ABOUT GREENDALE: NEIL YOUNG MAPS A WORLD IN MUSIC


Greendale, the sprawling, audacious, multi-faceted album from Neil Young, is a signal event in the career of an artist who has regularly exploded the expressive boundaries of modern music.

Part family saga, part political protest, part spontaneous creative combustion, the ten tracks of Greendale tell the story in song of the Green family, a Northern California clan balanced between the waning promises of the past and the waxing potential of the future.

The creative impetus behind this epic musical panorama of modern American life harks back to Young’s own childhood. At age three, he approached his father, a sports journalist and novelist, and asked what he was writing. “I don’t know until I write it,” was the reply. “Then I read it and I know what it is.”

It was the same spirit that sparked the remarkable speculative world of Greendale. “I’ve never written songs like this before,” Young told audiences during the recent solo European tour that served to introduce the Greendale canon. “I bring them into the studio day by day. I have no idea how this came along.”

In similar fashion, Greendale has taken on a shape-shifting variety of forms, starting with the upcoming Reprise Records release, which expands the musical palate from solo voice, guitar and harmonica into the capacious realms of Young’s legendary backing band, Crazy Horse.

Along with the album of Greendale, there is a bonus DVD disc included featuring a live solo acoustic concert Young performed earlier this year at the Vicar St. Theatre in Dublin. The disc includes all the songs from the album, along with commentary from Young on the music, as well as other past favorites.

Greendale has also been rendered as a full length movie, shot on location in Northern California over three weeks by Young, with a cast that includes his wife Pegi Young and longtime collaborator, Ben Keith. Taking, according to the artist, “the script from the songs,” the actors in Greendale lip-synch to the tracks, fashioning what Young calls “a song you can look at.” The film is scheduled for a fall premiere.

Even the release of Greendale is taking an innovative turn. Individual songs are being unveiled at the rate of one a week on Young’s website, www.neilyoung.com, which also highlights extensive additional information on the town’s environs and inhabitants, including a town map, biographies of the major characters and a Green family tree. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, meanwhile, are currently on a barnstorming North American tour, performing the groundbreaking work for concert audiences coast to coast.

“I just let them out,” concludes Young on the music of Greendale, which includes such instant classics as “Falling From Above,” “Bandit” and “Be The Rain.” “I never tried to make things fit together. I just kept on going… continuity wasn’t that important. Then I found out later that the continuity was golden all the way through.”