Neil Young “Trans”
I had tried to write about “Trans” once before, but I found the story too sad. “Trans” was made during a period when Neil Young was leading a program of intense language therapy with his son, who had cerebral palsy and could not communicate with him. At the same time he was experimenting with a new piece of music technology, a vocoder that digitally transformed his voice. Young became enamored with the vocoder’s ability to distort the lyrics and mirror the difficulty he was having communicating with his son. It also sounded cool and novel. His label, Geffen, would later sue Neil Young for making a series of deliberately uncommercial albums. Thankfully for artistic freedom, they did not win. But after I first heard the album, I think they might have had a case.
This might be an easier tale to deal with if the album was a great lost artistic triumph. And there are those that have made that argument, but I will not. I have been immersed in an isolation tank with “Trans” for three days (this is the advised way to listen to it). On resurfacing I report that it is not without its merits, but is scattered and often impenetrable. My breakthrough was that I don’t think it’s sad anymore. Quite the opposite.
“Trans” begins with one of its three human voiced tracks to ease you in — “A Thing Called Love”. It’s just another rootsy acoustic diddy from your ole bud Neil Young. Then suddenly the earth around the campfire you’ve been sharing with Neil, opens up and we are floating in the sky. It’s the year 2742 and the overlord boots up “Computer Age,” one of the great WTF moments of popular music. Once you adjust to the idea you’re not In Kansas anymore and this is all going to sound like Tron, however, “Computer Age” is kind of fun. It swings a bit more than some of the robo-farting to come. “Computer Age” sounds like a theme song for the best cyber-cop on the force, and he’s blasting it from his patrol craft as he hovers over the wasteland that was once New Jersey. It has what’s missing in most of these experiments — a groove.
Next up is “We R in Control,” which is told from the perspective of the computers. Let’s see what they have to say. Well, sure enough, they’re up to something. It’s a dystopian tale of robots gloating over their infiltration into every aspect of our lives. (In robot) “We control the traffic lights, we control computer bytes”. These little bot-buddies run into an obstacle that somehow concerns “precious metals in harm’s way.” But in an oddly stirring chorus, they also vow to persevere and “perform their function”. It’s Asimov with a clunky beat, playing like a fragment from an abandoned robo-opera.
“Transformer Man” is the song that helped me pass through the gauntlet and appreciate “Trans”. If you actually hear this song as Young talking to his son at the beginning of their arduous daily therapy sessions, it explains why the melody is so tender.
Transformer man, transformer man
Sooner or later you'll have to see
The cause and effect
So many things still left to do
But we haven't made it yet
Every morning
when I look in your eyes
I feel electrified by you. Oh yes.
Transformer man, transformer man
Transformer man, still in command
Your eyes are shining on a beam
Through the galaxy of love
Transformer man, transformer man
Unlock the secrets
Let us throw off the chains that
Hold you down
A love song between father and his disabled son sprouts up from a microchip. “Tansformer Man” is the most profound 180 I’ve ever done on a song. From the quick dismissal of a dead-end experiment to the acknowledgement of a three hanky weepie. “Transformer Man” humbles me with the vastness of Young’s love for his son. The next song however, sounds like the Decepticons are coming. Such are the hills and valleys of listening to “Trans”
Six tracks is a lot of vocoder. When human vocals do appear, there is an extra swell of feeling from the contrast that doesn’t sound intentional. Are these planned rescue beacons meant to lead us out of a digital hell? Or did Young just run out of buttons on whatever box he was running every instrument through, and needed three more songs to finish the album? I’m happy the human sung stuff is on there, but it’s not an elegant flow.
Still, it’s easier to absorb the organic songs like “Hold onto Your Love” because they don’t require context. We don’t need to ask the question: why are you making this music, and why like this? Even the peak of “Transformer Man” requires a Wikipedia search to be fully felt and absorbed. I found my way through it all by thinking of “Trans” like a sci-fi storybook for a child. This approach helped explain a song like “Computer Cowboy” which has a robot shout “Come a ky ky yippee yi yippee yi ay” over and over again.
There’s a type of person who gets hooked on putting q-tips deeper and deeper into their ear canal until they end up popping their ear drum. That’s why ear doctors drive Porsches. This is another way of looking at “Trans”. It has enough of the charge of new things, that it made Young and the patient listener want to keep probing deeper, then jump back to human voice, then go to deeper. This is a dangerous game. And “Sample and Hold” is my exploded eardrum.
“Sample and Hold” is a chore of a song that supposedly has Nils Lofgren on it (maybe it’s why he ran off to join the E Street Band). I’ve listened to the track many times and can’t hear a guitar, but there are some descending sqwawks that sound like a motorcycle inside a garbage disposal. Maybe that’s Nils? “Sample and Hold” has a relentless drum beat that I hope is not a live drummer. They’d have gone insane by take two. Computers can produce exact repetition and Young is experimenting with that to maddening degree. Clearly, repetition is a crucial part of the learning process for language, but had Young become so submerged in the therapy with his son that he had lost touch with the variation an adult mind requires from music? In my deprivation tank, cut off from everything, this theory seemed to make sense. If this was true, this is both the album’s flaw and it’s proudest badge. That drum machine is really pounding out to Neil’s son: love, love, love, love, love. And that’s why I don’t find “Trans” sad anymore.