John Lennon never minced his words about musicians he disliked, and his opinions about specific lyrics were no different—like, for example, the one Neil Young lyric John Lennon said he “hated.” Lennon detested the song’s premise so much, in fact, that he made a specific point of saying he hoped his then-young son, Sean, wouldn’t take Young’s sentiments to heart.
Neil Young was reaching his apex of fame as the Beatles’ sky-high professional arc was making its downward descent. The opposing timeline of either artist (and when, exactly, Lennon made his condemning comments) makes the ex-Beatles’ opinion all the more poignant.
Some Of The Beatles Had Strong Feelings About The Canadian Rocker
No Beatle was as outspoken about their dislike of Neil Young as George Harrison, but that doesn’t mean the other three members were necessarily fans. The Canadian songwriter never met the Beatles when they were still the Fab Four, although he would later meet George Harrison and Ringo Starr at other musical events post-Beatles breakup.
Nevertheless, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Neil Young and the members of the Beatles were well aware of each other. In a 1970 Rolling Stone interview, Lennon described the music he was listening to on American radio stations. “I like a few things by Neil Young,” Lennon mused. “I only heard Neil Young twice. You can pick him out a mile away, the whole style. He writes some nice songs.”
At the time of Lennon’s interview, Young had released his eponymous debut (1968), ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere’ (1969), and ‘After the Gold Rush’ (1970). Famous cuts from these records included “Southern Man,” “Cinnamon Girl,” and “Down by the River.” (Though Lennon didn’t mention which songs of Young’s he heard and enjoyed.)
Ten years after John Lennon praised Neil Young for his distinct sound, the former Beatle and Plastic Ono Band member had a much different take about what Young was writing at the time. In a 1980 interview with David Sheff for Playboy, Lennon explained why he hated a specific Young lyric from his 1979 track “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue).”
The Neil Young Lyric John Lennon Vehemently Opposed
Young included the song on his 1979 release ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ with Crazy Horse. In the first verse, Young sings, My my, hey hey, rock and roll is here to stay. It’s better to burn out than to fade away. My my, hey hey. The lines appeared to celebrate the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of rock and rollers, but fellow musical icon John Lennon disagreed, saying he always hated it.
“I hate it,” Lennon told Sheff of the lyrics. “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don’t appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It’s the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison—it’s garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo. They’re saying John Wayne conquered cancer—he whipped it like a man. You know, I’m sorry that he died and all that…but he didn’t whip cancer. It whipped him.”
“I don’t want Sean worshiping John Wayne or Sid Vicious,” Lennon continued. “What do they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? I mean, it’s garbage, you know. If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn’t he do it? Because he sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us. No, thank you. I’ll take the living and the healthy.”
In a tragically ironic turn of events, Lennon died three months later after Mark David Chapman shot him outside of his New York City home. Young would later call the assassination “the dark ages of rock and roll” (via HyperRust).
Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
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