Neil Young always makes it into my stack of CDs designated for long car rides. There’s something about the momentum of his songs, especially the ones performed with Crazy Horse, that fits my motoring mood. Maybe it can be credited to Young’s known love of automobiles that make his songs road-ready; lest we forget his own musical journey that began with a car trip from Toronto to LA.

Four decades after Young arrived here in California I was enjoying a performance en conduisant of his standard “Like a Hurricane” when my beloved passenger asked me if I knew whom the song was written about. “No” was the answer. Truth was, I knew very little about the origins of this song that’s a cornerstone of the Neil Young and Crazy Horse catalog and live set, even though I’d been listening to it for 30 years.

Seventies fans of Neil will remember “Like a Hurricane”, a perfect blend of bionic feedback and brittle melody, as the star of ’76’s tour. Back then, as now, “Like a Hurricane” is the exact kind of song you go to hear at a Neil Young and Crazy Horse show. When it’s performed—and it pretty much always is—the evening inevitably achieves the much-desired quality of “transcendence.” Lift-off is built into the song’s structure: an unusual combination of a minor chord verse and major chorus, as its swirling guitar lead rises above the low fog of basic drums and simple, descending bass lines. But phenomena like ascendance, descendence, and transcendence notwithstanding, “Hurricane” is the kind of song with something best left for the ears and guts to perceive more so than anything words could hope to convey.

Originally penned in 1975, a film clip of the song from the 1976 tour made the rounds on late night rock ‘n’ roll television that year; and as film clips go, it has a visceral quality (thanks, in part, to a wind machine) that is rare in concert footage. But “Like a Hurricane” wasn’t officially released in a recorded version until 1977, as a single from American Stars and Bars (one of Young’s less-directed albums in a vast and varied catalog).

In Shakey: A Neil Young Biography by Jimmy McDonough, the songwriter describes in his own words the circumstances under which he came up with “Hurricane.” “Wrote it sitting up at Vista Point on Skyline. Supposed to be right near the highest point in San Mateo County—which was appropriate, heh-heh.” Suffering from voice strain and directed to rest, Young was unable to sing at the time, but when he delivered it to the band, they recorded their version on the first take. About a month later, Young added his vocal “sketch” (the high and low parts) to it. “It sounds meek and mild, doesn’t it?”

Yes, it does. And it’s in that push/pull between the voice and the power of the lead guitar where you’ll hear a tremendous drive to overcome the fear of love, while the lyric recedes “to somewhere safer where the feeling stays / I want to love you but I’m getting blown away,” never quite matching the wattage of the music. Grief and longing are Young specialties, and he captures the dual emotions in a minor-key verse that bursts into a major chorus—”a minor descending thing that opens up,” he says—which he claims was inspired by Del Shannon’s “Runaway.” (A couple of other songs that employ the “Runaway” minor verse/major chorus technique are “I’ll Be Back” and “Things We Said Today” by Del Shannon fans, the Beatles).

What Young doesn’t get into with his biographer—and maybe that’s just because it’s so obvious—”Like a Hurricane” further borrows from “Runaway” for its verse. Think about the line, “As I walk along I wonder what went wrong with our love, a love that was so strong” and compare it to “Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar, dancing on the light from star to star.” There are definitely echoes of a harmonious melody in there (not to mention the makings of a fine medley!) And while Shannon’s pain is more of the brokenhearted variety, Young exposes heartbreak’s dark side when he introduces fear and obsession into the equation. Biographer McDonough asked Young how the “attitude” of “Hurricane” has changed through the years, to which he responded, “It’s not as pure and innocent as it used to be… because I’m not as pure and innocent as I used to be….”

Young’s own versions of the song have turned up on Chrome Dreams (the unreleased album from 1977 for which “Like a Hurricane” was originally intended); a heavier, faster version shows up on Live Rust; and a 13-minute tour de feedback appears on the 1991 live document, Weld. Young also rearranged it on pump organ for his Unplugged (remember those?) performance. Roxy Music included an icy version of “Like a Hurricane” on its 1990 live album; Kristin Hersh’s even slower-motioned version is creepily appropriate. There are plenty more, though please don’t confuse any of them with “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by the Scorpions; that is, of course, a very different song.

Enough has been written about Young and his song process that we can speculate, probably accurately, that “Like a Hurricane” was inspired by an actual person or event. But because it was written in a period between relationships for Young (following his break up with actress Carrie Snodgress, and well before becoming acquainted with his wife of nearly 30 years, Pegi Morton) the song has never been associated with one particular woman like Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” or Eric Clapton’s “Layla.” Yet there’s one insider account from Shakey that names the hurricane of the hour: “Neil had an amazing, intense attraction to this particular woman named Gail—it didn’t happen, he didn’t go home with her,” says Taylor Phelps. So that’s the story of “Hurricane”, though I do wonder what ever happened to Del Shannon’s “Runaway.”

Watch: “Like A Hurricane” [at youtube.com]

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