Baker's Dozen

Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives

7.

Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night

I think he’d come off a couple of deaths in his band and road crew and a lot of weird shit happening and there was that hangover, that post-hippy thing. He seemed fried, you know? Someone who’d burned the torch a lot, I can relate to that. I know from reading the Shakey biography they’d been eating honey slides, which is marijuana cooked into honey, and they’d just take spoonfuls of it and kind of nod off. You feel like it’s a lot of people wearing sunglasses indoors, like they’re learning the songs and recording them at the same time. ‘Tired Eyes’ is brilliant – he’s seen too much and he’s trying to make some sense of it. It’s Neil Young at his most emotional, but not in that pure country way, not in that big rock Crazy Horse way, but in the middle, exhausted.

Selected in other Baker’s Dozens: Lord Spikeheart, Tom Ravenscroft
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