Album: B-side to The Loner
Released: February, 1969 (written 5 years earlier)
A few years back, Brother Joe and I found ourselves in downtown Nashua,
New Hampshire on a drizzly Thursday nite.
We’d had dinner and were now looking for a place to knock down a pint or
two. After canvassing a few blocks we
finally settled on a rustic place by the river called The Peddler’s Daughter,
where we wandered in and bellied up at the bar.
This being just after a day at the office, Joe was dressed for success
and I was most likely dressed in casual civvies with perhaps several days’
worth of facial growth; which at one time was standard fare for me and a good
number of my USGS colleagues (Joe regularly jokes that a beard is a
prerequisite to working at my agency).
It was not long before we got
the sense that we were being watched. The
two of us took a look around and began to take in the fact that we were by far
the oldest ones in the pub. Yes, this
was a very young crowd that surrounded us, and a number of them had already
come to this same conclusion. There was
a snicker to our left, and an offhand ‘old man’ comment to our right. Joe and I chuckled. A few of the young whippersnappers did the
same. And then we all carried on with
our own agendas until Joe and I decided we’d do better to find another
locale. No biggie, but it was clear we
were out of place (on our way out the door, I do believe I heard a comment from
inside about it being past our bedtime).
I recollect now that somewhere along the lines that evening I thought
of Sugar Mountain; that place in Neil
Young’s dreams where “you can’t be 20,
though you’re thinking that you’re leaving there too soon”. Young wrote Sugar Mountain - a song that laments the loss of youthful innocence
- on the occasion of his 19th birthday. This amazes me, because you would think that
a song on such subject matter would be written after the fact. But
that would not be Neil Young’s style.
Even at such a young age, he was looking at the world through a slightly
different prism than most of us.
Neil Young has stated that he wrote over 120 verses for this song, but
in the end he chose just 4 of them for the official recording. The lyrics focus mostly on his then-recent
experiences at the tender age of 18, but do not discard his even-younger days
(for example with his parents at the fair).
It’s perfect that he covers the gambit of his lifetime experiences to
that point, because the dividing line is made clear: Life before and after the age of 20. This is a major demarcation, because it’s
around this time that many of us break off on our own. One key line to the song is the following:
Now you say you're leavin'
home
'Cause you want to be alone.
Ain't it funny how you feel
When you're findin' out it's real?
'Cause you want to be alone.
Ain't it funny how you feel
When you're findin' out it's real?
As I listened this week, I recalled that moment for me so clearly. It was the end of the summer of 1980 and I
would be off to college the very next day.
I was feeling as if my whole childhood was flashing before my eyes as I
packed my stuff. As I’ve discussed in
other entries, Franklin was such a great place to grow up and it was all I
really knew to that point. This transition
was going to be tough and it was all hitting me at once as I loaded my Lincoln
Mercury Capri for the drive west down the Mohawk Trail. I’d ultimately make the adjustment, but will
never forget that feeling. To this day
it remains a powerful memory.
What was I leaving behind? Well,
what do most of us leave behind? There’s
family, and friends, and jobs, and hangouts.
There’s the first time you did this and the first time you did
that. There’s this 7-year-old memory
over here and that 17-year-old memory over there. There are the uptown experiences and the
natural experiences and the educational experiences. There’s that sense of naïve wonder and risky
discovery and youthful exuberance and unrestrained joy. Moving on from such a comfort zone can be
difficult (but paradoxically, oh so necessary).
Sugar Mountain captures it all
in song.
This week, listening to Sugar
Mountain again and again, I reconnected with those bygone days. In the process, I got thinking: What were those never-heard lyrics in the
other ~ 120 verses of Sugar Mountain
anyhow? Some of them must have been very
good, because Neil Young has stated that one of the verses he retained, about
being “underneath the stairs and giving
back some glares” was intentionally chosen despite the fact that he thought
it was the worse of them all. Why do
this? I believe it goes back to that
ideal of youthful innocence and naivety:
Why exclude the emergence of a songwriter from such a concept?
Still, I chewed more on those lost verses and decided to fill in some
of the gap myself. And so, in an attempt
to honor the spirit of Sugar Mountain,
below are my own 4 verses:
Family
treks in the Volkswagen Bus
The
bond was there in all of us
It
was felt regularly at home
And
reaffirmed each time we roamed
Now
you’re hiking the railroad track
And
your friends have got your back
Conversation
can run deep
All
this meaning you hope to keep
Back
at home after a long night
Chair
in the kitchen looks just right
So
you sit, talk to old faithful
And
reflect on why you’re grateful
So
it’s almost time to go
Daily
life that once seemed slow
Catches
up in record time
Now
your leaving on a dime
The iconic image of Neil Young arising on top of those super-sized
speakers in the movie ‘Rust Never Sleeps’, was my first real inroads into
connecting with Sugar Mountain. In this opening track to the movie and
concert ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGI5wGp2tXA
) , Young impresses upon us the emergence of a songwriter. But it’s more than that. What is really being portrayed here is the
emergence of a man. And yet as the
lyrics to Sugar Mountain attest, this
is a man who is not going to forget what got him there.
The fortunate among us are those who can relate.
-
Pete
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