Did John Lennon and Neil Young have a good relationship?
Neil Young and John Lennon are two of the biggest heroes in the history of rock and roll. Lennon, of course, found fame in the Beatles and was arguably the most politically minded of the Fab Four, epitomised in the songs of his solo career. Meanwhile, Young had first shot into stardom as part of Buffalo Springfield before joining the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash. Later, he then went on to have his own excellent solo career.
The relationship between the two men is somewhat hard to explain. Evidently, they both had some modicum of respect for one another, although they were not exactly friends. Lennon had gone on record to say that he disliked Young’s lyric in ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ which stated: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”
Of the lyric, Lennon said: “I hate it. It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don’t appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or dead James Dean or dead John Wayne. It’s the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero – it’s garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. I don’t want Sean [Lennon] worshipping John Wayne or Sid Vicious. What do they teach you? Nothing. Death. If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn’t he do it? Because he sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us. No, thank you. I’ll take the living and the healthy.”
Then again, Lennon also said of Young, when asked what kind of music he was listening to in 1970: “I like a few things by Neil Young. There are some really good sounds. I only heard Neil Young twice – you can pick him out a mile away, the whole style. He writes some nice songs.”
Later, following John Lennon‘s death, Neil Young paid tribute to Lennon in two of his songs. Firstly, on 1995’s Mirror Ball and the track ‘Peace and Love’, Young sang: “Peace and love/Lennon’s goodbye/Over now/Living in time/A broken bell/A nursery rhyme/Deserted by heroes/Strangers in your own land/No way to deny you”. Evidently, Young had missed Lennon since his tragic murder in 1980.
Young also gave praise to the songwriting prowess of Lennon on ‘Devil’s Sidewalk’ from the 2003 album Greendale, where Young sings: “One thing I can tell you/Is you got to be free/John Lennon said that.”
Young had also covered Lennon’s classic ‘Imagine’ track after the tragedy of the September 11th bombings in the United States. He performed a rendition of the track at a live broadcast benefit concert called ‘America: A Tribute to Heroes’. The performance was reportedly heart-wrenching, with Young on the piano, accompanied by a small string section. It was a fitting song to aid in the difficulties that many people were going through at the time.
Other than that, there is not an awful lot said by Young about Lennon, so it ought to be noted that it is clear that Young clearly had much respect for his contemporary and that he deeply missed his presence in the world of music. Meanwhile, the traditionally spiky Lennon also evidently admired Young’s work, though he was known to go off on something of a vicious diatribe when something rubbed him the wrong way. For these reasons, I don’t think we ought to read too much into Lennon’s comments on ‘Rust Never Sleeps’.