TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

David Carr has a truly terrific profile of Neil Young for the Times:

Doing as he pleases has worked out pretty well for him. As a young musician torn between the crunch of the Rolling Stones and the lyricism of Bob Dylan, he avoided the fork altogether and forged his own path. Over the course of more than 40 records and hundreds of performances that date to the mid-’60s, he has backed Rick James, jammed with Willie Nelson, dressed up with Devo, rocked with Pearl Jam and traded licks with Dylan. Some of it has been terrible, much of it remarkable. He has made movies by himself and with Jim Jarmusch and Jonathan Demme. He called out Richard Nixon, praised Ronald Reagan and made fun of the second Bush. And he has little interest in how all of that was received. “I didn’t care and still don’t,” he said, then went on: “I experimented, I tried things, I learned things, I know more about all of that than I did before.”

I’ve listened to Neil Young for most of my life—at least since I was four years old, but probably earlier than that, too. While on long road trips to visit family, my Dad would often play “Harvest Moon,” and so I have rather vivid memories of driving down desert highways at night, drifting in and out of sleep, while “Unknown Legend” or “Harvest Moon” play. For me, that album will always be the soundtrack for the desert; a slow, calm, deep and profound beauty.

Of course, as a kid, he wasn’t who I’d list as my favorite artist. But whenever one of his songs would come on—”Old Man,” “Heart of Gold,” whatever—I listened, I followed every word, every sound. I don’t know any other way to describe his music other than as beautiful.

And now, 24 years old, the Ramones will always be my favorite band—and Neil will always be my favorite musician. He’s one of those people trying to find some truth in the world, and always trying to do something meaningful. Not all of his work is good. Some of it is terrible. But some of it is transcendent. It’s because so much of it is terrible that I so love his work; he was never afraid of failing in pursuit of doing something great. And so, by relentlessly pursuing it, by never settling for what he was already good at, he created art.