Weekly Neil: Speakin' Out

I've been a searcher, I've been a fool

Have you ever been to the movies intoxicated? It’s fun until it’s not. Right now, I’m not keen on the idea of altering my consciousness to enhance entertainment experiences — makes it all smooth together into a harmonious “it was good” instead of creating normal ups and downs where the visceral moments stick out and create lasting memories. But also, yes, I have been to the movies drunk before. Sometimes it was planned, sometimes it just happened.

Neil is likely drunk and even more likely stoned when he opens “Speakin’ Out.” The title of the song suggests an important treatise or a moment of rising up, like he’d done previously on “Ohio” and even “Southern Man.” But here, he’s simply speakin’ out about going to the theater.

I went to the movies the other night
The plot was groovy, it was outta sight
I sat with my popcorn out looking for good times
Lost in the cartoon, I grabbed a lifeline

The cynic reads these lyrics and is confounded. Why make a song for such an incident? The next verse opens with the answer: “I’ve been a searcher.” You can find a lot inside a cinema. The structure is often likened to a church, and for good reason. A certain type of worship goes on inside. There are pews and an altar. Ideally, you leave having found community and a feeling that the divine is slightly more tangible.

That second verse, though, is really about love. Neil’s been a long time coming to that almighty “you.” He’s hoping for your love to carry him through. You’ll be holding his baby and he’ll be holding you. What a serene scene. It’s outta sight.

The final words in this tune provide plenty of fodder for folks whose biggest beef with Neil is his inscrutable songwriting. No one seems to argue about his musical ability. But the lyrics themselves — what exactly is one to make of an image like “the notebook behind your eyes”? How can we reckon with the visual of a psychedelic television looking both inward and out?

When your decision comes to view
I’ll be watching my TV
And it’ll be watching you

I wrote about this a bit with “A Man Needs A Maid” — a song Jeff Rosenstock has since called “inarguably horrible” — but Neil spent a portion of the early to mid 1970s with actress Carrie Snodgress. He fell in love with her onscreen. She was playing a part that he could understand. But as he’d eventually note in the devastating “Separate Ways,” they had a kid and they split apart in ‘74. “Speakin’ Out” was recorded near the end of their union, in ‘73. He’s still singing about that strange gaze when his love is as big as a panoramic screen because she’s actually on that screen. But he’s still lost in the cartoon.

The lyrical deep dive given to “Speakin’ Out” here really doesn’t do justice to why this song is great. It’s simply a good hang. Neil’s got the Crazy Horse rhythm section here, plus Ben Keith on pedal steel and once and future Crazy Horse staple Nils Lofgren on guitar. “Alright, Nils,” Neil commands midway through, signaling that the time has come to have a little fun. “Speakin’ Out” is not a rocker. It’s led by a tipsy saloon piano and a staggering tempo. At the risk of belaboring the point, it’s a hammered affair.

But it’s magnetic. There are two likewise sloshy performances on the Archive from shortly after the recording of Tonight’s The Night. Ahead of one, captured at the Roxy in West Hollywood, Neil sets a hedonistic mood: “Welcome to Miami Beach, ladies and gentlemen.” It sounds nearly indistinct from the album version — they’re both loose hangs. When you press play, you’re on a beanbag chair in the corner of the room. The bong’s on the glass coffee table a few feet away. What kills me is how Neil ends these performances, like he does on record, by yelling the name of the song. He spends the intervening minutes struggling to make much of a point at all, but he’s still speakin’ out!

It’s a far cry from the cozy interiority Neil established with his solo acoustic performances in the early ‘70s. “Speakin’ Out” is fucked up, man. It’s eerie and spooky and it makes you glad to know these guys came out okay on the other side. And it’s all of those things while also being a song about, wouldn’t you know it, going to a groovy movie whacked out of your gourd. Out looking for good times. As Neil admits later in the tracklist of Tonight’s The Night, “Old times were good times.”

“Speakin’ Out,” written by Neil Young, from Tonight’s The Night (1975)

Neil Young: vocals, piano
Ben Keith: pedal steel guitar, vocals
Nils Lofgren: guitar
Billy Talbot: bass
Ralph Molina: drums, vocals