What Would Neil Young Do?

Poster by Jeremy Deller
Glasgow’s Modern Institute Museum

From Getty Images Blog:

“What would Neil Young do?” has that well-meaning, all-purpose flexibility that straplines like “think different” have. Its tone is a mix of the cheeky and the high-minded, serious but also a little wry.

I laughed when I first saw the poster because I recalled Neil Young telling his biographer James Mcdonough that when he was young he used to ask himself “…what would Bob Dylan do?…”

Ansel’s take was that Jeremy Deller was playing with the common US bumper sticker ‘What would Jesus do?”

I prefer to think that Deller is a Neil fan, has read the Bob Dylan story, has heard Neil’s trenchant ‘Living With War’ album and has conflated all the above with the Jesus bumper sticker thing.

After six hours of wandering around the Art Fair on the way home on a packed Underground train, an empty seat appeared.

I gestured to a woman with a handful of bags standing up beside it to sit down. She shook her head. I gestured again, she said “no thanks” so I sat down, wondering whether I should really have insisted, whether she was just being polite, and I’m sure it sounds daft, but in my self-conscious embarrassment I couldn’t help thinking, “What Would Neil Young Do?”

UPDATE: "What would Neil Young do?" is the punch line of an anecdote in the Canadian musician’s authorized biography, Shakey (2003).

Faced with any tricky business decision — whether to do a commercial or a TV show, say — Young and his manager Elliot Roberts would always ask themselves: "What would Bob Dylan do?" There comes a day, though, when the torch of cantankerous rock-star integrity must pass. 

Says Manager Elliot Roberts : "Years later I’m managing Bob Dylan, and some decision came up, he turns to me and says "What would Neil Young do?" 

What Would Neil Young Do?
Poster by Jeremy Deller(More on  A Battle Raged on the Open Page: Can You Change Your Mind?)

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