Neil Young

Fork in the Road (Reprise)

Neil Young’s topicality forever courts disposability. 2006’s Living With War and Are You Passionate? an administration earlier still ebb Bush-era bathwater. Yet when today transcends tomorrow, as on 1979’s Rust Never Sleeps and Freedom a decade later, there’s no stopping this “Old Man” whose ’59 Lincoln Continental drives these latest headlines. Rust job Johnny Rotten becomes Road killer “Johnny Magic,” flooring his now-green “heavy metal Continental” from Wichita to Congress as the “motorhead messiah.” The succeeding “Cough Up the Bucks,” another truck-stop chug, shrugs, “It’s all about my car … and my girl – it’s all about my world.” Young’s whinny on opener “When Worlds Collide” and the Crazy Horse tones detailing “Just Singing a Song” go straight to the heart of that world. So does “Get Behind the Wheel,” whose descending riff outcurves its lyrical vamp, while back-to-backs “Off the Road” and “Hit the Road” wreck on the highway just ahead of Road beacon “Light a Candle.” The closing title jam bristles live (“There’s a bailout coming, and it’s not for you”). No one dashes ’em off like Neil Young.

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This article appears in April 10 • 2009.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.