Weekly Neil: Razor Love
You really make my day with the little things you say
Look at the above image. Really study it. Can you make out what’s happening there?
Certainly a human figure, right. That much is clear. Hands on hips, too. The aesthetic is rustic but pixelated, almost like an Old West wanted poster run through a digital wash.
Or a Game Boy Camera.
The story goes that Neil’s daughter, Amber Jean (now an impressive visual artist in her own right), captured this on the handheld gaming console. It perhaps spoke to a sign of the times when this album, Silver & Gold, hit stores in April 2000. Here’s a look at that old folkie Neil Young in the new millennium.
It’s not quite as binary as all that, of course. Neil’s first real technologically iconoclastic album cover was 1982’s Trans, and the artwork speaks to the odd identity of the album itself. (The opener is a country tune, “Little Thing Called Love,” immediately followed by a synthesizer experiment called “Computer Age.”) Silver & Gold, by contrast, is an analog album warmed by acoustic numbers that tell of love and devotion.
That his then-teenage daughter, Amber, created its defining image using what is now considered a beloved childhood artifact adds to the coziness of the LP. Neil’s in rare form throughout, nostalgic for his days in Buffalo Springfield and spinning yarns of “grassy hills of the railroad town” amid images of his parents. “Our kind of love never seems to get old,” he sings on the title track to his then-wife, Pegi. “It’s better than silver and gold.”
It’s a markedly different approach than he took on 1985’s Old Ways, where he embraced modern country sounds and ended up with a distinctly mid-’80s document. Silver & Gold hews closest to Harvest and Comes A Time, and even to the sparseness of Hitchhiker — without all the forlorn longing and drug-addled confusion of the ‘70s. The result is an oaken testament to Neil’s staying power. He was 55 years old when the album came out, and he still had plenty to say. No song here cements that legacy better than “Razor Love.”
“You really make my day with the little things you say.”
The lyrics of “Razor Love” seem to be directed at a lover, with Neil expressing some regret about the love he has to give — the kind that cuts clean through. And yet he reflects on his time constantly on the road, thinking of those silhouettes on the window while watching out for the greedy hand. I can only hear it as the plea of a husband and father who’s coming to terms with his lot in life. As a husband and father who has spent a good portion of this summer away from his own family, I can confirm that “the little things you say” are worth miles when you’re angling to feel that connection.
Let me take a minute here. As Morgan Enos wrote in 2020, Silver & Gold never rushes; “it lingers.” I’ll do the same.
I’ve been a father for only a year and a half, but it already feels like a lifetime. I can’t remember what my life was like before there was a little cherub around to say little things that make my day. As I write this, my daughter said the word “umbrella” for the first time this week. It’s the most minuscule moment, but it means the whole world.
I don’t have a Game Boy Camera to give her. My old one is in a box in my parents’ storage garage — or in about 12 pieces in a landfill somewhere. But I’ve got a smartphone, and I’m sure she’ll have one of her own soon enough. (Lord help me.) I can’t wait until she takes my photo for the first time.
If I were a folksinger, I’d make it my album cover. If it was 1999, maybe I’d hang it on the fridge. I’ll probably just make it my wallpaper background on my phone. And it’ll make my day.
“Razor Love,” written by Neil Young, from Silver & Gold (2000)
Neil Young: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Ben Keith: pedal steel guitar
Jim Keltner: drums, percussion
Donald “Duck” Dunn: bass
Spooner Oldham: piano