Art is wonderfully subjective. The very notion of any form of art means that it is completely and utterly unqualifiable. What might be the most gorgeous painting in the world for one viewer could be complete trash to another. Some performances can leave one audience reaching for rotten tomatoes while another crowd dives to hand out Academy Awards. Likewise, music is just another art form, and some people can love your work while others hate it. This is something Neil Young simply has to put up with.
To have spent over five decades at the top of the rock world is a feat not many artists can achieve, add to that the fact he is still capable of headlining a huge festival as he did in 2025 at Glastonbury and you have yourself something close to a once-in-a-lifetime performer. Young has done it not with gimmicks or pop prowess but by continuously writing songs which are deliberate, artistic and authentic.
This has always been his strongest weaponry. Few artists feel as genuine as Neil Young. Not plagued by ego or individualism, the songwriter hasn’t just been one of the starring performers of his five decades in the limelight; he’s also been just as happy to take a back seat and let the band take the praise from time to time. However, that doesn’t mean he’s ubiquitously loved.
No, just like your local bagpipe busker, Young has been subject to some abuse from time to time. But while the majority of it would have landed on his back and flown into the sea of critique like the proverbial droplets on Young’s semi-aquatic feathered back, three comments might have hurt a little more because, by and large, Young considered them icons.
“I never forgot that every time a new Beatles or Dylan album came out, you knew they were way beyond it,” Young recalled in an interview with Cameron Crowe. “They were always doing something else, always moving down the line.” So it must have hit hard when Bob Dylan, John Lennon and George Harrison shared their dislike for his work, even if they were friends, collaborators and confidants during their shared moments.
Why did Bob Dylan hate ‘Heat of Gold’?
This was quite a simple critique for Dylan; he felt like Young had stolen his act. While there might be some merit here, there are also about 1000 other artists who did the exact same thing. Bob Dylan was a revelation, and countless stars tried to pinch his style. One song, in particular, pushed Dylan over the edge: “The only time it bothered me that someone sounded like me was when I was living in Phoenix, Arizona, in about ’72, and the big song at the time was ‘Heart of Gold’,” the singer told Spin.
The track is one of Young’s biggest hits, grabbing the number one spot on the Billboard 100 and making Neil Young the first Canadian to achieve the feat. But for Dylan, the closeness of the track to his own style, now a little less wanted than before, was too similar: “I used to hate it when it came on the radio. I always liked Neil Young, but it bothered me every time I listened to ‘Heart of Gold.’ I think it was up at number one for a long time, and I’d say, ‘Shit, that’s me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me’,” he added.
Which Neil Young lyric did John Lennon hate?
There was one plain reason Lennon hated Young’s song ‘My, My, Hey, Hey’ from Rust Never Sleeps, and it all stems from fatherhood. The famous line, later quoted by Kurt Cobain in his suicide note, was “It’s better to burn out than to fade away…” and it disturbed Lennon. As Lennon told Playboy in an interview in 1980, shortly before he was murdered: “I love all this punky stuff. It’s pure. I’m not, however, crazy about the people who destroy themselves.”
The Beatle went to explain: “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don’t appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It’s the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison … it’s garbage to me.” But it was the new arrivel of his young son Sean which seems to have pushed him toward a more conservative viewpoint.
Lennon continued: “I don’t want Sean worshipping John Wayne or Sid Vicious. What do they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? I mean, it’s garbage, you know.” He then went on to add further caustic disdain, citing: “If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn’t he do it? Because he sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us. No, thank you. I’ll take the living and the healthy.”
Did George Harrison really hate Neil Young’s music?
When Bob Geldof asked if he had heard Neil Young’s new song ‘Around The World’, George Harrison, never one to mince his words, quickly dismissed the idea, sharing: “I’m not a Neil Young fan.” It’s clear that this feeling wasn’t just reserved for one track but the whole catalogue the Canadian had at the time. “I hate it, yeah, I can’t stand it.”
Not only did Harrison then mimic his guitar playing, saying it was “good for a laugh” but he also commented on Young’s singing voice, a vocal which has garnered praise around the world: “It’s mainly his voice. I liked some of his songs, but I hated the sound of his voice; his singing is even worse than me”.
It is perhaps the most devastating of the harsh critiques because it seemingly has no redemption arc. While Dylan and Lennon are happy to admit they like much of the rest of Young’s work, Harrison is in no mood to do such a thing. Instead, we are left with the reminder that even artists like the great Neil Young have to deal with criticism. You should just be glad it isn’t coming from Bob Dylan and The Beatles.
