Southern Man
Every Neil Young song reviewed! #26: Southern Man. Album: After the Gold Rush
Neil’s first (and best) song about racism in the Deep South of United States. After four songs of Neil’s folk side, although it’s the exact same band that played on Only Love Can Break Your Heart, how’s that for versatility? Southern Man has always been a favourite of mine, it’s a great protest song that doesn’t sound preachy, clunky or contrived. It’s an incredibly rare feat in that it sounds great too. Now it’s not quite the proto-grunge of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, but it practically sounds like metal in comparison to the rest of the album.
I’ve always loved the vocal processing/effects(?) they put on Neil’s vocal for this song, I don’t know if it was a particularly hot recording to the point of slight distortion, but it definitely conveys the sense of anger and injustice that Neil felt. Regardless of the quality of the music, you could never claim Neil was dispassionate. Here that passions works to his advantage because this song soars. This part of the chorus is particularly great:
“Southern change,
gonna come at last,
Now your crosses,
are burning fast”.
and this entire verse is goosebumps inspiring:
“I saw cotton,
and I saw black,
Tall white mansions,
and little shacks.
Southern man,
when will you,
pay them back?
I heard screamin',
and bullwhips cracking,
How long? How long?”
Neil would say in Shakey that the passion in the song was partly inspired by his wife at the time, Susan Acevedo, being angry at him, and Neil honed his own anger into this song. I think the lyrics being fairly simple are what makes it work as a protest song, because there’s nothing worse than clunky verbose lyrics. It just sounds preachy.
On guitars it’s Neil’s show. Neil is alone, and his solo is one of the best of his career, it reflects the anger and serves the song. Ultimately that’s what solos should do, I don’t care about skill or how many notes are played, but whether it suits the song. Neil will always be my favourite guitarist for a reason, and I think rockists like Rick Beato are next to braindead to suggest he isn’t one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
Neil would revisit the themes from this song on his next album, with the song Alabama, we’ll get to that in about two weeks.
Southern Man has remained very popular in Neil’s setlists over the years. It comes back every few years and when he does bring it back it’s very prevalent in tour setlists. Here’s a version from 1993 from a gig at The Warfield Theater with Booker T. and the MG’s. I need to seek out their live recordings, Are You Passionate? may be underwhelming, but their live shows sound astonishing:
As another little bonus, here’s a cover by Sylvester of all people, it’s slightly underwhelming considering all the great music he’d go on to make, but still a cool oddity: