Sometimes, an artist is underrated because they just got here. There simply wasn’t any time. But sometimes the dust has settled, and yet where are the fireworks, the winging cherubs crying “Mercy!”? Nowhere to be found. Why? Plenty of reasons. Sometimes they keep putting their foot in the same old holes, or someone does it for them. Or they relentlessly (god bless them) refuse to make concessions regarding what excites them. You get my point: there are more reasons than cracks on Willie Nelson’s face.
So which one of these is Fred Neil? To put it bluntly, he’s the kind that leaves everything behind to go serve that noblest of causes: dolphins. That’s right, the music of Fred Neil, the King of Greenwich Village in the early 60s, has partly been obscured by his decision to leave the scene entirely to dedicate himself to conservationism, dolphins in particular. Dolphins – 1, General Public – 0.
But not quite zero, not at all. Though a little unsung, not only was Fred Neil a key player in the Village scene who mentored artists like Bob Dylan, Karen Dalton and David Crosby, he also happens to have been a clear influence on Tim Buckley’s singing, and his songs have been covered by a roster of folk and rock royalty. Perhaps his music never went far enough in any specific direction. His first two albums are a cauldron of folk, blues and acoustic rock ‘n’ roll: neither here nor there, but undeniably somewhere. Put them on, and you’ll hear a deep, rich voice crooning through meditative lyrics, amid arrangements that are grounded and tasteful, though they could use a bit of variety.
The predictability of his arrangements in the context of a full LP has two results: it subtracts sheer “wham” from the “blues/folk-rock” tunes by keeping them percussionless, and it blends the songs together, obscuring the quality of the songwriting.
Case in point, Candy Man:
An undeniable, head-banging-off-the-ceiling romper. But no drums? Fred. Oh Fred.
Nevertheless, it got recorded by Roy Orbison, and a later cover also became a top ten hit in the UK. So that’s the crux, friends. And it means that whatever might be missing, I won’t hear it: the power is there, the rawness, the touch of blues. And many of his songs have broken their bounds. This is the man who gave us Everybody’s Talkin’, of Harry Nilsson fame, but also the undeniable A Little Bit of Rain, as well as The Dolphins, a refreshingly aquatic-mammal-themed love song famously covered by Tim Buckley. So not only was Fred partly the jumpstarter of folk and folk-rock, but his ballads have stuck in the popular imagination, and his voice lives on, on its own and through the voices of others. That’s enough for fond remembrance, isn’t it?
So what makes him under-appreciated?
Just a mismatch between recognition and the depth of his talent. Another factor? His tendency to hide. His lack of interest. And in a corner of my mind that I don’t often like to visit, I sometimes think: maybe it’s the recordings. Maybe they didn’t always capture something that was undeniably there. But maybe it’s the dolphins.
In any case, go listen to Fred: Fred Neil (reissued as Everybody’s Talkin’) and Bleecker & MacDougal are the tightest, while Sessions is loose, but contains undeniable flashes of genius, i.e., the mind-blowing slow dirge Look Over Yonder, which is deadly, friends. Deadly. Dolphins – 1, General Public – 100
