Over the last year, it seems like every time I come back home on my breaks from school this wave of nostalgia overtakes me. It's not really something I ever expected to happen, considering I so desperately wanted to escape the south when I was living here full time. I suppose the fact that I'll be graduating college at the end of the New Year has something to do with this. Pretty soon I'm going to have to make some big decisions about what I want to do with myself or whatever, and I really just don't want to. So as a consequence of that I guess I'm feeling a little wistful for more carefree times or something.
"Helpless" is a really simple Neil Young song that you might call the centerpiece of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's 1970 album Deja Vu. If you ask me, most of the material that resulted from the collaboration between these former members of the Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, and The Hollies, is mostly bland, uninspired stuff, but the group did have its moments. "Helpless" is one of them. Notable among its surrounding tracks for it's sheer sparseness, it very much resembles a Neil Young solo cut. The song itself is overtly nostalgic, and in the wrong hands it might be just that, but Young's earnest delivery lends the song an overwhelming sense of loneliness and yearning that transports it to a much higher plain.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this song a lot lately. As I said before, it’s ludicrously simple, with basically one verse repeated twice with some slight variations now and then. It’s also basically just one set of three or four chords all the way through. The lyrics have got this real wounded tone, and are childlike in their attention to detail.
Blue blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the skies
Throwing shadows on our eyes
Leave us helpless, helpless, helpless.
“Helpless”– Neil Young, Live at Massey Hall 1971
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Neil Young Bio: All Music
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