[Album Review] Neil Young | Fu##in’ Up

Neil Young’s popularity and loyal following give him leeway to present his music how he sees fit. Still, it took some major globes to leave in his the goof while performing the opening for F##kin Up‘s first song, City Life (aka Country Home). Neil isn’t giving a f##k about f##king up six seconds into the album.

That is the vibe the album aims for as F##kin Up is a celebration of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s 1990 release, Ragged Glory—whose dank sound and loose style are considered ahead of the early ’90s grunge curve. Heck, I remember when it came out that “gunge” wasn’t even a thing yet—at least to a 13-year-old living in Sudbury, Ontario. I heard it mostly described as “garage rock.”

Last November, Neil, along with all three members of Crazy Horse—Billy Talbot on bass, Ralph Molina on drums, and Nils Lofgren on guitar—performed most of Ragged Glory’s tracklist at a small venue in Toronto, The Rivoli. Mother Earth (Natural Anthem) was left off of the setlist, likely because it is filler. The show was recorded and is now packaged as F##kin Up.

Ragged Glory was recorded live in the studio within a few weeks in 1990. Several songs were fully performed in a random order every day. The best takes are what made the album. It was an ideal way to capture these songs—some of which had been in Neil’s catalogue since the early ’70s and had been performed live but not recorded in a studio.

F##kin Up doubles down on this by taking the first, and only take. It’s a no-frills way to approach rock ‘n roll and it fits the songs and Neil’s style when he is with The Horse. Since their debut album in ’69, Everybody Know This is Nowhere, they remained one of rock’s best bands who could spontaneously deliver an entertaining performance—and that is exactly what you get here. A guitar may be slightly out of tune or the backup vocals low— but an authentic moment is captured. The Warts, flubs, mixing issues, off-key vocals, sloppy tempo changes, etc—are all left in. But these guys at their sloppiest are more entertaining than most bands at their peak.

Imagine if they aimed for a perfect recreation of studio recordings from 35 years ago? I’ve listened to these songs countless times since I taped Ragged Glory onto a cassette from a friend’s CD back in ’90 or ’91—a few years later finding my own copy in a discount bin at the mall in North Bay. (I wish I could remember the name of the store there.) Listening to them try and catch the same lightning in a bottle again would be tedious.

As I mentioned in my previous post, collecting Neil now is almost a full-time job with the amount of material he has been releasing. You can pick and choose which era of Crazy Horse you want to collect live now. Ragged Glory era is represented well with Weld—an excellent live compilation album from ’91 which captured the band’s live show at the time—and the archive release from 2021, Way Down in the Rust Bucket, gave us a complete show as the band was warming up for the Ragged Glory Tour. Still, those releases only had a handful of songs from Ragged Glory. F##king Up gives us the full tracklist.

I stick to my creed though, how a band sounds on the recording is more important than the setlist itself, and they do sound great despite the few errors. The crowd was eating up the band’s performance in the intimate setting.

If there is something I could find to complain about—and god knows, I can—I see it on setlist.fm, there were two encores performed that night, Cinamon Girl and Rockin’ In The Free World, which I think would have been fine to include on the CD and digital download releases. I know, I’m a fan of shorter albums, and the performance is already 65 minutes without the encore. But I’d make an exception for those two songs.

That said, F##king Up is a worthwhile addition to the collection. There is not much better in rock ‘n roll than Neil and The Horse in the pocket for a stupid long jam, and you will get plenty of that here. Just don’t expect technical perfection like a coked-up RUSH. Turn that dial down to a fun drunk Aerosmith and you’ll be fine.

4/5