Neil Young: Thrasher

SONG Thrasher

WRITTEN BY Neil Young

PERFORMED BY Neil Young

APPEARS ON Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

Two themes have emerged from Neil Young's career: The primacy of individualism and the value of change for its own sake.  Few songwriters have expressed the necessity of going your own way as effectively as Young: His eccentric, defiant individualism marks his career and his success as much as any other trait. Even a Young song that doesn't deal directly with this theme comes from his unique, highly personal perspective.

Set in a surreal approximation of the American west and inspired by his tenure with Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, "Thrasher" reflects the essential Neil Young theme of the dangers -- fear, really -- of calcification that comes from standing still and conforming. The song describes an arc beginning with an eagle ascending over a river of life and concluding with a vulture swooping down on the road to death.

A vision of gigantic thrashers inexorably mowing down all in from them haunts Young throughout:

When I saw those thrashers rolling by,
Looking more than two lanes wide
I was feelin' like my day had just begun

Although he knows that the thrashers will eventually come for him ("When the thashers come/I'll be stuck in the sun") as they must for us all, they're also a signal to live the life he has in the best way he can. For Neil Young, that always meant being himself; specifically, following his artistic muse wherever it led.

Three times, he returns to stifling canyons as places in which one loses ones way and from which one requires rescue:

I searched out my companions,
Who were lost in crystal canyons...

They were lost in rock formations...

I was watchin' my mama's T.V.,
It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode...

The canyon walls of the mind, of business, of life, even of art hem one in: They stifle creativity and suppress the potential offered by change.

Young scatters the song with penetrating, metaphorical aphorisms like this one--

When the aimless blade of science
Slashed the pearly gates.

--a reminder that we live in times that more than ever require a belief in oneself, as that is becoming all that we have left to believe in.

In the song's portentous coda, Young admits that he, too, will go the way of the dinosaurs, but at least he'll know that when that time he'll have hoed his own row and no one else's: When "the time has come to give what's mine," he'll have something of his own to pass on. And he'll be "stuck in the sun" far from the immobilizing "crystal canyons" where success threatens creativity and self.

LYRICS
They were hiding behind hay bales,
They were planting in the full moon
They had given all they had for something new
But the light of day was on them,
They could see the thrashers coming
And the water shone like diamonds in the dew

And I was just getting up, hit the road before it's light
Trying to catch an hour on the sun
When I saw those thrashers rolling by,
Looking more than two lanes wide
I was feelin' like my day had just begun.

Where the eagle glides ascending
There's an ancient river bending
Down the timeless gorge of changes
Where sleeplessness awaits
I searched out my companions,
Who were lost in crystal canyons
When the aimless blade of science
Slashed the pearly gates.

It was then I knew I'd had enough,
Burned my credit card for fuel
Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand
With a one-way ticket to the land of truth
And my suitcase in my hand
How I lost my friends I still don't understand.

They had the best selection,
They were poisoned with protection
There was nothing that they needed,
Nothing left to find
They were lost in rock formations
Or became park bench mutations
On the sidewalks and in the stations
They were waiting, waiting.

So I got bored and left them there,
They were just deadweight to me
Better down the road without that load
Brings back the time when I was eight or nine
I was watchin' my mama's T.V.,
It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode.

Where the vulture glides descending
On an asphalt highway bending
Thru libraries and museums, galaxies and stars
Down the windy halls of friendship
To the rose clipped by the bullwhip
The motel of lost companions
Waits with heated pool and bar.

But me I'm not stopping there,
Got my own row left to hoe
Just another line in the field of time
When the thrashers comes, I'll be stuck in the sun
Like the dinosaurs in shrines
But I'll know the time has come
To give what's mine.