Track of the Week: Neil Young: Cortez The Killer (1975)

Compared to his previous two albums, the bleakly confessional 'On The Beach' and 'Tonight's The Night', 'Zuma' is a walk in the park. It's still an intense dark album full of images of betrayal and death, but this time the emphasis is on country tinged murder ballads rather then bleak, personal existential angst. The album's centre piece is undoubtedly the seven-and-a-half minute epic, 'Cortez the Killer'. The song is remarkably simple, one of Young's traits that unites the range of musical styles he plays in, consisting of the same three chords repeated throughout, overlaid mostly with Neil Young and Frank Sampedro 's malevolent soloing. Never a conventionally skilled player, Young's soloing has always been worth listening to for the staggering amount of emotion he packs into it, driving already intense songs almost to breaking point. Here, his soloing has become even more ragged and discordant then on early classics such as 'Down By The River'. Sampedro's playing works in a similar manner and nicely complements Young’s. Together, they drag the song out to its epic length, through numerous sinister build ups and fiery releases. Anyone who dismisses all guitar solos as meaningless indulgent drivel should give this record a listen - the soloing is part of what gives the song its tangible feel of bad karma - 'Cortez' just sounds plain nasty. You can see why grunge pioneers like Dinosaur Jr and Pixies cite Young as a major influence. Lyrically, the song starts off as a lament for the death of the Aztecs, described romantically by Young - 'The women all were beautiful, and the men stood straight and strong / They offered life in sacrifice so that others could go on'. But in the last verse, he turns the song back in on itself, relating the loss of the Aztecs to a failed relationship - 'I still don't remember when or how I lost my way...' So how does the relationship end? It's left vague in the lyrics, but the sinister atmosphere of the song, and the violent intensity of the playing, suggests that something nasty happened to this initially ideal relationship. Especially as the song is placed at the end of an album loaded with images of death, and early songs deal with protagonists with a definite sinister side to them. On side one of the album, 'Looking For A Love' deals with a person whose relationships are jeopardised by his 'darker side'. And this is Neil Young, who sang, 'Down by the river / I shot my baby' on an earlier album. The title of the song focuses on Cortez, the Spanish conquistador responsible for the colonisation of South America by the Spanish and hence the death of the Aztec race, rather then the Aztecs themselves. The protagonist sees himself as Cortez in this situation, somehow responsible for the death of his relationship with this girl, but did he actually kill her? The suggestion is made all the more sinister by its very vagueness. In many ways the song is similar to 'Down By The River', the Young song quoted earlier, in that most of the actual violence happens inside the music and outside the relatively calm lyrics. Young's protagonists keep a straight face for society, but however well they hide it, they cannot stop the inner torment that plagues them as a consequence of their actions. As the song draws to a close, both guitarists emotionally worn out by the sheer intensity of the experience, an all but spent Young repeats the first line of the song, 'He came dancing across the water /Cortez, Cortez', then says numbly, 'What a killer.' He sounds genuinely tortured by the ordeal, whether it is in fact just the end of the Aztecs or the jealous murder of a loved one. And it is Neil Young's emotional intensity and honesty that makes him such a compelling artist.