Sunday Music – Borrowed Tune

Posted on Sun 11/27/2011 by TonyfromOz

Today’s music video is ‘Borrowed Tune’ from Canadian singer/songwriter Neil Young.

This video was posted to You Tube by azcarf44

When you like music so much, it’s always a difficult thing when someone asks who your favourite band or singer is.

There is just so much good music down through the years that naming just one excludes so much other good music that I like.

If I was pressed, I would reluctantly name my favourite band as Pink Floyd, and my favourite artist as Neil Young.

I started to really like Neil’s music from the release of the beautiful album ‘Harvest’ from 1972. That prompted me to then go out and get hold of the three solo albums he produced prior to ‘Harvest’, the albums with Crosby, Stills and Nash, and his early stuff with Buffalo Springfield, and from then on to get each of his new albums as they came out.

Oddly, when asked my favourite singer, and the reply is always Neil, the usual response is along the lines of, ” how can like a voice like that?”

It’s a hard thing to place your finger on just why it is that people like certain singers, and then like nearly everything they bring out.

Immediately following the release of the ‘Harvest’ album, Neil embarked on a long tour to promote the album, and during that live tour, songs were lifted and selected for a new album, to be titled ‘Time Fades Away’.

Because Neil has performed with a large variety of musicians, either as front man for a band, or as a solo artist, it might seem that his ‘sound’ and theme changes quite often.

During this particular tour, he was with his new band, the people he performed with on that ‘Harvest’ album, a band called The Stray Gators.

Fans were widely expecting the sound from Harvest, almost soft(ish) Country Rock, and when the band and Neil debuted new material on the tour, some of the songs with a hard rock edge, some of those songs were not received all that well, people expecting the mellow almost laid back sound of ‘Harvest’.

This new rock material was all put together for a new album, and scheduled to be released immediately following that ‘Harvest’ album.

This new live album, ‘Time Fades Away’ was released in late 1973.

The sound from this new band was almost reminiscent of the time Neil spent with an earlier band Crazy Horse, and in the main, people were expecting the mellow Stray Gators and not this band with a hard edge.

Around the same time Neil was working on a new studio album, also with The Stray Gators, and this album was to be titled ‘Tonight’s The Night’.

The album, almost in its totality is an expression of grief, and maybe, a little also of disillusion

During the tour following ‘Harvest’, and leading up to this album, Neil lost two very close friends to accidental drug overdoses, Danny Whitten from Neil’s former band Crazy Horse, and also Bruce Berry, a close friend of Neil’s and also one of the band’s ‘roadies’.

The album reflects the despondency Neil feels at the loss of two friends, and because it is (in some way) almost dark in nature, the album was not all that well received by Neil’s record company, and its release was shelved for two years, and while recorded in 1973, it was not released until 1975.

In the interim, Neil recorded and released the live album, and also a new studio album, ‘On The Beach’.

In 1975, he eventually persuaded the record company to release ‘Tonight’s The Night’.

At the time, these three albums immediately after ‘Harvest’ did not sell well, but now, looking back, this album, ‘Tonight’s The Night’ is looked upon as one of Neil’s great albums, and it marked a turning point for Neil in his long career, and the album (while the music from it was not popular at the time of, and immediately following the ‘Harvest’ tour) became one of Neil’s ‘must have’ albums for those fans who follow Neil’s music.

This album is one of Neil’s that is in the list of The Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 greatest albums of all time.

Of all the songs on the album, the one that shows the most raw emotion at the loss of his two friends is the song I have featured today, ‘Borrowed Tune’.

The song is just that, a tune borrowed from The Rolling Stones. Neil based the melody directly around the Stones ‘Lady Jane’ and wrote his own set of lyrics for the song, reflecting his feelings at the time.

He directly attributes the melody to The Stones in the lyrics of the song:

I’m singin’ this borrowed tune
I took from the Rolling Stones,
Alone in this empty room
Too wasted to write my own

The song from The Rolling Stones, ‘Lady Jane’ was from their 1966 album ‘Aftermath’, and it now almost seems strange to hear The Stones singing such a ‘soft’ song.

This Stones song is notable for two things, the lack of any drums, and also the lovely sounds of a Dulcimer, a stringed instrument, more popular from early folk music roots than for its use in modern music, and here in this song, it is being played by the late Brian Jones, and in the clip itself, you can see some examples of a Dulcimer.