The shiny allure of notoriety makes it easy to assume that fame would validate or empower musicians, but for many artists, including Neil Young, the truth lies somewhere closer to the opposite. More and more musicians seem to be taking a stand against inappropriate and unpleasant interactions with fans and the media. It seems modern. Novel.
However, even artists who had their meteoric rise to fame before the age of social media and streaming struggled under the immense weight that public recognition often entails. Neil Young was no exception, as he revealed in footage from the 2022 documentary Harvest Time.
Neil Young On How Fame Affected His Self-Image
It doesn’t take a platinum-selling musician to know the effects fame might have on one’s social life. When everyone recognizes you (and, in turn, wants to be around you), seemingly mundane activities like going to the grocery store or popping into a bar for a drink become more arduous. For Neil Young, the effects of his fame on others made him more self-conscious, not less so.
In Harvest Time, which documents the making of Young’s 1972 record Harvest, the Canadian singer-songwriter revealed why he preferred to live a life of seclusion on his ranch. “People look at you different than you are, you know,” Young said. “People get uptight when they meet me. I say, ‘Hello,’ people go, ‘Ahhh,’ you know, or something like that.”
“They freak,” Young continued. “A lot of people—I pick it up in their eyes. I’ll talk to them, and they look at me, and they just do some weird trip, you know. After a while, when that keeps happening to you over and over and over and over again, you begin to wonder about yourself.”
Burning Out or Fading Away
Neil Young got his start in the 1960s, which means he has had plenty of time to grapple with the positive and negative side effects of fame. His decades-long career—and others like it—is so interesting because he has seen so much. Young released albums and toured the world before the internet existed. Now, he has a comprehensive archival website with a newspaper-slash-blog called The Times-Contrarian.
He’s adapted to the times, society, even previous versions of himself. In a July 2024 interview with AXS TV, Young addressed one of his most controversial lyrics: It’s better to burn out than to fade away from “My My, Hey Hey.” He wrote the song in 1978, and that particular lyric refers to the rock and roll trope of dying young, like Jimi Hendrix or Buddy Holly. Although Young still finds some truth in his sentiment over four decades later, he admits it’s not wholly accurate.
“This song’s about rock and roll,” Young explained. “It’s not about life. Lie has children, it has family, it has relationships, it has nature, it has beauty, it has all these other things that rock and roll is a part of. But rock and roll is its own thing, and it’s an animal all to itself. There’s a lot more to life than just rock and roll. But I love to rock, and I’m glad to be here.”
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images
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