No, it was much more hostile or incompatible than that. After my father lost his own father, our relationship-which was already on the rocks-stretched itself out too thin. When I was a teenager and “Old Man” came on the radio in my father’s car, he broke through the hard-hearted facade he often sported and said, “This song reminds me of your Papaw.” He wasn’t a big Neil Young fan, only, mildly, amiable to the classics. When I got my driver’s license in high school and began blowing all of my cash on jewel cases, that was when I finally became free, untethered from the chains of mainstream radio. After growing up on heavy doses of AC/DC and Aerosmith and Def Leppard and tinctures of Motown, disco and oldies, my curiosity spilled into obsession with singer/songwriter stuff: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon and Young, a classic artillery of sharp tongues and thoughtful musings. It was a good beginner’s sampler something to whet my young rock ’n’ roll brain. At 16 tracks, beginning with “Down by the River” and ending with “Harvest Moon,” the disc chronicled all of the key commercial moments in Young’s catalog. The first CD I ever bought with my own money was Neil Young’s Greatest Hits, not Decade-the 1970s-spanning best-of-or Lucky Thirteen-the assembly of his David Geffen-era oddities.
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