Features Disc of the day
Fred Neil
Fred Neil
(Capitol, 1966)
Bona-fide classic from one of folk’s true outsiders…
For someone who always charged his songs with such a powerful emotional current, Fred Neil – supremely gifted songwriter and mainstay of the Greenwich Village folk scene – revealed very little throughout his years of making music. A man who liked to keep himself very much to himself, Neil released five albums betweem 1964 and 1970. This Capitol release is his best, painting a crystal clear picture of a troubled soul beset, as he sings in Badi-Da, by “an aching pain”. Combining coffeehouse blues with hee-hawing country progressions, the songs on Fred Neil are for most part weary, lonesome tales from a rain-soaked nowhere-land - a place where his sonorous vocal echoes resoundingly.
From the electric shimmers of The Dolphins to Green Rocky Road’s bluesy repetitions, each track remains untouched by the passage of time. Only during the final bluegrass-hypnosis of Cynicrustpetefredjohn Raga do we momentarily catch a glimpse of the Eastern flavours then snaking their way into the mainstream. This is very much Fred’s world. Everybody’s Talkin’, the rolling ballad that would finance Neil’s retreat from the music industry after it became a hit for Harry Nilsson in 1969, manages to meld a dazed lyric (Everybody’s talkin’ at me / I don’t hear a word their sayin’) with an upbeat desire to escape (“I'm goin' where the sun keeps shinin… Goin' where the weather suits my clothes”) back to his Florida homeland. He’s detached and dissatisfied, the outside world a constant, unstoppable distraction. By all accounts, this was Fred Neil through and through. Over the years Bob Dylan, Tim Buckley, David Crosby and John Sebastian (who played harmonica on Neil's Bleecker & MacDougal album) have all cited him as a major influence. “I still don’t know exactly where I’m going myself,” he told Hit Parader in 1966. He’s not the only one.
Ross Bennett
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 15/01/2009
Further Listening
Richie Havens – Mixed Bag (Verve, 1967)
John Sebastian – John B. Sebastian (Reprise, 1970)
Fred Neil – Bleecker & MacDougal (Elektra, 1965)
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