One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.
Neil Young rarely records other people’s songs. In live appearances it’s another story–he seems game to cover anything–but in the studio it’s Neil Young material that Neil wants to record. One exception to the rule is ”Four Strong Winds” by Ian & Sylvia from 1963. Young recorded his own version for his Comes a Time album (1978). It’s not just any old cover–it’s one great cover with special meaning to Young himself.
Two factors make the cover work so well. One is the gorgeous set of harmony vocals from Nicolette Larson. She was just coming into her own as an in-demand background singer in both the LA and Nashville circuits. Young met Larson through his old friend and collaborator Linda Ronstadt–he asked both women to sing on his American Stars ‘n Bars release in 1976, though Larson was still somewhat untested. Young then hired Larson for the Comes a Time project. This was Larson’s big break, and it led to a recording contract of her own. Her first album featured her version of Young’s “Lotta Love” (from Comes a Time), and this became the singer’s one and only hit single as solo artist.
The other factor that made Young’s ”Four Strong Winds” stand out was Young’s own retrospective mood. In 1977-78, the punk movement was surging through the culture. You might have expected a seasoned codger like Young to react to the new ethos and prove he still had relevance. And he did change course–by going backwards, back to his folk roots.¹ All at once he cast aside the raw, loud, rambunctious music of Zuma (‘75) and American Stars ’n Bars (‘77), and returned to a quiet Harvest vibe–very 1972, very Laurel Canyon. He even had most of the session musicians from Harvest back to help out on Comes a Time, with Larson replacing Ronstadt.
But Young was looking deeper in time than 1972, and reached way back to a song that shaped him at age 16, Ian & Sylvia’s “Four Strong Winds.” The first song ever written by Ian Tyson, “Four Strong Winds” ran up the Canadian charts in 1963. The single landed on a jukebox at a teenage hangout in Winnipeg, where a young Neil Young played it over and over. He had this to say in his memoir:
I loved that song. I had the feeling that it was about my life, and the music touched me deeply. I completely related to it and lived it every time I listened. It was everything to me. There was something about how immersed I was in that song that made me realize I had to get the same quality into my own music.
The statement explains why so many fans assume “Four Strong Winds” is a Neil Young original. It’s part of him; the jukebox song gave form to the artist he eventually became. Young might have felt its urgency more than Ian Tyson himself. (Tyson said he was just trying to imitate his new friend Bob Dylan, who had just penned “Blowin’ in the Wind.”)
No surprise that Neil’s version of the song is widely considered the definitive one. Ian & Sylvia’s original recording is sweet, but it’s stilted, with some of the mannerisms parodied in A Mighty Wind, the Christopher Guest mockumentary about folk revival musicians. By contrast, Young’s cover doesn’t seem the least bit dated.
Neil’s first attempt at the song stems from 1976. He played it with The Band as part of The Last Waltz concert. This performance was not included in the Scorsese film, or on the soundtrack album that followed, but it finally appeared on the 2016 expanded version of the soundtrack. This Last Waltz version is missing something, and I don’t mean Nicolette Larson. The Band backed Dylan on the song as early as 1967 (see The Basement Tapes Complete), and maybe Young’s arrangement threw them off. It didn’t help that Neil messed up on the lyrics and skipped (or had not yet come up with) the defining guitar riff that caps each section. But no matter. Neil got it exactly right on Comes a Time, with a little help from long-time musician friends and Nicolette Larson.
Footnotes:
1. Nothing is simple with Neil Young. In 1977 and 1978, he was both looking backwards and taking punk’s message on board, and accepting punk’s challenge. In ‘78 he collaborated with DEVO (already a post-punk project), and recorded “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” with its call-out to Johnny Rotten. It was DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh who gave Young a title for his follow-up to Comes a Time, namely, Rust Never Sleeps. Still, John Lydon and friends probably figured Neil’s long run was about over. They could not have guessed he still had 46 productive years ahead of him. And counting.
