhiker”.  Young recorded this “lost album” in a single night in 1976 at a session in Malibu.  It’s just him and an acoustic doing early versions of songs that appeared later like “Powderfinger”, “Captain Kennedy”, “Pocahontas” and “Ride My Llama”.  There are also two unreleased songs making it even more of a necessity.  The quality of the recording is impressive.  You can feel the spontaneity and 1970s buzz to the record from the pot giggles before tracks to the sparse and soulful playing.  I can’t stop listening to it.  It’s very pure.

I think the first time I saw Neil Young was when I was 22.  He was playing an outdoor shed show near my house.  I went with my then girlfriend and a crew of my boys.  I started to feel sort of weird before we left the house.  This hard to define feeling would come to me a few more times in my life, like a massive storm cloud brewing in the distance.  One of those storm clouds that has green edges to it that indicate it’s going to be very bad but is so unnatural and unique that you can’t stop looking at it.  What’s always interesting about those storms is how beautiful they are from a distance and how warm, lazy, and breezy the weather is right before they hit.  You can feel something is going to happen, and it’s probably not going to be good.  This was the case for me as well on that night.

I remember being in the back seat drinking cans of beer.  It was early September where the late afternoons were very warm but when the sun went down a chill would creep in.  I felt OK, but this odd foreboding started to creep in.  We listened to “Decade” on the drive.  Every stoner I knew listened to a lot of Neil Young.  I was OK with Neil, going to the show more as a check mark on my “rock legends I have seen” list.  My buddy Brian was driving.  He was really into Neil Young.  The volume was loud.  The beer was cold.  I started to feel a little warm and woozy, assuming the beer was taking over.

We sat on the lawn on a couple of cheap blankets.  People sat around us smoking tons of pot.  My head started to feel like a balloon.  I realized I had a fever rolling in like a massive wave.  It was all about timing now.  I was going to be very sick, but the question at this point was when (not if) it was going to crush me.  The Neil Young and Crazy Horse set started.  I recall “Hey, Hey, My My” being the opener.  People went crazy.  He sounded really good.  I settled in.  My girlfriend could tell something was wrong.  Her eyes showed me I must have looked shaky.  Then like a monster wave the fever broke on top of me.  I was curled up on the blanket.  I remember a “Powderfingers” that lasted a long time and a “Like a Hurricane” that went on for maybe a week.  I was hallucinating at this point, sweat pouring from my head, and shaking from chills.  I had to lean on Brian to get up the hill to get to the car when the show ended.

I was in my bed for the next 36 hours.  I was sweating through bed linens, twisting back and forth as my muscles convulsed.  In my head, the Neil Young show played over and over.  Those songs are stamped in my head.  He played all the big ones.  “Sugar Mountain”, “Cinnamon Girl”, “Down By the River” and “Tonight’s the Night”.  In my head, his current single “This Note’s For You” kept coming in and out.  I had a temperature of 105 at one point.  I remember hearing some of my friends real far away talking about if they should take me to a hospital.  However, I was certain I was a casualty in the Union Army in the Civil War and would not survive the wagon ride.  Meanwhile “Down By The River” screamed in my head.  They all sort of freaked out when I explained that I had already died and would be back, so don’t load me onto the wagon.  “YOU ARE LIKE A HURRICANE!!!” Neil sang in my head.  Then the show started over in the beginning.  That’s what happened for a day and a half.

I had a different relationship with Neil Young’s music after that.  It was sort of like surviving a massive unwanted acid trip.  Someone had taken a cheese grater to my brain.  I now had a certain fear and respect for the power of Young and Crazy Horse.  I was wrung out.  Later I saw an interview where Neil talked about the band saying “You have to be careful not to spook the Horse.”.  I know what he meant.  That damn band was powerful.  I paid attention to Young and Crazy Horse after that.  You should too.  Check out “Hitchhiker”.