Weekly Neil: Winterlong
It's all illusion anyway
I’ve been enjoying taking my daughter on long walks. The sidewalks in our neighborhood remain covered in leaves, crispier by the day. This makes for delightful stomping and crunching in her tiny boots.
Fall is great. Winter still comes. Here we are, talking about the weather.
Neil first recorded “Winterlong,” a song you’ll swear you’ve heard before, in 1970 with Crazy Horse. They assembled onstage at The Fillmore East in New York in early March for a set of rock and roll songs including a killer 12-minute “Down By The River” and a 16-minute “Cowgirl In The Sand.” In ‘70, with the crackling electricity of his new band, this is how Neil reinvented himself. A few days after these shows, he released Déjà Vu with Crosby, Stills & Nash, cementing his status as a world-conquering folkie. (Three months later, he’d put out “Ohio” and continue his rise.)
But you could never contain Neil. He was writing songs like “Winterlong,” which he had in his back pocket dating back to quiet acoustic shows in ‘68. He teased it in Ann Arbor ahead of a Buffalo Springfield tune — “That’s a new melody,” he tells the crowd with reserved glee. Then he brought it to Crazy Horse, where Danny Whitten sang co-lead, like he did on “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown.” The difference between those songs, as the band expresses on the Fillmore East recording, is vast.
“Downtown” is about scoring drugs. As such, it’s got a touch of swagger and recklessness. “Winterlong,” as a mopey love song with a melody that sounds at home on CVS speakers, frankly doesn’t quite work in the electric full-band style. It’s fascinating. That’s likely why it never made it to a proper album tracklist. But he tried it live with Crazy Horse, here, in 1970, with Whitten’s lonesome voice complementing the twang of their twin guitar tones.
Neil tried it again in ‘73 with most of the same crew, and Harvest pedal steel player Ben Keith swapped in for Whitten, who had since died. That version made it to his greatest-hits collection Decade in 1977. Keith’s contributions add to the loneliness of the track, and his vocals are a bit smoother than Whitten’s were. Sonically, the entire enterprise could’ve fit into On The Beach. It’s got a similar vibe to “See The Sky About To Rain” and was cut just two days before “Walk On.” Of course, that would’ve made On The Beach a different album, but not by much.
That makes “Winterlong” stand alone: an also-ran that simply never quite worked the way it ought to have. But resurrected live with Lukas Nelson and Promise Of The Real in 2015, it sounds just as blue and fragile as it did in the early ‘70s. “Winterlong” also leads off the alternate-universe On The Beach tracklist Neil released as part of the Archives series 1973-1974, ahead of “Bad Fog Of Loneliness” and “Traces,” tunes with similar baggage. (That one also puts “Ambulance Blues” as the centerpiece instead of the closer — absolutely mental.)
So, why “Winterlong”? Because it’s getting cold, man. Because it’s a song of yearning penned by a young man who didn’t overthink it. “Waiting to follow / Through the dreamlight of your way.” Not Pulitzer material by any measure. But I get it. The best lines of the song are Neil singing “come back now” and letting out a pained sigh. It doesn’t get much more direct than that.
When the leaves are all gone and the world turns a sad shade of brown, “Winterlong” really hits. When you’re waiting out a gray season and you’ve got little else to hold onto, a line like “You seem to be where I belong” feels about as cozy as a nip of whiskey by a fire.
In a parallel timeline, you’re hearing it right now as you pick up your beta blockers at the corner pharmacy. It’s taking a long time, like winter. You get it, even if it’s also just a bit off. A sweater’s shape ruined in the wash. An interminable checkout line. It’s all illusion anyway.
“Winterlong,” written by Neil Young, from Decade (1977)
Neil Young: vocals, guitar
Ben Keith: pedal steel guitar, vocals
Billy Talbot: bass
Ralph Molina: drums, vocals