When Neil Young sat down for an interview with Guitar Player in 1992, grunge had upended the guitar world and reignited a long-running debate over technique versus expression. More than three decades later, his views on the 1990s return to punk-infused music still feels strikingly relevant.
“It’s just rock and roll, but it’s real rock and roll,” he told GP associate editor Jas Obrecht. “Punk and rock and roll are all the same thing. What has degenerated from it — what ‘rock and roll’ is now — is not rock and roll. It’s pop. It’s fabricated for the masses. It’s an imitation — a shoddy semblance of what it was. It’s Perry Como music compared to real rock and roll.”
Young’s argument was bigger than the changing tastes of the early ’90s. To him, the divide wasn’t between punk and classic rock, or grunge and shred. It was between music driven by expression and music shaped for mass consumption.
“Remember when it all started?” he continued. “There was real rock and roll, and then that other music your parents listened to. It’s like rock and roll now is the music that our parents listened to. It’s, like, gone.”
That philosophy extended directly to his guitar playing. When asked what he looks for in an electric guitar solo, Young didn’t bring up speed, precision or technique— he was focused on a sensation.
You can tell I don’t care about bad notes. I listen for the whole band on my solos.”
— Neil Young
“Elevation. You can feel it. That’s all I’m looking for,” he said. “You can tell I don’t care about bad notes. I listen for the whole band on my solos. You can call it a solo, because that’s a good way to describe it, but it’s really an instrumental. It’s the whole band that’s playing.”
That perspective also informed his view of formal music education. The 1980s shred boom led to a massive influx of guitarists to Berklee College of Music and music schools like the Musicians Institute. Young saw it as the beginning of the end.
“It paints a pretty doomed picture of the future, doesn’t it?” he asked. “First of all, it doesn’t matter if you can play a scale. It doesn’t matter if your technique is good. If you have feelings you want to get out through music, that’s what matters. If you have the ability to express yourself, and you feel good when you do it, then that’s why you do it. The technical side of it is a complete boring drag, as far as I’m concerned.”
Young — who has steadfastly played a 1953 Gibson Les Paul and 1959 tweed Fender Deluxe for the better part of 60 years — also acknowledged that technical virtuosity has never been his goal.
“I can’t play fast. I don’t even know the scales. A lot of the notes I go for are notes that I know aren’t there. They’re just not there, so you can hit any note.”
But his comments weren’t a dismissal of technical ability. In fact, he reserved some of his highest praise for two of rock’s most celebrated virtuosos.
“I appreciate these guys who play great. I’m impressed by metal bands with their scale guys. I mean, Joe Satriani and Eddie Van Halen are genius guitar players. They’re unbelievable musicians of the highest caliber.
“But I can’t relate to it. One note is enough.”
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