I’m a big Neil Young fan and I think that “Thrasher” is one of his greatest songs. But I have always been puzzled by this verse:
So I got bored and left them there They were just dead weight to me Better down the road without that load Brings back the time when I was eight or nine I was watchin’ my mama’s TV It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode
What episode from which show is he referring to, and how does it fit in the context of the song? If the line is autobiographical, it must have aired in Canada around 1953-55, Neil was born in 1945.
I know that the song in general is about his band mates from CSN&Y, and how he got sick of them (“they were just dead weight to me”), so what in this mysterious TV episode could have reminded him of that situation?
He like being cryptic and I think he hates his fans, so we’ll never get a definitive answer.
I took it to mean that it was some half-forgotten memory, maybe of a Roy Rogers episode, or Lassie (who did rescue Timmy from the deathly clutches of the Grand Canyon), more than it is a specific actual episode that we’re supposed to get.
But then, Thrasher is supposed to be about Neil’s relationship with CSN, and really, if you don’t know that, there’s no way to know from the lyrics.
And I love the song! But it’s not about CSN-sometimes Y to me. It’s about change.
I also consider this one of Neil’s greatest songs ever, from one of my favorite Neil Young albums, if not my favorite Neil Young album. ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ was my gateway album to Neil Young when I was 14.
I agree-- it’s probably meant to evoke a general episode of its type, rather than a specific one. I googled to see if I could learn more about that specific line (I already knew the song was, at least in part, about his moving on from CSN). I found this interesting analysis, which pointed out that the ‘great Grand Canyon rescue episode’ line was a third reference to geologic formations:
The first reference is “Down the timeless gorge of changes”,
the second is “Lost in crystal canyons”.
So, it seems to me that the theme is that the other members of CSNY have become ‘lost in crystal canyons’, or ‘fossilized’; they lost their creative way, which reminded him of a half-remembered ‘great Grand Canyon rescue episode’.
P.S. Just as a personal reference, I have a very specific memory from when I had a restaurant job- my first job at 14-- I took turns every other Saturday with another employee going in at 5am to help unload the supply truck. I remember one bleak, cold winter morning, still long before dawn, walking to work with the song ‘Thrasher’ playing in my head as a welcome earworm. I was feelin’ like my day had just begun
I have always interpreted the “crystal canyons” as heaps of cocaine. And there’s even a fourth geological reference, which also can be seen as a drug reference, “They were lost in rock formations, or became park bench mutations”, though I don’t know what a park bench mutation is, but it’s a striking metaphor nonetheless.
And thanks for the link to the analysis, gonna read it know.
ETA; have read it. Yeah, that’s probably the best and closest to answering my question you can get. Thanks again for that find.
Yeah, “crystal canyons” as a metaphor for heaps of cocaine, I can see that, good interpretation. In any case, I think the general ‘geological formation’ metaphor is layered, and the layers all point to the other members of CSNY being trapped or stuck creatively, and ‘the great Grand Canyon rescue episode’ reference is to how trapped or lost they are, and perhaps speculating as to whether they can be still be saved, metaphorically / creatively.
