Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983)

Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983)

With all due respect to record label-agitators Prince, John Fogerty, and Van Morrison, Neil Young’s Everybody’s Rockin’ remains the most notorious nose-snub in rock and roll history. A 25-minute rockabilly album recorded in response to David Geffen’s insistence that Neil make a proper “rock and roll” record following the artistic and commercial disasters of his previous three Geffen albums, this vindictive tribute to 50s rock and roll is pure period piece, one that reaches Christopher Guest-levels of comic surrealism. Neil even dresses the part, appearing on the cover looking battle-ready in conspicuous pompadour and pink suit. While the album is certainly evidence of Neil’s continued artistic floundering, it also proves he hasn’t lost his sense of humor. The most compelling aspect of Everybody’s Rockin’ is Neil’s inability to actually pass himself off as a rock and roll playboy, which only emphasizes his strangeness: In the accompanying music video for “Wonderin,'” Neil plays a rockabilly heartthrob but looks more like the snarling, smirking psychopath depicted by Jack Nicholson in The Shining, far more like a man who’d threaten to bash his buttercup’s brains in than ask her to go steady. The album does contain some decent material, maybe in spite of itself: “Wonderin'” is best heard as a live version that appears on the 2006 archival release Live At The Fillmore East, but the tidy, swinging album version is almost as good; and if you can get past the conspicuous digital reverb of “Cry Cry Cry,” you might mistake it for a lost Sam Phillips joint. Nevertheless, Everybody’s Rockin’ mostly deserves its reputation as one of Neil’s least essential LPs. It would also result in a 3.3 million dollar lawsuit: Geffen claimed Neil was making albums “uncharacteristic” of Neil Young. Ever refractory, Neil countersued for breach of contract. Seems to me if Geffen didn’t consider an album like Everybody’s Rockin’ exactly characteristic of this most impulsive and disputatious rock star, one who has never abided a kibitzer no matter how rich or powerful, he clearly wasn’t paying close enough attention.