Fred Neil Has a Raga Moment

Some guys don’t have any luck at all and don’t really care. After making it, relatively at least, it’s always odd when a public figure kinda just throws in the towel to pursue some cloistered life where meeting the public – or even being on its mind – is something to be avoided at all cost.

While odd, since we all want a bit of notoriety, keeping a low profile is a sought after pot of gold. Recently deceased J.D. Salinger went in on a bucolic, lost in the woods lifestyle for the better portion of the latter twentieth century. And why not? What could he have ever done to eclipse his masterpiece? Probably nothing. Maybe that’s why Fred Neil decided to book it back down to Florida after making a name for himself in roughly a decade and a half gigging around New Yawk, New Yawk and influencing some of your parents favorite, throw back singers.

Most renowned for penning “Everybody’s Talkin’,” Neil’s version didn’t ever hit the charts. Instead, three years after the song’s release on his eponymous second album, the track was versioned by Harry Nilsson and used as the main theme to John Schlesinger’s film Midnight Cowboy. And while the Nilsson version found its way to the second spot on the charts, with Neil obviously benefiting financially, the man who penned the track didn’t gain the same sort of renown that his copy cats did.

Working the nascent folk scene during the late ‘50s found Neil playing nurse maid to everyone from Bob Dylan – who backed him up on harmonica occasionally – to David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Seeing as Neil’s name isn’t a familiar one to most folks, his influence seems to have been greater than his success as a recording artist.

Despite that fact Neil recorded pretty steadily during the ‘60s and had a fair share of acclaim foisted upon him within his own NY folk scene. The guitarist’s second album, which was re-released as Everybody’s Talkin’ subsequent to the song’s second life, included a decent amount of balladry that must have appealed to the growing throngs of bearded folksy college students that were massing around the genre.

The disc, initially issued in 1966, stands as some halfway marker between folk and rock. At this point, as indicated on songs like “Faretheewell (Fred's Tune),” there wasn’t a full band working out most of Neil’s compositions, but electric instruments had infiltrated his recording sessions. Even included on this second disc was harmonica player Alan ‘Blind Owl’ Wilson, founder and principal member of Canned Heat.

As more of a prescient track, “Cynicrustpetefredjohn Raga” functions to hint at the growing counter-culture interest in eastern philosophy and music. The constant guitar chording, sometimes layered two or three times over, is supplemented by Wilson’s lonesome harmonica and a bit of electric guitar soloing. It all seems out of place on such a laid back affair, but the eight minute track should rightly be perceived as more important musically (probably not culturally, though) than “Everybody’s Talkin’.”