Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Where would music be if it wasn't for breakups.

This song is only in my Spotify Top #500 Songs because it was Neil Young’s first Top 40 hit as a solo artist in 1970, was on the radio a lot, and was one of many great songs on After the Goldrush, which was an awesome album.

At 13, I obviously had no idea about love. I’d had girlfriends, but they were more like friends that you hung out with a lot. We enjoyed each other’s company, but there was never going to be any heartbreak. Plenty of time for that later.

Like most young guitar players in the 1970s, Neil Young was featured on our playlists, although as far as songs go from that album, The Needle and the Damage Done, was my favorite. I just loved the D fingerstyle progression. It went perfectly with the style of guitar I was playing at the time, and I’ve used variations in my own songs from time to time, as have a great many songwriters. That song had a poignancy, as in the late 70s I would see a number of friends and acquaintances succumb to drug addiction and what came with it. Fortunately, I never went in that direction.

But back to this song. It was written after the breakup of Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell. It and a number of other songs sprang from the breakup, but they had only been dating for 2 years. I guess it was one of those full-on relationships, a flash and burn. Yet, for all the intensity in the songs that flowed from it, the relationship was said to have been broken up for 2 main reasons, his infidelity, and her growing fame.

If only we could all have 2-year relationships that would provide the muse for great songs including ‘Our House’ and ‘Teach Your Children Well’, by Nash, and ‘A Case of You’ and ‘My Old Man’, by Joni Mitchell.

Speaking of ‘A Case of You’, my wife and I were randomly watching music on YouTube a couple of months ago and came across the 2022 Newport Folk Festival, where Brandi Carlile so lovingly accompanied Joni. It brought tears to my eyes then, and it did again today when I watched it for the 3rd or 4th time. If you do nothing else motivated by this post, watch this video and tell me you were not moved by it.

This was Joni’s first performance in 20 years and with some serendipity for my Substack, the album featuring this performance, called ‘At Newport’, was officially released today. It also features that awesome classic, ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, that young people today probably heard for the first time by one of the hundreds of artists who have covered it over the years.

I’m kind of glad Nash and Mitchell broke up because so much wonderful music was a result of that short bright flame.

On a tangent, this morning I was listening to an episode of the podcast that gave me the idea for an autobiography based around 500 songs. On yet another tangent (I’m known for doing that) I accidentally wrote ‘epidose’ when I was keying this in, and I was tempted to leave it here because I liked the sound of it. But it isn’t original. It’s a thing according to the Urban Dictionary. “An accidental metathesis of the word 'Episode', considered particularly apt when used in connection with high profile Soap Operas or Reality TV.”

The podcast I’m referring to is called ‘A History of Rock Music In 500 Songs’ and I was listening to Episode 166: “Crossroads by Cream”, and the link to this story is that Young, Mitchell, and Nash were commonly referred to as folk singers. Andrew Hickey talks in the podcast about the definition of folk songs, the reference was to people saying that blues music is not folk music, because it isn’t traditionally transmitted by oral tradition. I’d beg to differ, because most of the great bluesmen of the day learned their songs and craft by listening to other people’s performances…..

As you know, if you have been reading In My Life, I grew up in folk clubs. Many of the songs I learned in those clubs and folk festivals, were of that ilk. But very quickly I was drawn to less traditional clubs which featured a lot more blues, music written in the late 60s and through the 70s, and of course the rise of the singer-songwriter, which was the direction I was heading to.

Me performing at a breakaway ‘club’ that I started for people who wanted less traditional music and more opportunities to jam, back in the day

It got me wondering what folk music actually is because, over the years, much of the music played at folk clubs is in fact music written in that 70’s era, like the songs from After the Gold Rush, which back then I think we called contemporary.

What do you think of when you hear the words ‘folk music’?