Late Nite Music- Neil Young, “All Along the Watchtower”

As I listen to Neil cover this Bob Dylan song he released on the John Wesley Harding album back in 1967, I can’t help but see a montage of images in our time.  Geithner before Congress (No reason to get excited…) , Madoff, home foreclosure signs (businessmen, they drink my wine), flag-draped boxes carried reverently across the tarmac, Cheney sticking up for torture, Mancow being waterboarded, Sean Hannity blustering (Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late), the soldier in Afghanistan joining his buddies in repelling a Taliban attack wearing boxers and flip flops and his helmet, the dark funnel cloud of an F-5 tornado, a hurricane blows the on-scene weatherman out of frame, Obama and Biden (all along the watchtower, princes kept their view), Paris, Britney, Lindsey (while the women came and went), unemployment line (barefoot servants too)…..

Neil is, of course, Neil.  Like Dylan, there is some strange, powerful gift he has been given, and he has honed that gift over the span of his career.  And like Dylan it’s too easy to assess Neil in caricature, dismissing him as some sort of  post-relevant Grandpa Granola (Devo’s affectionate nickname for him when he toured with them back in the 80’s).

When I see Neil play like this it makes me want to cash in whatever it would take to get a Les Paul electric and learn to play the thing tuned to the D string.  And I’ve talked to enough folks to know I’m not the only one.