“The Needle and the Damage Done” is one of Neil Young’s most obviously personal songs, infamously written about his friends he knew who used heroin and recorded before Crazy Horse lead singer Danny Whitten died of heroin. Released on his most successful record, Harvest, Young chose a live solo performance to include on that studio album instead of recording a proper studio version during either the Nashville or California sessions that made up that album.
Phil Spector’s Gun are a noisy Philadelphia rock quartet who put out their debut album in autumn 2023. For the b-side of their latest single, they’ve recorded a cover of “The Needle and the Damage Done.”
Their covers opens with a pretty faithful performance of the opening of the the song, only played on electric rather than acoustic. But, almost immediately, the full band kicks in, including what sounds like a small, detuned string section. The band performance is sloppy and noisy, very much in the spirit of the other side of Neil Young, the Crazy Horse/proto-grunge side. That string section, though – I don’t think there’s much in Neil’s catalogue as aggressively dissonant beyond his own guitar solos.
Lead singer Kevin Brusha sings the lyrics pretty straight, with a similar level of frailty to the original only with a different aesthetic. (There are no signs of folk music in this performance.) The original is quite short and Phil Spector’s Gun jam it out a little bit, as Neil might himself have done if he ever played an electric version. There’s a little bit of Time Fades Away or Tonight’s the Night to this performance, which is very fitting.
