Music Corner · April 3, 2021 0

Neil Young ushers in the ‘80s with fractured ‘Reagan Democrat’ album ‘Hawks & Doves’

In 1980, Neil Young was at the peak of his powers.

He was coming off a decade that he practically owned and, in many ways, defined musically, with a bushel full of killer songs and critically acclaimed albums (if you include 1969’s “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,” then I argue he released six great studio releases in a row, all the way through “Zuma” in 1975). He wrapped the decade with the one-two punch of “Rust Never Sleeps” and “Live Rust,” and he even put out a greatest hits package entitled “Decade” in 1977.

So there was every reason to believe he would continue carrying the torch for his unique mix of rock, folk, singer-songwriter confessional, country and Crazy Horse-backed fuzz rock. Never mind that rock was undergoing a revolution after punk lit a match to ’70s excess and the synthesizer was challenging the primacy of the guitar.

Young would kick off the decade with “Hawks & Doves,” a hodgepodge of leftover older tracks and, on side B, newer acoustic and country songs. Side A was known as Doves, while the flip side was Hawks — or his hippie and redneck personas, respectively, he also said at the time. Total run time was just under 30 minutes, making it his shortest album to that point.

“Hawks & Doves” came out the month before the 1980 election, when Ronald Reagan trounced President Jimmy Carter, the Democratic incumbent, and politics echo throughout the album. That’s hardly surprising for Neil Young, writer of pointedly political tomes like “Ohio,” “Southern Man” and “After the Gold Rush.” What is surprising, however, is that around this time, he publicly voiced support for some of Reagan’s views, something that didn’t sit well with many fans.

There’s a palpable theme of blue-collar struggle and patriotism running through the album, including on the lyrically puzzling “Union Man” and especially on the title track. The latter in my opinion may be the strongest or at least catchiest song of the bunch, despite its almost cringeworthy chorus (“USA! / USA!”). The song features a lovely refrain leading to the chorus that really gets me: “So my sweet wife / can dance another free day,” a paean to his then-wife, Pegi Young.

It’s not hard to imagine Young feeling grateful and also satisfied, but also apprehensive, at the dawn of the ‘80s. he was newly re-married but dealing with his toddler son, who had been born a couple years earlier with severe cerebral palsy. Meanwhile, the United States was entering a terrifying new phase of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, when the nuclear arms race would go supercharged (with Reagan leading the charge, no less), and lots of geopolitical subtext underlining the theme of good versus evil.

Times were changing, and Young in 1980 was entering that vaguely defined period known as midlife.

Verdict

John: 5/10

Sven: 6/10

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