Neil Young confuses and irritates me. It baffles as to how a songwriter can write a song like "Old Man" and immediately follow it with drivel like "A Man Needs a Maid". I also can't stand how he sometimes injects orchestral elements into his songs (see the aforementioned song) which completely ruined Harvest for me.

After the Gold Rush is still fantastic though.

I found Harvest really tough to get into at first. It wasn't really until I had listened to it more and more that I began to really enjoy it.

Pissed off that his tour this year isn't coming to my state. :banghead:

try its sequel Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon is kind of an acquired taste also. Almost camp fire type songs, really country-like in sound. I enjoyed it.

"A Man Needs A Maid" is my favorite song of this album. And I love that strange orchestral elements in "There's A World" that you're talking about. For me, "Harvest" is his best album. It's strange that you don't like it. Maybe, like Abstract said, you should listen to it some more to like it. And, "Harvest Moon" is my favorite of his late works.

In this one I am with u 100%. I do not know Dylan well enough to judge him lyrically, but musically Neil Young is far beyond ...

Neil young really isn't that much better musically than Dylan. I saw them both live last year, I was blown away with how good Dylan was at the organ. Of course Neil blew me away as well but he hasn't really progressed as a musician as much as Dylan. Neil youngs acoustic music is every bit as much as simple as bob Dylans. I might even give the edge to bob. Songs like "I was young when I left home" demonstrate a great fingerpicking ability that Bob possessed. That level of fingerpicking combined with singing at the same time surpasses anything that Neil did on a level of difficulty. Another example of great Dylan picking is on the track "buckets of rain". It's Neil's electric playing that gives him the edge on Dylan. But from my experience as a guitarist, the fingerpicking of Dylan is still more difficult than Neil's electric soloing. But it's the tone and style that makes Neil's electric guitar playing great, not the level of difficulty.

They're pretty musically equal in my opinion, being that they both have something different to offer.

On a side note, it's a popular belief that young can sing good and dylan can't. I completely disagree. It's Neil's falsetto that gives people this impression. When you listen to songs like buffalo Springfields "mr. Soul" you can clearly hear that Neil doesnt have a very good vocal ability other than his falsetto. I'll take the vocals of Dylan's "one more cup of coffee" over any vocal performance of Neil. Bobs voice was ever changing, Neil's is always the same.

Yes, actually, none of them is a good singer, but that doesn't make them less good musicians. The trick is to know how to use your voice and they both know. In the first half of their careers Young's voice was better, he sang so beautifully, but, as you said, his voice is always the same, while Dylan's husky voice in his 90s and 2000s albums is just amazing.

I think they both have great voices. Like you said, they know how to use it. To me it's never been about vocal range or prowess, it's about the emotion and the sincerity that is in the voice. And to me, there aren't many better at that then Dylan and young.

Yeah, of course the most important things for a singer are the emotion, the sincerity and so on, but it's always been better when he has a wider vocal range. Don't you think that if Dylan and Young had wide vocal ranges, instead of their poor ones, they would make even better music.