Forever Young

Los Angeles is a crowded place, so on those occasions when you find yourself alone you're tempted to think you missed an important homeland security announcement, or perhaps the Rapture. The Beverly Center was abandoned. My cowboy heels clicked on the polished travertine on my way to the 10:20 p.m. showing of Jonathan Demme's concert film "Neil Young: Heart of Gold," past the half-dreaming ticket taker and into an empty 50-seat theater. All alone.

This felt about right. What I have for Neil Young has always seemed a solitary thing. I was 12 years old in 1972 when my older brother brought home the album "Harvest," which I promptly borrowed and never gave back, wearing the grooves out with the chipped stylus of an Emerson turntable. Some of those songs--"Alabama," "A Man Needs a Maid"--are knitted into my living soul. By the time I was 13, I had the complete works of Neil Young--a small stack of LP's that included Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

For devotees who might want to compare their favorite albums, here's my top five: "Time Fades Away," "Zuma," "On the Beach," "Tonight's the Night" and "Harvest," all of which are supremely, supinely desperate and inconsolable lyrical statements. I like my Neil as I like my Joni Mitchell: on the rocks.

Of course, Neil Young had millions of fans, and "Heart of Gold" was a No. 1 single, so he was hardly a cult figure. Yet I almost hate to tell you how bad I had it. To what you can be sure was the sheer delight of my parents, I ripped the ass out of all my jeans and quilt-patched them like those on the back of the album "After the Goldrush." My size-12 feet grew into a point from wearing cowboy boots like Neil's. I had a closet full of snap-fastened cowboy shirts and a Mexican silver belt. Talk about unintended consequences: Neil Young, style icon.

And as soon as I could, I went to Fuller's Music and bought the closest thing to a Martin D45 guitar I could afford, a Yamaha spruce top. While I was there I bought some harmonicas and a chrome neck brace. First Woody, then Dylan, then Neil, now me.

Outside of Woody Guthrie, the Beatles and maybe Bob Dylan, Neil Young is probably responsible for more guitar purchases than anyone in history. Young was an inspiration, proving once and for all that you didn't have to be particularly good at music to be a great musician. That singing-saw voice, that wood-chopping style of hammer-on guitar, the occasional lyric so unvarnished as to splinter into complete weirdness. The blown-out, overdriven raunch of those four-note solos of "Powderfinger" played on "Old Black," Young's battered Gibson Les Paul (got one of those too).