So, Why exactly is Neil Young considered the "godfather of grunge"?

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Therefore, Neil Young, godfather of credible '60s and '70s hard rock, seemed to mesh well with their nefarious purposes.

Pearl Jam had more in common with REO Speedwagon than the Sex Pistols.

That is a bit harsh. How about Bad Company instead of REO?

and I still hate typing that word 14 years later

Amen, brother. Let's all let it go, please.

Did Kurt even like Neil Young? I thought it was only the Pearl Jammers who paid lip service to ol' Neil.

Uh, you mean because half of them were in Mother freakin' Love Bone? If anybody was grunge by proximity, it was Nirvana.

Uhh...ever listen to Mother "Freakin'" Love Bone? They were just bad funk metal, not Grunge.

Did Neil Young actually coin this particular cliche? I honestly don't know. This is a serious question.

Cinammon Girl
When You Dance I Can Really Love
Lookout Joe
Danger Bird
Barstool Blues
Cortez The Killer
Drive Back
Hey Hey My My
Sedan Delivery
Powderfinger
Welfare Mothers
Like A Hurricane

He sure did. In "Hey, Hey, My, My", found on 1979's Rust Never Sleeps.

He sure did. In "Hey, Hey, My, My", found on 1979's Rust Never Sleeps.

Duh, I know where he sings it, but was this song the first ever usage of the maxim?

Unless Suzi Quatro or somebody coined it, I'm pretty sure he was the first.

Of course, not everything Young did was grungeworthy. If all you ever heard was After The Gold Rush and Harvest, or CSNY, you would have no idea why anyone would make the connection.

Which is another excellent question.

The story according to "Shakey" was that NY had this line, knew it sounded like a cliche, and went and used it anyway. A similar situation arose with "Keep on rockin' in the free world"-- he said it was such a cliche "that I had to use it."

Or Ron Asheton or Leigh Stephens.

Remember the Kosovarians?
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Half of Green River ended up in Pearl Jam and the other half in Mudhoney. Whether or not PJ sounds raw like Beach or Mudhoney, there is a direct connection into SubPop and the beginnings of all of this stuff. In fact, much more so than The Melvins who proudly like to point out they never lived in Seattle, the SubPop guys never liked their band and were in San Francisco when the whole thing blew up.

Or Ron Asheton or Leigh Stephens.

NY was the Godfather Who Happened To Be Making High-Profile Albums At the Time of Grunge.

Cinammon Girl
When You Dance I Can Really Love
Lookout Joe
Danger Bird
Barstool Blues
Cortez The Killer
Drive Back
Hey Hey My My
Sedan Delivery
Powderfinger
Welfare Mothers
Like A Hurricane

One John Lennon song that could be considered the precursor to grunge:

In its guitar sound (heavy), vocal delivery (screamed), and its lyrical content (heroin withdrawal), this song seems to me to pretty anticipate the entire In Utero album. But I always thought that Cobain was a third-rate Lennon for the 90s.

and, of course, "Dude wore a lot of plaid."

The story according to "Shakey" was that NY had this line, knew it sounded like a cliche, and went and used it anyway. A similar situation arose with "Keep on rockin' in the free world"-- he said it was such a cliche "that I had to use it."

Cheers.

Plenty of good points here. I should add that Neil was a huge influence on Dinosaur Jr, and without them, there'd be no grunge, for good or for ill. I think it was Sonic Youth who turned Kurt onto Neil Young. Or so I have read...
-- Stew (beardma...), November 9th, 2005.

This is the most spot-on statment in this thread. When the first Dinosaur LP came out in 1985, Neil Young was the obvious precursor - matter of fact the person who recommended it to me at the time described it as "Neil Young with 10 penny nails driven into his head." In 1985 nobody really thought "guitar hero" was a viable pursuit for an indie rock band, but Dinosaur pointed the way for a lot of scrawny college kids to pick up old fuzzboxes and wah-wah pedals and ROCK! Dinosaur filtered the fat guitars and long solos through a maudlin, tortured outlook; it was really the blueprint for Seattle grunge. IMO, Dinosaur also heavily influenced every post-EVOL Sonic Youth album.

Prior to the Seattle explosion in '88, the "grunge" term was already in use, and it referred to any band that aped the slower rhythms and dirty guitar sounds of classic rock - bands like Kilslug, Raging Slab, Halo Of Flies, The Bastards, and Dinosaur. Even Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid were described as "grungey". This was a pre-existing strain in the underground. Sub Pop just positioned it as a defining style, and like the true marketing geniuses they were, branded Seattle as grunge central.

I'd agree with the perception that there were grunge bands who looked towards Stooges, Sabbath, etc as inspiration (Mudhoney), and those who aspired towards more of a Led Zep / BTO orientation (Mother Love Bone, and by extension Pearl Jam). Once it got into the mainstream all these subtle subcultural differentiations melted and anybody wearing plaid and playing a guitar was grunge.

Re: Nirvana and grunge - I interviewed Tad in '89 and he pulled his opening band, Nirvana, into the room because he wanted to get them more exposure. Dan Peters, Mudhoney's drummer, was there as well - it was pretty clear everybody in the room were good friends. While Nirvana were from "outside Seattle" they were welcomed with open arms and widely respected by the existing bands in the grunge scene. Steve Turner from Mudhoney said in '93, "since day one, Nirvana was always described as a pop-band-meets-the-Melvins - like, these guys could be huge. So we expected it. In a perfect world, I always thought Nirvana would be huge."