By Christopher R Weingarten
Trans (1982)
Young welcomed the MTV era with an album that left everyone perplexed. He indulged in synthesizers, even sent his voice through a vocoder – and drove his rock fans insane. “I knew straight away it was crazy stuff that had nothing to do with Neil’s previous output,” said guitarist Nils Lofgren. “However, it never occurred to me that a record company would reject the album as ‘not Neil Young enough’.”
It was the first album for Geffen Records, who later sued Young for delivering “unrepresentative” music. “It was just the most incredible ‘old school meets new school’ clash imaginable,” said Lofgren. “He bought his first two Synclaviers, which were sort of the high-end synthesizers of the time. In 1982 these things cost around $150,000 with all the trimmings. Nobody could afford something like that.”
Even if the sound was alien and synthetic, the songs sprang from an all too human impulse. His youngest son, Ben, had cerebral palsy – and Young had quit all activities to attend to therapy. “If you listen to ‘Transformer Man,’ or ‘Computer Age,’ or ‘We R In Control,’ you’ll hear various references to my son and all people who have to push buttons or use computer voices to communicate,” he said Young the ROLLING STONE 1988.
However, nobody was aware of the deeper meaning of the album at the time – and so Young was booed often enough on his tour of Europe. “When Neil and I walked onto the stage with our headsets and sunglasses on ‘Transformer Man,’ it must have looked like a futuristic scene from an Isaac Asimov book,” says Lofgren. “People were like, ‘What the hell is that?!’ And before they could decide whether they liked it or not, came ‘Cinnamon Girl’. ‘Computer Age’ wasn’t bad either: I played my ’61 Strat, but I sang in a distorted voice that was three octaves above my normal range. For me it was a wonderful experience.”