Weekly Neil: Unknown Legend

She gets the far-away look in her eyes

Have you ever seen the film Rachel Getting Married? It was directed by Jonathan Demme, and it’s terrific. It might be my favorite movie, if you asked me right now. It also might be the one that helped lay the groundwork for the Anne Hathaway backlash of the late aughts/early 2010s, though that frankly remains none of my business.

I love Rachel Getting Married for many reasons (more later). One of them involves what happens when Rachel does, in fact, get married — hope that’s not a spoiler. Tunde Adebimpe from TV On The Radio (the groom) sings to her during the ceremony. He doesn’t play himself; he plays a guy named Sidney. Sidney clearly loves both Rachel and Neil because the song he chooses to sing a cappella during his vows is “Unknown Legend.”

The first time I saw the film in 2019, I’m almost ashamed to say I didn’t know the song. 1992’s Harvest Moon, like a lot of later-period Neil, is an album I’m still getting around to. But in the film, something about the sway of the the melody clued me into the fact that I might know who originally sang it. It sounded familiar, the way an old church hymn might if one pops up in a TV show, even if you haven’t been in many years. “Unknown Legend” is nothing like a church hymn, I should say. It’s gentle and self-assured and not a drop more saccharine than it needs to be. It is, in fact, much less saccharine than the song “Harvest Moon,” to which I danced with my mother at my wedding. I love “Harvest Moon” deeply. But “Unknown Legend,” like the subject of the song itself, is cool and just out of reach, even as it still feels knowable.

“Somewhere on a desert highway, she rides a Harley-Davidson,” Neil sings on the chorus about a former waitress and free spirit who’s domesticated herself but who still gets that “far-away look in her eyes” from time to time. In the film, Sidney crucially changes her appearance to match Rachel’s. Instead of “her long blonde hair flyin’ in the wind,” he sings about a brunette. Rachel joins in at certain points the way a nervous but excited bride might but ultimately lets Sidney serenade her as both her and her sister, Kym, wipe away tears.

It’s an otherworldly enterprise when you meet the person you fall in love with and ultimately decide to marry. Sidney and Rachel are so sure. You can see it in their eyes — no far-away looks, but a loving openness. Their eyes ask, “Where are we going?” But they don’t panic not knowing the answer. They’re eager to find out together. When Neil paints this portrait as he sings about “the chrome and steel she rides colliding with the very air she breathes,” he captures a delightful bit of synergy: the motorcycle zooming through time and space, and the Unknown Legend there to hoover it all up.

Mac DeMarco used to cover “Unknown Legend” on tour, twisting it up and bending it to the point of questioning, “Is this a joke?” When I asked him about that earlier this year, he expressed huge admiration for Harvest Moon and insinuated it doesn’t get its due in Neil’s full catalog. “We used to cover ‘Unknown Legend’ every night. I mean, we kind of butchered it, but we try and pay our respects to Neil,” he said. “He’s sick. He’s amazing. He’s Neil Young. What can you say?” Even when he’s not entirely serious, “Unknown Legend” still sounds amazing. The parts are all there.

If we’re to understand Harvest Moon as a spiritual sequel to 1972’s Harvest — the album that made Neil a household name — “Unknown Legend” is as spacious as crisp as those barn songs from 20 years prior. Three of the Harvest players appear here as well (Ben Keith on pedal steel, Tim Drummond on bass, and Kenny Buttrey on drums), though it’s notable that the former two also played on 1978’s Comes A Time. That album, more than Harvest, feels more like a sonic precursor to Harvest Moon. And so it makes sense that “Unknown Legend” dates back to those late-’70s sessions. There’s even a song called “Motorcycle Mama” on Comes A Time, which illustrates an alternate history where Neil pivoted solely to roadhouse country blues and never returned.

“Unknown Legend” is very much not of that ilk. It’s gentle. One of its key characteristics is a chunky acoustic guitar-pluck riff that lingers in the air, just as Neil’s delicate descriptors do. Is it about his second wife, Pegi? Is it about his first wife, Susan Acevedo? Is the Legend in question a composite character? Factually, it seems like it. But that misses the point. Sidney identifies what it is about Rachel that makes the song make sense for their vows — a quality felt spiritually.

The main reason why Rachel Getting Married knocks me out is because all of the music is diegetic — that is, everything we hear as the audience is also heard by the characters. A wedding band appears in multiple scenes warming up for the ceremony, and their skronking soundtracks tense moments as well as seemingly mundane interactions between members of Rachel and Kym’s complicated family. “I wanted all the music to happen in the moment,” Demme says in a video featurette. “I thought, let’s get a lot of terrific musicians to be their friends. Let’s leave a lot of instruments laying around. Let’s have some of their friends create original music for the ceremony and for the dance, and what have you.”

The musicians would play downstairs while a scene was filmed upstairs, not knowing precisely what was happening or when an actor would hit a cue or a line of dialogue. The result is mesmerizing and organic. “That’s the important thing, not just the spontaneity but the simultaneous creation of both the picture and the soundtrack at the same time,” Amir ElSaffar, who plays trumpet and santoor, says in the same clip.

This is what makes the “Unknown Legend” moment so affecting. After a weekend of stressful planning, surfacing tension, and unexpected moments, a man sings a sweet and pure song of love to his bride. And for a moment, everything is right.

“Unknown Legend,” written by Neil Young, from Harvest Moon (1992)

Neil Young: guitar, harmonica, vocals
Linda Ronstadt: vocals
Tim Drummond: bass
Kenny Buttrey: drums
Ben Keith: pedal steel guitar
Spooner Oldham: piano
Tim Mulligan: mix