Neil Young, Still Raging Against The Digital Machine

Neil Young (Photo: Ben Houdijk / Shutterstock.com)

In a revealing and comprehensive profile in the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, NEIL YOUNG touched on a bevy of hot-button topics, but reiterated his disdain for agents of the digital platform.

"His ire this afternoon ... was focused on the engineers of SILICON VALLEY, against whom he has been zealously waging war for decades," DAVID SAMUELS wrote. "SILICON VALLEY’s emphasis on compression and speed, he believes, comes at the expense of the notes as they were actually played and is doing something bad to music, which is supposed to make us feel good. It is doing something bad to our brains ... The same goes for everything else that SILICON VALLEY produces, of course: the culture of digital everything, which is basically a load of toxic, mind-destroying crap. It’s anti-human."

YOUNG recalled the time when APPLE's STEVE JOBS tried to persuade him to let APPLE create high-quality audio of his music for its iPODS. “He said, ‘Send us your masters and I’ll have my guys do what they can with them to make them sound great.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s impossible, your iPOD won’t play anything back.’”

"JOBS disagreed. 'He said, "Well, our guys can make it so that your music can play back through it." 'And you know he was right,' YOUNG said. 'It does play back, and you can recognize it.' He pauses. 'But it’s not my music.'"

Read the entire piece here.

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