Weekly Neil: Human Highway, With Dominic Angelella
The singer-songwriter tells why Neil's songs feel so cinematic
This is Weekly Neil, a newsletter about Neil Young. This week, I’m excited to feature a conversation with musician and great guy Dominic Angelella about “Human Highway” — its numerous iterations, Neil’s lyrical change-ups, and how Dom thinks many of Neil’s songs are heavily influenced by cinema. In the case of “Human Highway,” a song that dates back to at least 1973, Dom sees it as a sci-fi film (and has, in fact, watched some of the actual 1982 sci-fi film of the same name that Neil co-directed). Find out why below. Then listen to Silver Dreams Don’t Move Me, Dom’s album from 2022, and buy a t-shirt if you’d like.
When I interviewed Dominic Angelella last fall about his album Silver Dreams Don’t Move Me, he mentioned Neil Young’s penchant for combining sheer noise with pretty acoustic melodies — and what he takes from that model. “I’ve always wanted to make skronky noise-pop punk stuff, and then also really enjoyed just playing the acoustic guitar,” he said, on a FaceTime audio call from Ireland, where he spends part of his time these days. “I think obviously this is why so many people become obsessed with Neil Young because he is very good at both of these things.” This newsletter may have been born in that very moment, perhaps subconsciously.
I agree with Dom. Neil is a master of two worlds: the noisy and the serene. This is why he’s been affectionately called the Godfather of Grunge. And I’d argue it makes the quieter bits more fascinating to know he could’ve turned up the knobs and let Old Black howl but ultimately didn’t. “Human Highway” is an acoustic folk song, complete with harmonica and, on 1978’s Comes A Time, gentle harmonies from Nicolette Larson. But it’s heavy, man. It doesn’t even need the guitar noise to convey its weight.
Weekly Neil: Technically, “Human Highway” got a definitive version by being released on Comes A Time in 1978. But because there are so many different versions, you get the sense that he didn’t consider that necessarily definitive.
Dominic Angelella: There’s that Songs For Judy recording where he says, like, “Here’s an old song I wrote a long time ago and never could get it to record. Every time I tried to record this song, someone stepped in and stopped it.” It made me think about Hitchhiker, because the version of “Human Highway” on Hitchhiker is so much better than the one on Comes A Time. It’s just so raw and cool. When it came out, I was so stoked because it felt like that was the direction he wanted to after Zuma, the return to the folk with what he picked up from the Ditch Trilogy era. It’s rougher and more raw and also way more apocalyptic and negative.
WN: There’s a version on the Archives that was recorded with Crosby, Stills & Nash from ‘73, a studio recording. You listen to that and you’re like, this could have been “Helpless 2.”
Dom: I was listening to it this morning. It’s amazing. It’s so cool that there is a version of this song for every era of Neil. There’s even a Year Of The Horse one where it just feels like a real classic ‘90s Crazy Horse song. I think the first time you hear “Human Highway,” it almost sounds like a weird throwaway. And then the deeper you go, you just realize that it’s kind of a perfect song. It just feels like the whole thing about, you know, a song is good if you just hear someone play it on guitar or piano and sing it. That Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version is amazing. Like, their harmonies doing the upper partials and just creating whole new chords on top of how simple the song is, it’s really beautiful.
WN: From your perspective as a songwriter and musician, are factors like that a part of why you’re drawn to “Human Highway,” or is it more from a lyrical standpoint?
Dom: This has been my whole thing about Neil Young since I’ve gone deep is that I feel his love of movies really shines in his songs. Some of his songs are Westerns, and some are ‘70s Hollywood classic, sort of like Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon era. Some of his best songs are sci-fi, and that includes “After The Gold Rush.” This one is in the vein of that, where the lyrics are so vague, but it brings across these really strong images of post-apocalyptic walking through America. Coming down off the mountain to the human highway and needing to be cleaned. He’s writing about living through the ‘70s in this very big way that feels universal and timeless. To me, this is “After The Gold Rush” but with what he picked up from his staring-into-the-void era. I don’t know when he wrote this song exactly. I guess it was probably around 1970.
WN: The Archives have a scanned-in lyric sheet from 1973, but it could’ve been earlier.
Dom: Yeah, ‘73 makes sense. Another one is “I’m The Ocean” — all those songs feel connected to me. Whenever there’s a songwriter who makes music throughout decades, I get obsessed with trying to link up how the songwriter uses their language throughout time. With him and any of the great sort of traditional American songwriters, you can see it, and I love that. To me, the song feels like it’s in that tradition.
WN: It is funny to think of Neil still releasing 17-minute songs now, which he definitely still does, like “Chevrolet,” and then Bob Dylan releasing “Murder Most Foul,” which is also like 20 minutes long and a long meditation on the murder of JFK. They’re still doing what they've always done, but it’s fascinating to see how everything they’ve learned throughout decades informs the template that they’ve always had.
Dom: This is a very different analog, but I I really like that about billy woods. Someone like billy woods is like a modern Neil because he’s consistently following his muse. His verses and his songs are his day-to-day life, but it switches from the abstract to the very direct and very on-point, and I just think using language like that and putting out everything you do and compulsively making music is the most exciting thing someone can can do. [His new album] is one of the best records I’ve ever heard about going on tour.
WN: “Human Highway” is a folk song, but as you said, there are sci-fi elements to it. There are interesting lyrical images that are at odds with the presentation of the song, which is an interesting trick.
Dom: He loves the lone cowboy thing. The lyrics change in some of these versions, like, it’s generally “I married the DJ’s daughter,” and then some of them are a little different. But I just like this whole thing of him coming down off the mountain into humanity and, you know, marrying the daughter of some kind of like wealthy suit and then having a price on his head. It could also be a Western too. But yeah, I think a lot about his love of movies. I even watched the first 10 minutes of Human Highway, the Devo/Neil Young movie, this morning. It’s really funny and interesting to see him and his old hippie buddies. Also just realizing he’s the same age that I am now in ‘82, and most people think that his best years are behind him. Watching him just direct this movie and play an idiot, I’m like, man, mortality really is crazy. It strengthened the whole sci-fi comedy element because the movie is that.
WN: It’s funny to think of Neil Young and Devo together, but in ‘82, that’s exactly what he was doing.
Dom: I was reading that a lot of those songs ended up on Trans, which is, you know, a woefully misunderstood record. I that’s the thing, is that my favorite music is always a little shitty. I think the best thing about Neil is that he’s not afraid to get kind of shitty sometimes. When I shitty, I’m sort of saying it a little tongue-in-cheek. What I mean is little mistakes left in, unafraid to be perceived as bad, etc. Just kind of trying to find your vision and just, you know, being unafraid to go through some murky waters to get there. I was on tour two years ago, and it was like a real-life Vince McMahon meme. We were listening to Barn, and we were just like, this record sucks, five minutes. Slowly, we said, actually it’s sick. Actually, it's great. The fact that it just sounds kind of like a bunch of dudes hanging out jamming is good.
WN: You mentioned being a Ditch Trilogy purist. Was that your first exposure to Neil, or did you get established with, like, Harvest and go deeper?
Dom: I was on tour with Drgn King, and we were staying at this kid’s house in Columbus, Ohio. I remember very, very strongly how the room looked — this is some Marc Maron shit, I’m sorry. But I have to embrace the cringe of being a fan of music. The low-lit room where he’s explaining to me about how the second half of On The Beach is unmastered, about the honey slides. The whole myth of it is so strong that I just couldn't resist. I just listened to that record for months and months and months. When I found out that it was really a part of a larger era, I just probably, from [ages] 27 to 30, just spent so much time listening to those three records. They all really affected me, just the way the way the lyrics were written. He just is in such a strange place, and I’ve just always been really attracted to raw but poetic writing. It wasn’t really until after that that I got deeper with the earlier stuff. Sometime after that, I discovered Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere as more than just something on my dad’s shelf. At the same time that Crosby came out with If I Could Only Remember My Name. Those two records sound so similar. Just the feeling of them is so special. But the beginning for me was Ditch Trilogy.
And then reading Shakey opened me up to “Sugar Mountain” and all the ones that he wrote when he was a kid. Someone said about Lorde’s Melodrama, you know, people don’t normally write about that era when they are that age. Listening to Neil Young write about becoming a young man as he is a teenager becoming young man. Most of the time when you’re that young, your thoughts are just like a confusing mess of gibberish.
WN: Yeah, and he had some real clarity at that point.
Dom: Yeah, he’s a wild, brilliant person. All right. I’ll talk to you soon. I’m gonna go get some Chinese food.
Dominic Angelella’s latest album, Silver Dreams Don’t Move Me, is $8 on Bandcamp.
“Human Highway,” written by Neil Young, from Comes A Time (1978)
Neil Young: guitar, banjo, vocals
Nicolette Larson: harmony vocals
Ben Keith: steel guitar
Karl Himmel: drums
Tim Drummond: bass