The album cover for Deja Vu – the second studio album by Crosby, Stills & Nash, and their first with Neil Young. Image: ATLANTIC.

On the Saturday morning a week or so ago that Victorian premier Daniel Andrews announced that the lockdown would be extended from one o’clock that afternoon, I was in my little town for a bit of shopping. Outside one barber, about a dozen people were queued, further on near a supermarket another barber and another queue of a dozen or so waiting to be shorn, trimmed, clipped.

I allowed myself a smile. One lockdown it’s toilet paper, and now it’s come to this. I was too flippant by half. For now my locks need the services of a barber, hairdresser, professional with scissors, and there’s none to be had. Locked down, locked out.

I know in the scheme of things, where businesses are more than struggling and families with children are enduring confined spaces, where hospital staff are reaching burnout, where case numbers are rising, again it’s a small matter. But there has been a flow-on effect, which is akin to word association.

The last time my hair was reaching out to beyond my collar I was listening to vinyl albums at home and cassettes in the car (remember sticking a pencil in the cogs when the tape got stuck?). My hair had colour.

So it’s been that in following these time passages I’ve spent the odd moment recently going back into the record collection. Call me a cave dweller if you will. I could of course search on any amount of streaming services and more than likely find the music from my albums. But here’s the thing about nostalgic longhairs. It’s a tactile thing. It’s like the wind blowing through your locks.

You can’t hold for instance a Spotify playlist in your hands, turn over the gatefold album cover, again and again, you can’t reach into the sleeve and pull out a lyric sheet (so that’s what he/she/they are singing, hello Neil Young’s Time Fades Away), marvel at the artwork, delve into the symbolism, for instance, of what does that mean exactly?

And there’s exercise involved, if you’ve used up your allotted time outside. Listening to albums requires effort. You have to get up and turn the record over to listen to the other side. You want all of me, it could be saying, well you need to put some effort in, and be gentle placing that needle. You want to miss a track, you need to lift, move, drop that stylus in the groove.

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Music, of course, takes you back, not only pre-pandemic, but pre-internet. It’s the tracks of your years. In some cases, it’s not the quality of the music, how well it stands the test of time that matters. It’s a marker. And it can be both, too.

A few years back, I interviewed songwriter Richard Clapton. I took to his house in Sydney a copy of his first album Prussian Blue. He was chuffed to see I had it, one of a few hundred who bought it he said. He duly signed it. I’ve played it recently, and it sounds as good as the day I bought it in the early ’70s. There I am the teenaged McFadyen knowing about an artist before they’ve had a hit, before they’re famous. I’m too cool to think I’m cool.

I also pulled out Deja Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. And there it was, Almost Cut My Hair, Crosby’s paean to the non-suits of the world.

Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It’s gettin’ kinda long…

How right you are David, but can I go that extra mile and join in harmony with I feel like letting my freak flag fly…?

I’m not too sure about that, maybe in Lockdown 9.2. Now I’ll just keep delving into the collection. Loudon Wainwright III singing Me and my Friend the Cat and I am back at late night card games at home with friends who, on the verge of losing interest, would be woken as Wainwright yells “Me and my friend the cat/into the night we sat, we were sitting at speeds known only to few…”

That speed, of course, was 33 revolutions per minute.

McFadyen’s Top 10 album playlist from the cave, picked at random…
Album II – Loudon Wainwright III
Time Fades Away – Neil Young
Deja Vu – CSNY
Radio Birdman – Radio Birdman
Crime of the Century – Supertramp
Cold Chisel – Cold Chisel
In the Falling Dark – Bruce Cockburn
Thick as a Brick – Jehtro Tull
Running on Empty – Jackson Browne
London Conversation – John Martyn