Weekly Neil: Cortez The Killer

I still can't remember when or how I lost my way

A lot to say about “Cortez The Killer.” One thing that should be celebrated up front, though, is the poetry of beginning a song this way: “He came dancing across the water.” Neil’s not a poet by any stretch but he knows when to pick a good verb. “Then I saw black and my face splashed in the sky” is a great line from “Powderfinger” made memorable and visceral, even upsetting, by that word “splashed.”

“Dancing across the water” suggests joy and glee and ease of motion, all aspects that perhaps Hernán Cortés embodied as he approached the land he would come to conquer and end an empire. But the song withholds the “galleons and guns” until the second line, focusing first on the sheer majesty of an arriving ship. It’s no coincidence “Powderfinger” begins similarly with the image of an unfriendly visitor on the water. The songs were first recorded around the same time in the summer of 1975, nearly 50 years ago.

And still so much left to say. The bloodshed and legacy of Cortés. Colonialism in general. Neil’s ongoing fascination with Indigenous culture (see also: Broken Arrow, “Hitchhiker”/“Like An Inca,” “The Last Trip To Tulsa,” and many more) without, perhaps, much interrogation. “What the fuck am I doing writing about Aztecs in 'Cortez The Killer' like I was there, wandering around?” he told biographer Jimmy McDonough. “'Cause I only read about it in a few books. A lotta shit I just made up because it came to me.”

The fact that my introduction to it came courtesy of Dave Matthews Band and Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes, who duetted on it during a 2003 concert in Central Park that I listened to often as a teenager.

But lately, the story has been centered around the song’s so-called “lost” verse, which Neil penned and even recorded during the Zuma sessions in May 1975 with Crazy Horse. A power outage or maybe a blown circuit caused the tape to stop rolling, so that final verse wasn’t captured, apparently prompting Neil to remark later that he never liked it anyway. A half-century later, on tour this summer with Crazy Horse, he’s dug out that final verse and taken it for a spin every night to open the show. He sings:

But I floated on the water,
And I ate that ocean wave.
Two weeks after the slaughter,
I was livin’ in a cave.
They came too late to get me,
There’s no one here to set me free,
From this rocky grave,
To that snow-capped ocean wave.

I mentioned this last week, but I’ll be seeing Neil and Crazy Horse on Saturday in Connecticut. I believe I’ll hear this and it’ll probably seem strange, like your dad suddenly getting a new hairstyle after rocking the same cut your entire life. But it also won’t be anything like that, probably. It’s just a song. Do those words change the meaning? Not really. A postscript isn’t necessary in “Cortez The Killer.” Neil returns to that haunting image of a great conqueror dancing across the water and calls him what he is, a killer. Then it’s over. No real need to talk about who’s narrating.

Then again, I’ll have no clue how I actually feel about this until I hear him sing it.

Speaking of, it’s an interesting and downright bold song to choose to cover. Musically, it’s quite simple: three chords in double drop-D tuning, airy strums, plenty of room to explore and stretch out a bit. The lyrics seem straightforward though they’re clearly highly personal. (“I know she’s living there, she loves me to this day / And I still can’t remember when or how I lost my way” is a wild thing to drop into the middle of all this.)

Some notable folks have covered “Cortez.” The aforementioned Dave Matthews Band jam with Warren Haynes on a wailing Les Paul. Slint, sounding sludgy. Built To Spill, who reached 20 minutes with their mildly psychedelic version. Dinosaur Jr. have dug into it. All these make sense as guitar-heavy choices.

I like the quieter ones, too. Squirrel Flower, the moniker of singer-songwriter Ella O’Connor Williams, covered “Cortez The Killer” at SXSW earlier this year and just released a live recording of her version, which is somehow both incredibly graceful and shred-tastic. A big part of that is who she chose as her backing band for this feat, including Kai Wilde of the slowcore band Teethe who innately understands that this song needs continued forward momentum and occasional dynamic changes that nudge the action into the arena of the sublime. I also like how Alex Peterson, of the great noise band ALEXALONE, plays guitar here. With Ella, they are just two of five guitarists who contribute here. I have a Spotify playlist called “Open” where I drop mind-altering noise compositions that I have strong (positive) reactions to. ALEXALONE’s “Eavesdropper” anchors that collection. There’s synergy between that vibrating, hypnotic motion and “Cortez” as brought to us by Ella and her collaborators, mainly because there are five guitars employed here to bring the song to 10 minutes in length, as it always seems to require.

Ella wrote that her version was an attempt to fight back against powerful forces creeping in:

I decided to cover “Cortez” with my friends as a way to feel the power of community amidst the fascism surrounding us that week in Texas. I love Neil Young and his uncompromising convictions, so I thought this song would be the perfect expression against everything going on. I had the idea the day before the show. Alex offered up their practice space, we ran through it a few times, and then Dimitri and Greg joined the crew day-of. We put it all out there with this one. In the words of Neil, it was ‘one of the pleasures of my life to be able to be on this stage with these people.’

Sounds good to me. Whoever can help you get to the place, right? I’ll see you all on the other side of the journey. More to come after I hear “Cortez” in full this weekend. Walk on.

“Cortez The Killer,” written by Neil Young, from Zuma (1975)

Neil Young: vocals, guitar
Frank Sampedro: guitar
Billy Talbot: bass
Ralph Molina: drums