Change Your Mind

If you got fourteen minutes to spare I highly suggest getting "Change Your Mind" from Neil Young's "Sleeps With Angels" album and giving it a spin. Bob Lefsetz would suggest you lie on your floor and play it on your turntable, but I'm not near so particular.

If you don't particularly like Neil Young you might not want to bother. This is hardly the song to alter your opinion (I was going to say it's hardly the song to 'change your mind', but that's just too cheap). But if you don't mind him, and you can still yourself in this ADD world for a quarter of an hour, I think it's time well spent.

Came up randomly on the iPod during one of the numerous long drives of this past week, and I guess I was just in the mood for it. What an incredible song. Legend has it that it's written for Kurt Cobain, whose death occurred at the same time this record was being made. Cobain's suicide note quoted Neil Young. Already a big fan of Cobain's music, being mentioned in the suicide note purportedly hit Young hard and affected the recording sessions.

As far as I have been able to learn, only the title track was actually written after the event. The fact that the whole album seems to have death as its central theme is only an accident. A happy accident, I guess, for the sake of the art, but it feels unseemly to think of it that way. Of course I don't know what songs were written when for sure, but this is the best info the internet has coughed up so far.

So "Change Your Mind" was probably not written for Kurt Cobain, but man would it have made sense were it so. The song's 'message' being the most obvious reason. But stylistically, it's a great tribute to Nirvana.

The lyrics are more literal than Cobain's tended to be, but they share his emphasis on emotion and rawness over craft (they both are definitely more John than Paul).

As for the actual music? It seemed like Nirvana had this inner battle between wanting to be punk, almost musically subversive, and wanting to present the incredibly tuneful, essentially pop, hits songs that Cobain couldn't seem to stop himself from writing. I mean, they wanted to be the Melvins, but ended up selling umpteen million copies of a record that after it was mastered one of them (can't remember who, but it's true; you can look it up) opined sounded like a Def Leppard record. And really, if you had to choose one or the other, it probably does sound more like Def Leppard than Black Flag.

But at the same time Nirvana was a fierce rock band. Especially out of the studio (except when they were cello-ing it up for their MTV unplugged set), they seemed to love making an unholy racket. Even the studio records tend to have pretty challenging moments (with the exception of Nevermind, which never really gets too crazy). So their reputation as a perpetually unhinged punk rock band survives, and is deserved, despite magnetized evidence to the opposite.

"Change Your Mind" to me has the same sort of dichotomy. If you took out the endless jamming you'd be left with just a beautiful pop song. One of Young's prettiest, impossibly catchy. But he ensures it can never be a radio staple, and that impatient listeners won't give the song it's due, by stretching it to 14 minutes and 40 seconds. The bulk of which contains his singular lead guitar playing. If you allow yourself to really get inside it, the whole track is perfect. But if you've got in on in the background, it's pretty much just noise.

Helluva tribute. If that's what it was.

When you get weak,
And you need to test your will
When life's complete,
But there's something
Missing still
Distracting you from this
Must be the one you love
Must be the one whose magic touch
Can change your mind
Don't let another day go by
Without the magic touch

Distracting you
(change your mind)
Supporting you
(change your mind)
Embracing you
(change your mind)
Convincing you
(change your mind)

When you're confused and
The world has got you down
When you feel used and
You just can't play the clown
Protecting you from this
Must be the one you love
Must be the one whose magic touch
Can change your mind
Don't let another day go by
Without the magic touch

Protecting you
(change your mind)
Restoring you
(change your mind)
Revealing you
(change your mind)
Soothing you
(change your mind)

You hear the sound,
You wait around
And get the word
You see the picture
Changing everything
You've heard
Destroying you with this
Must be the one you love
Must be the one
Whose magic touch
Can change your mind
Don't let another day go by
Without the magic touch

Destroying you
(change your mind)
Embracing you
(change your mind)
Protecting you
(change your mind)
Confining you
(change your mind)
Distracting you
(change your mind)
Supporting you
(change your mind)
Distorting you
(change your mind)
Controlling you
(change your mind)
Change your mind
(change your mind)
Change your mind, change your mind
(change your mind)
Change your mind
(change your mind)

The morning comes
And there's an odor in the room
The scent of love,
More than a million roses bloom
Embracing you with this
Must be the one you love
Must be the one
Whose magic touch
Can change your mind
Don't let another day go by
Without the magic touch

Embracing you
(change your mind)
Concealing you
(change your mind)
Protecting you
(change your mind)
Revealing you
(change your mind)
Change your mind, change your mind
(change your mind)
Change your mind
(change your mind)
Change your mind, change your mind
(change your mind)
Change your mind
(change your mind)
Change your mind, change your mind
Change your mind
Change your mind, change your mind
Change your mind
Change your mind, change your mind
Change your mind, change your mind