Neil Young 73: Oceanside Countryside

Accepted Neil lore is that he once prepared an album of mostly solo acoustic songs to be called Oceanside Countryside, to which the label execs suggested he add more instrumentation. Rather than be offended, he did exactly that, resulting in what would be eventually released as Comes A Time.

Decades later, one of the discs in the massive Archives Vol. III box was titled Oceanside Countryside. Because there was no documentation saying otherwise, it could be inferred that the disc of that title presents the original sequence, which is not the case. Such is the confusing nature of Neil’s Archives, and the thankless task of organizing things that evolved regularly and often without reason. Enough people asked about it, and he eventually confirmed that the original Oceanside Countryside sequence would indeed be its own entity, kicking off the Analog Originals Series, but also designated as Special Release Series #7. (Adding further to the confusion is the cover photo, which had already been seen on the inner sleeve of American Stars ‘N Bars, which had been released before most of the songs on this album had been recorded.)

Keen listeners will notice that this rejected album includes three songs that would end up on side one of Hawks & Doves, one of which was also one of two songs rescued from the Chrome Dreams miscarriage. Then again, Comes A Time itself ended up using two older songs from a Crazy Horse session, so it’s all fluid.

Side one, or “Oceanside”, presents five songs with only the slightest overdubs by the man himself. That means those harmonies on “Sail Away” are his, and using Nicolette Larson for the final version (eventually released on Rust Never Sleeps) was a good idea. “Lost In Space” doesn’t seem quite as weird in this context, and look! There’s “Captain Kennedy” again, making its third appearance on a shelved album. Even without the rhythm section, harmonies, and strings that would be added, “Goin’ Back” is still lovely, and “Human Highway” is also just fine without the extras.

As with Comes A Time, side two (or “Countryside”, natch) is more overtly country. It also features additional musicians on most of the tracks, though he harmonizes with himself again on “Field Of Opportunity”, and not always well, so this was definitely improved when Nicolette was overdubbed. Rufus Thibodeaux continues to saw his fiddle on “Dance Dance Dance”, which would have been a bold choice now that “Love Is A Rose” was out on Decade. “The Old Homestead” is brought forward from the Homegrown era, and is here shorter by 31 seconds than the released version, thanks to two couplets being excised for no reason we can determine. His old favorite “It Might Have Been” gets another treatment; frankly, “Four Strong Winds” was a better substitution. The familiar version of “Pocahontas” closes us out, and it’s all Neil with no other players, bringing us full circle for another spin.

So while it’s not as “lost” an album to the extent that Homegrown and Chrome Dreams were, Oceanside Countryside would have been just fine, if considered a little slight, had it come out as originally envisioned. Today it’s a nice little side view, and still predicts his more overtly country moves in just a few years’ time, and not just because these were the first recordings he made with Rufus. People may well be miffed at the idea of so many repeats in their collections, but that’s why Neil streams it on his website.

Neil Young Oceanside Countryside (2025)—3½

Neil Young 72: Archives Vol. III

At least it only took the Neil Young Archives team a little under four years after the release of the second box to put out the third. Perhaps in an attempt to dwarf quality with quantity, Archives Vol. III covered the widest period yet—eleven years—on 17 CDs, with five Blu-ray discs containing eleven films in the deluxe edition. Granted, that means the ten or so albums released in that period are represented here, and usually liberally, with more of an emphasis on the first recorded and/or performed versions of songs among the previously unreleased selections. Also, various “raps” pop up on the discs, these being more or less contemporary snippets of Neil explaining things to put the recordings in context. As the other two boxes didn’t have these, they’re unnecessary. (Also, the customary book of photos and credits doesn’t include a tape log, a maddening exclusion to us curmudgeonly chroniclers, and the page numbers are pretty screwy.)

The first two discs are collectively titled Across The Water and basically expand on the Odeon Budokan disc of the second box, even overlapping chronologically with it and including alternate mixes of two of its tracks. There’s some repetition of songs already available in excellent takes on Songs For Judy, but we are assured that these are different performances. The acoustic tunes aren’t any great improvements over other versions, but when Crazy Horse plugs in, we get unique runs at “Country Home”, “The Losing End”, a sloppy “Homegrown”, and a lengthy “Southern Man”. We also get two versions of “Cortez The Killer”, for no apparent reason other than that they were recorded 20 days and two continents apart. (Across The Water is also one of the Blu-ray offerings, a concert film with color footage from Japan, and black-and-white footage on and offstage from the UK. The viewer can now determine whether Poncho and Billy were indeed tripping onstage, as the former has insisted.)

The other boxes were criticized for including previously released Archives titles, such as Fillmore East and Homegrown, because people don’t like buying things twice. This set sidesteps that thorny issue, sort of, by combining selections from Hitchhiker and Songs For Judy on a disc called—what else?—Hitchhikin’ Judy. His two songs from the Band’s Last Waltz show plus “Will To Love” (the album version, not the unadorned original) and “Lost In Space” on piano—with Ron Wood on acoustic guitar—round out the disc. (While selections do appear throughout the box, the Chrome Dreams album is not duplicated as one of the discs either.)

After the alternate take of “Hold Back The Tears”, Snapshot In Time presents portions of a cassette recorded at Linda Ronstadt’s kitchen table, going through some mostly unreleased songs while she and Nicolette Larson extemporaneously harmonize. Some of these would be recorded for American Stars ‘N Bars and Comes A Time; one of the more interesting moments is when “Peace Of Mind” segues into “Sweet Lara Larue”, an update of “Come Along And Say You Will”. The standard “Hey Babe” precedes—finally—the first official release of “Barefoot Floors”, which was a glaring omission in Vol. II. If we are to take the preceding rap at his word, it’s a recording of them listening to the song in a car.

Windward Passage is a 35-minute condensation of the official Ducks bootleg, plus unique versions of “Sail Away” and “Cryin’ Eyes”. We get some of the other guys’ tunes as well as Neil’s, so the selection is very curious. And brief. Did this really need its own dedicated disc? Well, he warned us.

Despite its cover art, Oceanside Countryside does not present the unreleased first draft of the album that would eventually morph into Comes A Time. For one thing, the selections are sequenced in strict recorded order. At any rate, there are some nice stripped-back mixes of Comes A Time songs, plus the familiar “Pocahontas” and “Lost In Space”, unreleased takes of “It Might Have Been” and “Dance Dance Dance”, a rightfully rejected “Comes A Time”, and a mix of “Peace Of Mind” with a lost verse. (The album itself would eventually get an official release, including eight of the songs on this disc.)

The sessions to complete Comes A Time—which also included outtakes of “We’re Having Some Fun Now”, an unreleased version of “Love/Art Blues”, and a cover of the oldie “Please Help Me, I’m Falling”—bookend a one-off benefit performance performed by Neil with Nicolette, the session players, and the Gone With The Wind Orchestra. That show is not in the box, but the rehearsal for it makes up the bulk of the Union Hall disc. It’s a mix of old and new songs, including a pointed medley of “Dance Dance Dance” and “Love Is A Rose”, a strings-laden “Alabama” with a “Sweet Home Alabama” tag, and the mega-rare “Lady Wingshot”.

The double-disc Boarding House presents recordings for what would become side one of Rust Never Sleeps. The alternates aren’t better than what he chose to release then, but it’s a striking acoustic journey, with the first versions of “Shots” and “The Ways Of Love”, and “Out Of My Mind” on piano is particularly striking. There is some sloppy editing; his announcement of “Sugar Mountain” appears about seven songs before he plays it, and he talks about going “way back” in time before a splice into “Comes A Time”, which wouldn’t be out for another five months. Meanwhile, in the middle of the shows he spent an afternoon jamming with Devo, recording the odd version of “Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)”, sung by Booji Boy, used in the Human Highway movie (also included on the Blu-rays), and which opens the second disc. Why not push the Devo track onto the next, still short disc so Boarding House could stay under 80 minutes and fit onto one? (The Boarding House film on the Blu-rays presents one of the shows in full.)

Instead, the 49-minute Sedan Delivery disc begins with a studio take of “Bright Sunny Day” with Crazy Horse, but the rest consists of side two of Rust Never Sleeps assorted with tracks from Live Rust, rather than any alternate performances or song selections. (For one, “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown” was played every night, and not included here. That said, both the new Boarding House film and a restored Rust Never Sleeps film are included on the Blu-rays.) Yes, the tracks chosen are presented in chronological order, recorded from four different concerts, but there’s no flow to the disc, save for ending with “Hey Hey, My My”.

Once we get into the ‘80s, the discs focus on contrasts. Coastline offers side two of Hawks & Doves, plus the “Winter Winds” outtake, then a smattering from Re-ac-tor. There’s no “T-Bone”—at 38 minutes, there’s room on the disc—but we do get an early “Sunny Inside” (why didn’t he play this with when he toured with Booker T and the MG’s?) and the otherwise unheard “Get Up”, an odd-metered tune that predicts the next album.

After the Vocoder tracks recorded alone and with Crazy Horse, Trans/Johnny’s Island offers more songs by the band initially dubbed Royal Pineapples but eventually just called The Trans Band, eschewing most of the ones they did for the album for unreleased songs and versions. The influence of Hawaii is more prominent, or maybe that’s just the constant congas and pedal steel. “If You Got Love”, left off Trans at the last minute, is included, and we weren’t missing much, though “Soul Of A Woman” stomps live and “Love Hotel”—played exactly once—finally gets an airing. The early version of “Silver & Gold” is nice, but it wouldn’t be captured correctly for another 15 or so years. In hindsight, these songs would have meshed well with CSN’s of that era. (This era gets a lot of coverage in the Blu-rays: the Berlin and Solo Trans concert films, and a new animated film by Micah Nelson, once of Promise Of The Real and occasionally Crazy Horse, to accompany the Trans Vocoder tracks.)

Evolution tackles the first Old Ways sessions and Everybody’s Rockin’ detour, beginning with live “gitjo” performances of “California Sunset” and “My Boy”. Back on his own, he used the Synclavier and drum machines for early versions of “I Got A Problem”, “Hard Luck Stories”, and “Razor Love”, the latter of which also wouldn’t be recorded right for another 15 years. “Your Love” isn’t bad, mostly because it’s simple and not attempting to sound too modern, and there’s another stab at “If You Got Love” that’s not awful.

Around the time that Geffen sued him for making records that didn’t sound like Neil Young, he hooked up briefly with Crazy Horse—plus Ben Keith tooting along on sax occasionally—to play four sets at their usual haunt, the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. Touch The Night presents most of the last show, which features songs that would emerge without the Horse on Landing On Water (including the 11-minute “title track”), another “Your Love”, the unreleased piledrivers “Rock” and “So Tired”, plus “Barstool Blues” and “Welfare Mothers” to please the crowd. (The sound is muddy as befits a cassette source; the video feed is on one of the Blu-rays as Catalyst.)

But then he was back to playing country music with a vengeance and the International Harvesters, which is the focus of Grey Riders. This era was already well-covered on A Treasure; in addition to seven songs from that set, there are a few alternate versions, like a rockin’, rearranged “Misfits” (now subtitled “Dakota”, and performed with a brief detour called Crazy Harvesters), plus an early “This Old House”, “Time Off For Good Behavior”, and finally “Interstate”, but not the previously bootlegged version. (It should be noted that not a single track is duplicated from the official Old Ways, which says something about Neil’s own estimation of it. Also, the video content on the now-rare Blu-ray version of A Treasure is included on the Blu-rays.)

Road Of Plenty recycles six tracks from Landing On Water, then continues with three rarities from the Rusted Out Garage tour. The “title track” is an early version of what would become “Eldorado”, and the first recorded performances of “We Never Danced” (a studio track on Life) and “When Your Lonely Heart Breaks” are mostly of historic interest. (Oddly, nothing from Life is included anywhere among the CDs, despite there being plenty of room, but the In A Rusted-Out Garage pay-per-view concert film as well as the rarer Muddy Track documentary are among the Blu-ray offerings.)

The final CD in the box is devoted to Summer Songs, an eight-song demo recorded in 1987 and forgotten for decades, then uploaded to the Archives site for streaming on Christmas Day in 2021 in a different order than presented here. Beginning with a superior “American Dream” he runs through songs that would end up on three future albums. “Someday” and “Wrecking Ball” have slightly different lyrics, and “Hangin’ On A Limb” could well be the unadorned track we already know. “For The Love Of Man” wouldn’t make an album for a quarter-century, while “Last Of His Kind” would be played live that year and thereafter saved mostly for Farm Aid appearances. At 38 minutes it’s another short disc, but apparently that was all he had in the tank that day. (We recommend inserting “This Old House” and “Feel Your Love” into the sequence to fill it out.)

Were we in charge of things—and obviously we’re not, despite having repeatedly offering our proofreading and organizing skills—Vol. II would have ended in 1978, but that would have stretched that set to 20 discs (not counting Blu-rays). But then, arguably, what was left wouldn’t have been as strong or exciting. At the very least, the Across The Water discs could have been in there, in place of Odeon Budokan, which would then be saved as the standalone Special Release Series volume it became anyway, and with a better cover. Hitchhiker and Songs For Judy would have sat between the boxes alongside Chrome Dreams, shaving the first three discs out of this one. (There is plenty of room in Vol. II for the last four songs on the Hitchhikin’ Judy disc, which would have brought that box neatly to the end of 1976.) What’s more, plenty is left out, particularly from the International Harvesters era (“Leaving The Top 40 Behind”, “Silver & Gold”, “Beautiful Bluebird”, “Your Love Again”). And still no “Evening Coconut”?

The fact of the matter is that the 14 hours of music in Archives Vol. III runs the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous, as his journey was affected by changes in the industry as well as with technology and his personal life. As it is, it’s a daunting collection of music that at least follows his original stated intention of releasing everything, good and bad. And hearing things in context does fill out the picture in ways that the albums as originally released couldn’t. But we didn’t expect to be blown away to the extent we were with the first two boxes, and we weren’t.

Footnote: the box was preceded by a promo disc called Archives Vol. III Takes, which offered a song each from 16 of the 17 discs in the set. As a sampler it’s alternately entertaining and frustrating; while it was a treat to hear “Lady Wingshot”, “Winter Winds”, and “If You Got Love” in decent quality, “Bright Sunny Day” and “Razor Love” were frankly underwhelming and the live versions not that unique. Plus, “Hitchhiker” came from the Hitchhikin’ Judy disc, which consisted of previously released material. Therefore, it accurately previewed the set as a whole.

Neil Young Archives Vol. III: 1976-1987 (2024)—3

Neil Young 71: Early Daze

Way back in 2017, when the Neil Young Archives launched as an interactive streaming website, the timeline feature included virtual Post-It notes as placeholders for various projects that would, we would presume, be someday released. One of those notes read simply Early Daze, which we knew from his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace was a collection of recordings made with Crazy Horse in 1969. This is basically what Neil was up to after Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere came out, and right around the time Ahmet Ertegun suggested that Crosby, Stills & Nash add him as a second guitarist, which was only one reason why the project changed. And it only took him twelve years to get it out of the pipeline and into the world.

All of these songs have been heard before, but not all in these versions. For starters, “Dance Dance Dance” was already on the first Archives box, as was “Everybody’s Alone”, said to be an alternate mix, but that’s negligible. “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown” doesn’t quite have the bite of the live version, just as “Winterlong” would be improved onstage as well as in a later recording. Both still sound excellent here. Yet another stab at “Wonderin’” was likely left aside because Neil botched the lyrics. “Cinnamon Girl” is the mono single mix, which favors Danny Whitten’s vocal, but has the familiar guitar coda tagged on.

The biggest surprise is Danny’s “Look At All The Things”, with Neil harmonizing and not quite at the level of the perfect take on the first Crazy Horse album two years later. It turns out “Helpless” was tried first with the Horse before CSNY got it, and has a slightly faster but still laid-back lope. “Birds” is the same take as the alternate B-side version, but here includes the second verse skipped on the 45. Then it’s back to the beginning of the year for the first take of “Down By The River”, this time with supposedly the original scratch vocal.

The music on Early Daze is not incendiary; there are a lot of acoustic guitars, some country influence, and Jack Nitzsche on electric piano. While everything has been freshly mixed—as opposed to done and dusted in 1969—there’s a rehearsal vibe to a lot of it, as opposed to sounding like polished album tracks. But if you take these songs, and replace “Down By The River” and “Cinnamon Girl” with “Oh Lonesome Me” and “I Believe In You”, you’d have a pretty decent second Neil Young and Crazy Horse album. (You can even leave the studio chatter in.) But then we wouldn’t have Déjà Vu and After The Gold Rush as we know them. Of course if Danny had lived, things would have been completely different. This album is a testament to him, as he sings with Neil on nearly every track.

Neil Young With Crazy Horse Early Daze (2024)—3½

Neil Young 69: Chrome Dreams

If you’ve read this far, you would be aware that lost or otherwise abandoned albums dot Neil Young’s career. Depending on whom you believe, Chrome Dreams was either a work in progress that made it to an acetate or a full-fledged album that was yanked at the last minute in favor of American Stars ‘N Bars. At any rate, the acetate was bootlegged sometime in the ‘90s, becoming one of those “why the hell did he bury this?” touchstones for fans.

Some 46 years after its original sequencing, he put it out as part of his Archives’ Special Release Series. At fifty minutes, it’s longer than most contemporary Neil albums, which averaged 35 in those days. Selected from sessions stretching over two and a half years, it’s just as much of a mixed bag as the album that did come out, and just as down as Homegrown was, which was supposedly why he didn’t put that out. Up until the appearances of Hitchhiker and Archives Vol. II, half of the tracks were unique alternate versions to standard ones that were eventually released. So while the album has become slightly redundant at this late date, it’s still arguably superior to Stars ‘N Bars.

The unadorned “Pocahontas” starts us off, just as it did Hitchhiker, followed by the canon versions of “Will To Love” (for a real mindwarp), “Star Of Bethlehem” (which of course was part of Homegrown), and “Like A Hurricane” (to blow your ears out); these three were also on side two of Stars ‘N Bars, but with the first two swapped in order. “Too Far Gone” comes from the Zuma sessions, as delivered on Archives Vol. II, played by Neil with Poncho Sampedro on mandolin in an identical if more delicate arrangement than the one that would finally turn up on Freedom a decade later.

“Hold Back The Tears” is a wholly different recording finally making its official appearance. It’s a lot starker than the Stars ‘N Bars take, with Neil’s own harmonies and overdubs as well as an extra verse making it superior. The familiar Crazy Horse trash version of “Homegrown” is followed by “Captain Kennedy”, of all things, which was part of Hitchhiker and had first snuck out on Hawks & Doves. The piano-based “Stringman” was recorded live in London with overdubs added later, and is beautiful (which made it so welcome on Unplugged, and on Archives Vol. II). “Sedan Delivery” is another terrific surprise. An earlier take with Crazy Horse, it’s still loud but slower, with only one unchanging tempo compared to the stop-start of the established arrangement, but it’s almost more punk, with extra words, too. “Powderfinger” is the acoustic one from Hitchhiker, twice as paranoid as the one we know and just as effective, and it all ends with the Comes A Time take of “Look Out For My Love”.

Chrome Dreams is a hell of an album, and an intriguing demonstration of album sequencing. Had it come out back then it likely would have confused people and sold poorly, and just as likely be heralded today. It would also have irrevocably changed the course of time, as we would then live in a world that never had Comes A Time or Rust Never Sleeps. Hearing all these alternate versions for the first time was game-changing, to be sure. For all its retroactive redundancy, it still deserves to be heard, if only for “Hold Back The Tears” and “Sedan Delivery”. (Footnotes: The original drawing that allegedly inspired the album title was lost in a warehouse fire, but fate managed to provide artwork of a similar vintage by none other than Ron Wood for this official release. Also, the album straddles his second and third Archives volumes, making organizing and navigating even crazier.)

Neil Young Chrome Dreams (2023)—3½

Neil Young 68: High Flyin’

In the summer of 1977, Neil took up with one of the guys who used to be in Moby Grape, who’d found a singer-songwriter and a drummer who could sing, and the quartet played several gigs around the Santa Cruz area billed as the Ducks. This was not Neil’s band; his job here was mostly as guitar player, supporting the other guys and their original songs, except when they played one of his. As quickly as the combo started, they were done, and Neil went off to start work on what would become Comes A Time.

It only took 45 years, but an official Ducks album finally came out as part of the Neil Young Archives Official Bootleg Series. High Flyin’ presents two discs of the band in their element: a bar. Three such venues are represented here, including Neil favorite The Catalyst, along with a recorded “live rehearsal” and an appearance at a local auditorium. The songs were recorded well enough—by Neil’s own team, of course—to the point where you can almost smell the spilt beer and urinal cakes.

Just as in every scene across America and most of Canada throughout the rock ‘n roll era up through today, The Ducks were a decent bar band, with accomplished if pedestrian vocalists. If anything, they were faster than Crazy Horse, and certainly funkier. Overall, pretty solid rock ‘n roll, as would be expected of any other bar band with a hotshot guitarist.

The draw here, obviously, is anytime Neil rips off a stinging lead, blows into a harmonica, adds a harmony, or steps forward to sing one of his own songs. “Are You Ready For The Country?” is a fun stomper as ever, while “Sail Away” and “Human Highway” get nice electric treatments with energetic harmonies. The band’s treatment of “Little Wing” is especially moving, as Neil gives it something of a riff missing from the acoustic take, and “Mr. Soul” is delivered with pure Springfield energy. (Sadly, Duck takes on “Comes A Time” and “Cryin’ Eyes”, both common to other bootlegs, do not appear here.)

But that’s a small portion of nearly two hours of music. For the most part the songs alternate between originals written by bass player Bob Mosley or Jeff Blackburn, the other guitar player, plus drummer Johnny Craviotto gets to bellow some obscure R&B nuggets. “Truckin’ Man” is indicative of their lyrical depth; “Car Tune” shows that they had more in common with Neil than just music. The instrumental “Windward Passage” has become somewhat legendary over the years, being a two-guitar dueling jam, with Neil on one and Blackburn with a chorus pedal on the other. Each disc closes with a version of “Silver Wings”, arguably the band’s best (non-Neil) tune, unless you count “Hey Now”, which features even fewer lyrics than “T-Bone”. One surprise is a furious “Gone Dead Train”, which Crazy Horse covered on their first (Neil-less) album. Throughout, Neil happily lets loose, content with being part of the backdrop in a way he hadn’t been since the Squires.

High Flyin’ isn’t essential except for us Neil completists, and even that’s pushing it, but it does beg one question. Since this technically was never an actual bootleg, shouldn’t it be part of the Performance Series?

The Ducks High Flyin’ (2023)—3

Neil Young 65: Toast

Remarkably, or maybe not, the first two “unreleased” albums Neil Young issued as part of his Archives’ Special Release Series have a similar history. Like Homegrown, Toast was started, abandoned, and then superseded by another album that didn’t directly relate to issues in his personal life. We may never know the full details of the “rough patch” that found Neil living in San Francisco while his wife and kids were back at the ranch, but apparently that experience colored the lyrics and his overall mood. At any rate, he began again with Booker T and the MG’s a few months later, and those sessions resulting in Are You Passionate? the following year.

Crazy Horse is definitely a different band than the MG’s in more ways than one, so one would think Toast (named after the studio where it was recorded) would have a more, shall we say, primitive sound. However, the earlier takes of the songs that made it to Passionate show that their soul-influenced arrangements were well in place before Booker T et al got hold of them. If anything, those tunes recall the Bluenotes, which also started as a Crazy Horse project before Neil replaced the rhythm section.

“Quit” lacks its subtitle, as well as Booker T’s organ, but it’s basically identical to the later take, right down to the female vocals. Knowing what we know now, it’s eerie to hear Pegi singing on it, but it stands out better here, without the sameness of the tracks on Passionate surrounding it. In contrast, “Standing In The Light Of Love” is total grunge, from the pounding riff to Neil’s strangled vocals, and much more what we expect from the Horse. It’s also one of those tracks that, amazingly, had stayed buried all this time, even after being revived in 2014. That said, “Goin’ Home” is still the best song of the batch, though this mix fades the song during the final solo, rather than coming to an abrupt halt, which we always liked. “Timberline” is another one of those legendary lost songs from the era, but this ragged take shows its shortcomings. The sloppiness doesn’t really match the desperation in the narrative about an unemployed logger, which needs more development. (We say this while being quite aware that it’s precisely the kind of track that people love from the Horse.)

A distinct improvement is “Gateway Of Love”, which was teased on the back cover of Passionate and played live with the Horse throughout that summer. It’s the only track we hear that has the “Latin influence” Poncho Sampedro mentioned in interviews about the shelved album; most of that is in the drums, while the bass could go either way. “How Ya Doin’?” is an odd title for what became “Mr. Disappointment”, since that question only surfaced in the later recording. This earlier version is sung in Neil’s natural voice, rather than the low rasp he adopted for the album. “Boom Boom Boom” is the same song as “She’s A Healer”, except that it’s longer and taken just a tad slower. Once again the eventual title features prominently in the lyrics, while the initial title does not. At thirteen minutes it does drag, but the jazzy bridge stands out more, and Tom Bray adds a trumpet, just as he would on the later album. Neil overdubbed a few stabs at a piano, and somebody’s playing the vibes and tapping bongos.

Toast is still unfinished as an album, and likely wouldn’t have wowed us had it come out instead back then. The disparate styles don’t cohere very well, but at least there are more dynamics, so it’s superior to Passionate, and will likely get more spins round our way. Moreover, his voice isn’t as strained here. It’s not as revelatory as Homegrown, and it hasn’t had as many decades of speculation to live up to, but once again we want to hear everything else he’s been sitting on.

Neil Young With Crazy Horse Toast (2022)—3

Neil Young 64: Citizen Kane Jr. Blues

Eighteen months after they were originally announced, the second, third, and fourth installments in Neil’s Official Bootleg Series finally appeared. Two of these chronicled shows only two days apart, and mined material already on four other archival releases. But most fans were far more excited about a show that should have been part of Archives Vol. II—it even fits chronologically between two of that set’s discs.

Citizen Kane Jr. Blues was mastered from the original cassette recording of an impromptu set played in the wee hours at New York City’s Bottom Line following a Ry Cooder gig; Leon Redbone was the opener. Neil had just finished recording On The Beach, but would only play four of that album’s songs, and played even further material that had yet to be released, or even recorded in the forms we would get to know them. (The show was edited to fit on two vinyl sides, but Neil does provide a “complete” stream of the album on his site, which runs about ten minutes longer, mostly due to a lengthy monologue before “Motion Pictures” that explains why he hasn’t played “Southern Man” in a while, and discusses “honey slides”, a potent marijuana concoction that allegedly fueled his recent writing and recording.)

After a brief introduction, he introduces a song with a title that gives this boot its title, but would come to be known as “Pushed It Over The End” and a highlight of the upcoming summer’s CSNY tour. Even without the dynamics of the full band, the stop-start arrangement is hypnotic. He introduces “Long May You Run” as a song he wrote about his car, and the audience chuckles throughout. “Greensleeves” is delivered straight, to silence, then he apologetically sets up “Ambulance Blues” for being a “bummer”, but again, they hang on to every line. At the time, only “Helpless” had made it to an album, and the crowd is happy to hear it.

“Revolution Blues” is just as spooky acoustic, and he downplays the down mood of “On The Beach” by opening with a few guitar licks in the style of Stephen Stills. An inebriated-sounding request for “something country-western” prompts “Roll Another Number (For The Road)”, which is appreciated with clapalongs and yee-haws. Even without the full intro “Motion Pictures” is mesmerizing. He offers the crowd a choice between two songs for his last number, but they want to hear both, so they get a lovely “Pardon My Heart” and then “Dance Dance Dance”, a month away from mutating into “Love Is A Rose”.

Basically, if you love this period of Neil, Citizen Kane Jr. Blues is essential. While he’s been all about sound quality, and replicating other bootlegs with pristine tapes from his own Archives, this show is intimate, raw, and seemingly much more spontaneous. Even the stray coughs from the crowd enhance the natural ambience. And it’s from a period that hasn’t been as documented as, say, early 1971. There will never likely be a better-sounding version of this show, and that’s fine.

Neil Young Citizen Kane Jr. Blues (2022)—4

Neil Young 62: Way Down In The Rust Bucket

The return of Crazy Horse for 1990’s Ragged Glory album rode a wave of critical acclaim that spilled over into the subsequent Smell The Horse tour the following winter and spring. While the staging was in line with the big amps and giant mike stands of previous tours, the tone was colored by Operation Desert Storm, and the setlists stayed pretty basic, as captured on the Weld album and video.

It didn’t start out that way. As he had on other occasions, Neil followed up the album sessions by bringing Crazy Horse into a nearby club to whip the tunes into shape. These were smaller affairs than the usual arena shows, with tickets sold quickly and quietly to the lucky few who managed to pounce on time. Being Neil, the shows were filmed and recorded for his own reference; songs from other such visits came out officially in the ‘90s, on the Broken Arrow and Year Of The Horse albums.

The two-and-a-half-hour set played on November 13 that year, as captured on Way Down In The Rust Bucket, covered most of Ragged Glory, which had already been out for two months, but also touched on other songs from the previous two decades. Along with the usual Horse staples, like “Cinnamon Girl” and “Like A Hurricane”, the boys plowed through lesser-known nuggets, like “Surfer Joe And Moe The Sleaze” and “Bite The Bullet”. They even played “Danger Bird” for the first time ever in public, and the second-ever live performance of “T-Bone”. The band sounds great; Neil has trouble with some of the high notes on “Days That Used To Be”, and we don’t expect velvet harmonies from the other guys anyway.

The focus throughout Way Down In The Rust Bucket is the music. Very little of the between-song chatter is included, and every track fades to silence after the song is finished, with a minimum of crowd ambience. (The video portion, simultaneously released on DVD, included all the chatter, tuning, and false starts, as well as the night’s performance of “Cowgirl In The Sand”, which apparently had audio issues.)

Of the many projects teased from Neil Young Archives throughout 2020, this was a welcome installment in the growing catalog. Hard to believe, listening over 30 years later, these guys were considered “old” then.

Neil Young With Crazy Horse Way Down In The Rust Bucket (2021)—3½

Neil Young 61: Archives Vol. II

Speculation about the next installment of Neil Young’s Archives box sets began immediately upon release of the first. For a few years it was presumed that this set would take the story through the rest of the ‘70s. When Archives Vol. II: 1972-1976 did finally appear, the covered timeline was shorter, but the ten discs dove deep into one of his most fertile songwriting periods, and an era that has since become hallowed by fans. (Also, with the multimedia portion largely handled by the Archives website and app, the physical package was only released on CD, initially as a limited release with a deluxe book as with the DVD and Blu-ray versions of Archives Vol. I. This sold out in seconds, forcing Neil and Reprise to prepare a second run, as well as a slightly cheaper version with a less elaborate book. The hole left by the death of manager Elliot Roberts was never more apparent.)

Three of the CDs had already been released individually, and familiar album tracks abound; he’d already established that the Archives project is designed to present his creative output in context. Roxy gains an extra track in an extended encore performance of “The Losing End (When You’re On)”, but Tuscaloosa was not so lucky, despite the outtake of “The Loner” made available for streaming.

There is an alternate live version of that song on Everybody’s Alone (1972-1973), which fills in more of the gaps in the wake of Harvest, skirting around Time Fades Away, and offering the title track to the incomplete CSNY album Human Highway. The opening “Letter From ‘Nam” is immediately recognizable as a draft for “Long Walk Home” a decade and a half later; “Goodbye Christians On The Shore” is a mysterious fable in 7/8 time. Long booted favorites like “Sweet Joni”, “Come Along And Say You Will”, and the ramshackle electric pillage of “The Last Trip To Tulsa”, exiled for years as a B-side, show up, along with a rambling introduction to an acoustic “L.A.” that finds its way out of “I Got You Babe”.

Strangely, “Everybody’s Alone” itself doesn’t appear until two discs later. Confusingly titled, Tonight’s The Night (1973) presents the raw sessions from that album, but with none of the fabled “raps” in between the songs themselves, save a longer intro to “Tonight’s the Night Part II”. A barely together “Speakin’ Out Jam” shows the effects of the tequila, and the sound of the Santa Monica Flyers backing Joni Mitchell on “Raised On Robbery” must be heard to be believed. Similarly, Walk On (1974) presents a more complete picture of how On The Beach happened, bringing in key outtakes of the period, including an electric “Bad Fog Of Loneliness” and solo acoustic renditions of “Traces” and the old chestnut “Greensleeves”.

The Old Homestead (1974) is something of a companion to Homegrown (which follows in the set) and it’s fascinating. Only the “title” track and “Deep Forbidden Lake” had been released on albums proper, with the rest of the program—70 minutes total, the equivalent of two Neil albums—devoted to songs that slipped through the cracks. Some, like “Hawaiian Sunrise”, had featured on that summer’s CSNY tour, represented here by a superior take on “Pushed It Over The End” and Stephen Stills’ blazing contribution to “On The Beach”. “Homefires” and “Give Me Strength” were often highlights of acoustic sets over the years, while “Bad News Comes To Town” would be trotted out with the Bluenotes and “Changing Highways” would emerge 22 years later as a Crazy Horse stomper. A piano rendition of “One More Sign”, dating from the Buffalo Springfield era, is as heartbreaking as “LA Girls And Ocean Boys”, which would be co-opted into “Danger Bird”. Three distinctly different takes of “Love/Art Blues”—solo, downbeat, and jaunty with yodeling—demonstrate his quest for the right sound. “Frozen Man” and “Daughters” had been rumored for years, and live up to our hopes.

Dume (1975) not only widens the scope on Zuma by about half an hour, but reveals some of the incredible candidates left off that album, such as an earlier version of “Powderfinger” and electric takes on “Ride My Llama”, “Pocahontas”, and amazingly, even “Kansas” and “Hawaii”. “Too Far Gone” and “No One Seems To Know” appear a year before the live takes on Songs For Judy; “Born To Run” is not the Bruce song, but a Neil original tried and abandoned over the decades. Look Out For My Love (1976) is even more sprawling, the continuing adventures of the refurbished Crazy Horse alongside that year’s CSNY experiment that dwindled down to the short-lived Stills-Young Band, culminating in another stab at “Human Highway”. But first we get a transcendent “Separate Ways” that would have tilted Long May You Run even further in Neil’s favor, a band take of “Traces”, and two tracks with the Crosby-Nash vocals still intact. In the midst of all this is “Mediterranean”, an intoxicating exploration unlike anything in the catalog.

The disc also weaves in and out of the shows that made up Odeon Budokan (1976), a live album captured in London and Japan, both solo and with the Horse. While heavy on Zuma, he was probably right to shelve it and wait for Live Rust three years later. Still, the sequence includes a few songs that would have made their debuts had the album been released back then, including “Too Far Gone”, “Lotta Love”, and “Stringman”. (The overdubbed version supposedly earmarked for yet another scrapped album is on the previous disc.)

As before, not every song from every album of the period is included, and the repetition throughout the ten discs may rankle some. It can also be jarring to hear songs outside of an order etched in our brains for decades. But given the quality of those original albums, it’s astounding that he had this much in the tank, and exciting for fans who’d thought they’d heard everything. In a word, wow.

Neil Young Archives Vol. II: 1972-1976 (2020)—4

Neil Young 60: Homegrown

While some unreleased albums gain notoriety via blurry traded copies, Neil Young is the king of unreleased albums shelved so well that they’ve never been bootlegged. Homegrown was his first legendary secret, scheduled for release in 1975 only to be replaced from the back burner by Tonight’s The Night. Save the handful of tracks that emerged elsewhere, it had never been heard outside his closest circle for 45 long years. With all the delays inherent to his Archives project, the promise that it would be finally released in 2020 seemed almost too good to be true. (Even the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way, pushing its release back a few months while fans sheltered impatiently in place.)

The biggest mystery about the album was this: seeing as Tonight’s The Night was such a dark album, just how much darker was Homegrown, even if Neil said it was a sequel of sorts to Harvest? The answer lies in his biography. Tonight’s The Night eulogized dead friends, while Homegrown eulogizes a dead relationship, with the body still warm and the legacy ongoing in the child Neil and girlfriend Carrie Snodgress shared. It was mostly written and recorded in the aftermath of CSNY’s massive 1974 reunion tour, and yet another aborted album by that crew. Neil was incredibly prolific in this period, the songs coming faster than he could record them, much less release them. His voice throughout Homegrown is weary, and Tim Drummond’s solid but wavering bass reflects the mood wherever he plays.

The first few songs do mirror the Harvest sequence. “Separate Ways” begins already in progress, a lazy lope a la “Out On The Weekend”, but even slower and much more infused with despair than simple melancholy. Having only been heard on bootlegs with the likes of Booker T & the MG’s, it’s great to finally have it in the official canon. “Try” is only slightly jauntier in tempo, with a tack piano and Emmylou Harris, and notoriously uses a phrase attributed to the woman screaming in the rain in “Harvest”. In the “Man Needs A Maid” slot is “Mexico”, a solo piano and voice vignette derived from Joni Mitchell’s prettier moments. “Love Is A Rose” was previously a pleasant trifle on Decade; here the same take, with its bum harmonica note, proves its true home. While not as raucous as the eventual Crazy Horse version, the title track revs slowly up to speed in the spirit of “Are You Ready For The Country?” And then the album goes completely off the rails. “Florida” is a recitation of a surreal dream while he and Ben Keith scrape piano strings and rub wine glass rims at an excruciating pitch. (If it sounds at all familiar, that would be due to the packaging of Tonight’s The Night, where the words were transposed over a replica of the liner notes from On The Beach.) “Kansas” isn’t as surreal, but acknowledges the waking “from a bad dream” over exploratory acoustic strumming. (That the melody sounds a bit like the Hitchhiker version of “Powderfinger” is probably insignificant.)

On the basis of the contents, “We Don’t Smoke It No More” wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, being little more than a slow Jimmy Reed blues with the barest of lyrics but cool lead guitar fighting with harmonica. Perhaps the most surprising departure is “White Line”. Even though its acoustic arrangement was revealed on Songs For Judy, this understated take (recorded at the Who’s studio, by the way, with only Robbie Robertson adding acoustic noodling) seems galaxies away from the loud Crazy Horse rendition that would be taken as standard fifteen years later. Frankly, it’s gorgeous. It nicely sets up the brilliant “Vacancy”, an edgy electric stomp like “World On A String” crossed with “Revolution Blues”, with sometime Band member Stan Szelest working the Wurlitzer electric piano. (Levon Helm is on the album as well.) “Little Wing” cleanses the palate just as it mysteriously opened Hawks & Doves, and an allegedly alternate mix of “Star Of Bethlehem” brings the program to a quiet close.

The benefit of history makes Homegrown as good as it sounds today. Despite being recorded in Nashville and on his ranch with some of the same players, it’s ragged where Harvest was smooth. Its haphazard flow is right in line with the mind of the man who directed Journey Through The Past only a couple of years before. Had it been released as originally planned, it likely would have confused and angered many, only to be debated for decades. It is the natural follow-up to On The Beach, and should be celebrated.

Neil Young Homegrown (2020)—4

Neil Young 58: Tuscaloosa

Among his many threats and yet-to-be-realized intentions, Neil Young had dangled the idea of an album called Time Fades Away II, compiled from the first part of the tour that spawned the ragged live album of the original name. Ten years after that bombshell revelation, Tuscaloosa presented most of a show that fulfilled that concept. More so, even; unlike Time Fades Away, which concentrated on new material, this set offers more of what the crowd was likely expecting to hear.

After two tunes played solo and sung flat for even him, the band joins to fill in the sound behind his acoustic, concentrating on the hit Harvest album. Halfway through the program, with no warning, “Time Fades Away” explodes into the speakers, turning up the energy considerably. “Lookout Joe” is introduced as a song for returning vets, and sounds very much like the version came out two years later. “New Mama” appears in its loud incarnation, thank goodness, and for the first time we hear a slight resemblance to “Last Dance”. “Alabama” fits very well with the “new” songs, and “Don’t Be Denied” is still trying to find its arrangement. Frustratingly, the album ends on a fade.

Tuscaloosa is more for diehard fans than casual listeners, and it’s no substitute for Time Fades Away, yet we’re happy to have it. At less than an hour, it seems short; a few songs were left off the release due to repetition or supposedly subpar performances, which goes against Neil’s stated “warts and all” goal of the Archives. (“The Loner” was said to have been out of tune, but based on the evidence eventually allowed to stream on his site, it sounds terrific.) Folks following along in release order may tire of songs that were also on the previous Archives Performance Series release, but the guy only had a handful of albums out at the time. And as he also points out, in 2019 he is the only surviving member of the band, so it’s a tribute to them, too.

Neil Young & Stray Gators Tuscaloosa (2019)—3

Neil Young 57: Songs For Judy

Just as chapters in Neil’s first Archives box were tantalizingly parceled out ahead of time, a decade later he appeared to be doing the same thing, focusing on performances from the mid-‘70s. Perhaps not surprisingly, the item designated #7 in his Performance Series was basically a chronologic and sonic upgrade of one of his more famous bootlegs. Songs For Judy gets its title from various meandering raps about Judy Garland, which were something of a theme during a November 1976 tour with Crazy Horse. Journalist Cameron Crowe and photographer slash guitar tech Joel Bernstein had carefully selected their favorite acoustic performances from the run and stuck them on a Maxell tape, which eventually got into the wrong hands and began circulating as “The Bernstein Tapes”. (Another fun fact: the night after the last show of the tour, Neil flew off to San Francisco to play a gig called The Last Waltz. It was a busy year.)

A quick glance at the tracklist may suggest you’ve heard this all before, and if you’ve got the bootlegs, you have, but suffice it to say this sounds a lot better. Even coming three months after the cutting session that made up Hitchhiker, only four songs are repeated. And of those, “Pocahontas” gets a stoney intro and extra lyrics at the end, while “Human Highway” is delivered on “gitjo” with a disclaimer of its own. “Give Me Strength” is given an excellent reading, and it’s hard to tell whether the crowd knew “Love Is A Rose” from the Linda Ronstadt version or thought it was “Dance, Dance, Dance”. At the time, these were brand new to audiences, and wouldn’t be out on albums for a while, if at all. The pretty piano lament “No One Seems To Know” makes its official debut, finally, and it’s worth the wait; “Too Far Gone” and “White Line” would each take over a decade to find homes. The audience hoots and hollers either way, upon which Neil constantly remarks.

Beyond that, the selections touch on just about every album he did have out by then. “Here We Are In The Years” is resurrected with a dedication to President-elect Carter, while “The Old Laughing Lady” is given a much jauntier arrangement (much like how he’d do it on Unplugged) with an added coda known as “Guilty Train”. “A Man Needs A Maid” is performed simultaneously on stringman and piano, beginning with the familiar chords of “Like A Hurricane”. “The Losing End” is just as effective solo as it was with the Horse, and even “Sugar Mountain” gets a treatment that wanders around the all-too-familiar structure. We get one line from the chorus of “Country Girl” before he moves on (“that’s as much as I know,” he says, as we tear our hair out in frustration). And of course, the hits: “Heart Of Gold”, “After The Gold Rush”, “Needle And The Damage Done”, “Harvest”, “Tell Me Why”, etc.

An unreleased live album from earlier that year, half of which featured Crazy Horse, was eventually released as part of Archives Vol. II, so those jonesing for electric mud will have to seek elsewhere. Still, Songs For Judy is an archival release of more broad appeal to casual fans than the last handful, and is right up there with the Fillmore East and Massey Hall sets.

Neil Young Songs For Judy (2018)—3½

Neil Young 56: Roxy and Rainbow

Shortly after recording what would be the Tonight’s The Night album, Neil and the band he dubbed the Santa Monica Flyers played a handful of shows at the new Roxy club in West Hollywood. These sets consisted of the nine songs intended for the album, played in order—well, actually eight, since the title track would be played a second time each set as an encore, along with one older song from albums already out, the only song the crowd might recognize.

Sadly, only grainy photographs provide visuals from these performances, wherein Neil’s latest character was bearded, more scraggly than ever, hiding behind shades, wearing a hideous seersucker jacket over a Tinkerbell T-shirt, and constantly welcoming the patrons to “Miami Beach”. Among the equipment onstage were a wooden Indian, a lone palm tree, go-go boots stapled to the side of the piano, and what looks like a high school trophy. The lighting consisted of exactly one bulb.

However, audio bootlegs have existed of these shows, and a compilation approximating an average set was released nearly 45 years after the fact as Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live. We hear the album in its original sequence, but it’s not exactly revelatory, except that a few of the songs run longer and slower. They also sound very close to the album versions, which makes sense since the songs were played twice a night only weeks before during the recording process. So “Mellow My Mind” is just as cracked, and “New Mama” is the acoustic arrangement as opposed to the harder electric approach from earlier in the year. But we do get to hear some of Neil’s warped stage patter, some of which are indexed per style as different “raps”, as well as a brief run through “Roll Out The Barrel”, started by Nils Lofgren on piano with Neil wheezing along on harmonica. Even if the band was gone on tequila and weed, they don’t sound any sloppier than usual, ably keeping up with his drawn-out take on “Tired Eyes”. The only “extra” song included is “Walk On”, predating the official take (which almost made the album) by a couple of months.

Familiarity with the tunes after all this time makes it impossible to imagine what they must have sounded like in the moment. Roxy is recorded well, and a cool historical document, only a year after Harvest had been so smooth and comparatively mellow. It even has a black label design just like Tonight’s The Night had. Its designation as the fifth installment in the Archives Performance Series inspired hope and wonder as to what was being held aside for number four. And, along with Hitchhiker, it gave further hope that Archives Vol. II would even appear in our lifetime.

Five years later, after several volumes documenting shows from the same two-month period pre-Harvest, came one of the more welcome installments in his Official Bootleg Series. Somewhere Under The Rainbow was recorded at the London venue of the same name on a brief tour that took the Roxy band, songs, and vibe to England for a week, then back to the States for another.

The brief was the same: drink a lot of tequila, play the eight Tonight’s The Night songs straight through, then play the title track again, before touching on any material the audience might recognize. That’s pretty much what happens here, along with plenty of references to Miami Beach. The second pass through “Tonight’s The Night” is prefaced by a near-apology, and runs for twelve minutes thanks to an extended monologue about having to fire Bruce Berry for losing a guitar. An acoustic “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong” is well received, as is “Human Highway” in one of its earliest performances. A nine-minute slog through “Helpless” features Nils on accordion and Ben Keith near the end. Neil loses his way not far into “Don’t Be Denied”, which the crowd appreciates nonetheless since it was from the latest album, and “Cowgirl In The Sand” is taken at a slow pace before Ralphie kicks it up to speed.

This is a true bootleg, mastered from the original audience tape because Neil hadn’t bothered to record the show himself. There are some drop-outs, some odd fades, and generally muddy sound overall. It’s a shame it’s not cleaner, but that was the original brief of the Archives—everything, regardless of perceived quality. (That said, just as with other releases in the Official Bootleg Series, this set was edited. The full show, as posted on Neil’s site, featured a lot more talking throughout, particularly during the acoustic portion and when introducing the band, and runs for two hours, a half-hour longer than the CDs.)

Neil Young Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live (2018)—3½
Neil Young With The Santa Monica Flyers Somewhere Under The Rainbow (2023)—3

Neil Young 54: Hitchhiker

Waiting for Neil to reveal his Archives to the extent long promised is an exhausting task for any fan, particularly those not especially wowed by his newer material. Based on direct quotes, we’d come to expect a laundry list of unreleased album projects, and while a few live albums made it to retail shelves, such titles as Homegrown, Chrome Dreams, and Toast remained locked up. And then he went and put out Hitchhiker, which the general public didn’t know anything about until he mentioned it in his second memoir.

The music was recorded over the course of a “stony” evening in 1976, shortly after he bailed on the Stills-Young Band tour. David Briggs rolled tape, and the session resulted in ten acoustic demos, all release-worthy. In fact, three of the recordings have been in the catalog for, well, decades; “Campaigner” came out on Decade with one less verse than the full take here, “Pocahontas” was overdubbed for Rust Never Sleeps, and “Captain Kennedy” made it out intact on Hawks & Doves. Five other songs appeared in alternate versions on later albums as well. Most people will zero in on “Powderfinger”, the oft-bootlegged acoustic version, just as mysterious as ever, but without the fire of Crazy Horse.

“Ride My Llama” comes off as fragmented, petering out before he decided how to finish it. The title track, which wouldn’t make it to an album for 34 years, comes off less a cautionary tale than an acknowledgement of the medicine he enjoyed. Another stab at “Human Highway” will fuel debate over the “definitive” version of the song, with or without CSN. “The Old Country Waltz” is played on piano, and very well too, showing off its complexities and delivered with a much more honest approach than the hokey take on American Stars ‘N Bars.

Two otherwise unreleased songs make their first appearances. “Hawaii” is a strange portrait of an archetypical Neil loner; it’s fairly complete, which only makes it more odd that he seemingly hasn’t played it since, even onstage. “Give Me Strength” is a gorgeous slice of heartbreak that he supposedly sat on because it was just too personal. This particular take has a couple of guitar mistakes and other noises, which would not have passed muster in 1976.

At a brisk 33 minutes, Hitchhiker is another tease of an ongoing project of unfathomable depth. According to the logo on the packaging, this is the fifth in a series of “special releases”, which means there are four other such albums in the pipeline that predate this little surprise. The mind reels at the possibilities; if only they were probabilities. The only constant thing about Neil is that he constantly changes his mind.

Neil Young Hitchhiker (2017)—3½

Neil Young 51: Bluenote Café

The ‘80s are usually dismissed as Neil Young’s lost years, in which he spent much of his musical time chasing trends or avoiding them, while still immersed in technology. Most of the resulting albums were underwhelming, with otherwise decent songs at the mercy of questionable production.

The Bluenotes phase confused people, and not only because he chose a band name that was both affiliated with somebody else, and not exactly a somebody known for guitar-based blues with slick horns. Neil changed the band’s name to Ten Men Workin’, after the first song on This Note’s For You, and while the rhythm section would return a few times in the future, the album remains unique in the catalog.

But as he’s proven before, it’s all one song, and hindsight has been very kind to some of his less successful experiments. In a rare case of revisionism, the band now called Bluenote Café is celebrated with its own installment in his Archives Performance Series, and a double disc to boot. Where the album was a challenge, Bluenote Café presents two and a half hours of music in two sets, giving plenty of room for the band to stretch, and the songs to breathe.

The music comes from three stages of the Bluenotes era—a couple of shows when Crazy Horse was augmented with a horn section, a club tour with the established band on the album’s release, and then a shed tour later in the summer. In addition to most of This Note’s For You, several songs make their first album appearance, and a few other rarities help round out the picture. “Welcome To The Big Room” is something of a theme song, in a band that had several. “Don't Take Your Love Away From Me” translates well from the Shocking Pinks, “Hello Lonely Woman” is given a jolt of energy compared the pre-fame demo, and “Soul Of A Woman” is otherwise similar to the one on A Treasure but for the horns. A true highlight of the first set is “Bad News Comes To Town”, a terrific soul burner that uses the extra players as part of the dressing.

“I’m Goin’” was buried on the B-side of “Ten Men Workin’”; though this is a later recording, it’s still a one-chord song with the same horn parts, but plenty of guitar. “Ordinary People” sounds much better in this context, with Ben (or Poncho) yelling along instead of Neil’s overdubbed asides. “Crime In The City” (not to be confused with “Life In the City”) adds a little more edge than the one that made it to Freedom, with different but not all of the verses from the song’s original epic length. Here’s it’s followed by “Crime Of The Heart”, a fairly simple idea with more complicated chords than Neil usually plays. “Doghouse” is pretty stupid, but that didn’t stop Pegi from covering it a few years ago. “Fool For Your Love” is tighter than the Road Rock version, yet still sterile.

In the encore section, exactly two songs come from previous albums: “On The Way Home”, with the horns playing the arrangement from the Buffalo Springfield recording, and “Tonight’s The Night”, stretched to 20 minutes but still managing to be the best performance of the song above the rest.

People who chronicle this stuff will tell you that there is more music from this era to be heard, and maybe a future Archives box will have more. For now, Bluenote Café helps to prove that Neil’s best work of the decade was on stage. And just as with A Treasure, it helps whet the appetite for further installments.

Neil Young and Bluenote Café Bluenote Café (2015)—3½

Neil Young 47: Cellar Door and Carnegie Hall

One of the selling points for the Blu-ray version of Neil’s Archives box was that it provided the capability to download additional material as it became available. His rationale was that if he discovered something he considered Archive-worthy, it would go right into the virtual filing cabinet around which the project was formatted. And for the better part of a year, right around each month’s full moon, a new item would pop up to add to the pile of music already contained in the set. Since then, nothing. (And after the official Archives website was launched, that became the repository for material old and new.)

In a move guaranteed to irritate those Blu-ray owners, Live At The Cellar Door, compiled from six shows over three days late in 1970, emerged as a standalone CD. This installment of his Performance Archive Series (dubbed “2.5” to go between the already-established 2 and 3) was recorded a whopping six weeks prior to the shows sampled for Live At Massey Hall. Given that this period had been well mined—“See The Sky About To Rain” having already appeared on the box—and folks were clamoring for any news on the status of Archives Vol. II and beyond, this disc may have seemed redundant to those of us without Blu-ray players. Were these solo acoustic performances really that different from any others, in the way that shows by the likes of, for example, the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, or even Neil with Crazy Horse might have been?

Luckily, they are a little different. “Expecting To Fly” receives a nice treatment at the piano, for example. So does, amazingly, “Cinnamon Girl”, so often associated with electric fuzz, and here with an intro resembling that of “After The Gold Rush”, which is likely the reason for the spontaneous applause. He acknowledges that he never did it that way before, and it’s pretty clear why. In fact, half of the album is a showcase for his “almost a year” of piano playing.

Given the between-song “raps” that dotted similar releases, Live At The Cellar Door mostly sticks to the music, except for a three-minute detour before “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong”. The prelude is punctuated by his fingers messing with the piano strings to comic effect, while the song itself travels from sorrowful to jaunty and back. It’s one performance that makes the album worth owning.

Ever oblivious to a marketing study, eight years later Neil chose to inaugurate his Official Bootleg Series with a show recorded at Carnegie Hall within days of the Cellar Door shows. With the idea that he’d replicate classic vinyl boots with original artwork but optimal sound, in this case the boot in question preserved the second of two performances, while the one he put out was the first.

Unlike many of the shows he’s released lately, this one is a complete performance, 23 songs running to two CDs, split right where the intermission occurred. In addition to songs heard on Cellar Door, “Wonderin’” is given a pleasant acoustic reading, “The Loner” is similar to the 4 Way Street arrangement (but not in a medley), and “Southern Man” is just as frenzied stripped down. “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” is transferred to piano, and there’s a nice little exploratory acoustic passage before “Dance Dance Dance” that sounds almost like “Music Is Love”. “Sugar Mountain” gets interrupted a few times because the crowd won’t clap in rhythm or sing along. A lot of banter is left in, including further admonishments of the crowd. (The similarity of his piano intros is the source of one such exchange.) Were this title available before Cellar Door, it would be preferable, but it wasn’t, so there it is.

Neil Young Live At The Cellar Door (2013)—3
Neil Young Carnegie Hall 1970 (2021)—3

Neil Young 44: A Treasure

For a couple of years in the ‘80s, Neil had insisted that he would only be playing strict country music henceforth. He changed his mind of course, and hindsight has shown that his stance was more down to his defiant nature than anything else—basically, the more his label told him not to, the more hokey he got. This resulted in the Old Ways album, which gestated over two years into a bland listen that has clouded the popular perspective of where he was at.

The release of A Treasure, a collection of live recordings from that two-year period, should change all that. Only two songs from Old Ways appear here—thankfully, “Get Back To The Country” did not employ a jawbone onstage—giving us a chance to appreciate that Neil was up to a lot more than the album would suggest. The overall sound is closer to, say, side two of Hawks & Doves, using many of that album’s musicians.

What also makes it preferable is the handful of songs that were performed multiple times on the road—and on the Austin City Limits TV show—but didn’t make it to Old Ways. The very first track, “Amber Jean”, is a love song to his newborn daughter. “Let Your Fingers Do The Walking” is a journey into a Nashville pun, but luckily without the syrup it would have received in the studio. “Soul Of A Woman” had been tried out in his Trans and Shocking Pinks guises, and would also appear during the Bluenotes era; here it’s middling R&B. “Nothing Is Perfect” comes straight from the mid-‘80s Farm Aid mentality, but “Grey Riders” absolutely cooks.

A few older songs are given new coats of paint. “It Might Have Been” is an old standard performed as far back as 1970 with Crazy Horse (and included on Archives Vol. I). There’s a stunning take on “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong”, which some reviewers have compared to Poco or the Flying Burrito Brothers. “Are You Ready For The Country?” doesn’t have any of the sloppy charm of the original. Proof that country was always in his blood is reinforced with “Motor City” and “Southern Pacific”, both originally heard on the acerbic Re-ac-tor album, and here transformed to good old-fashioned stompers.

A Treasure confirms—and this was the point—that Neil wasn’t necessarily lost during the ‘80s; he just put out some bad albums. As an official installment in the Archives Performance Series, it only has us wondering if the others will be just as illuminating. (A Blu-Ray edition of the album features highest-quality audio synched to whatever video footage was available; in some cases, the song might be the same but the players are different.)

Neil Young/International Harvesters A Treasure (2011)—3

Neil Young 42: Archives Vol. I

Pigs flew, hell froze over, and the first set of Neil’s Archives finally came out, looking not all that different than from what had been rumored. A true multimedia experience, the hoopla centered around the most deluxe version, that being the Blu-Ray edition, wherein the listener could scroll through the information on each disc while any track played. This version—as well as the DVD edition, with all the content but not the ease-of-access—was also chock full of extra video and audio files, photos, and memorabilia, with a thick book and even the Journey Through The Past film on its own disc.

As a gesture to those fans who couldn’t swing the two hundred plus dollars for the Blu-Ray or DVD version (plus whatever it cost for a player to hear it on), Neil also made Archives Vol. I available as an eight-CD set—just the music, no visuals, outside of a slim booklet detailing track info. (The DVD and Blu-ray sets did include the Sugar Mountain installment, which was nice of them.)

The set begins appropriately with a few tracks by his first band The Squires, who apparently thought of themselves as a surf outfit. Once he started writing and singing his own songs, it’s clear that the Beatles were a big influence. We get to hear early versions of songs, such as “I Wonder” (which would become “Don’t Cry No Tears” on Zuma). A failed audition for Elektra includes some melodies we recognize from elsewhere, and before we know it he’s in Buffalo Springfield. A few repeats from their box set, album tracks and outtakes alike, are bolstered by the long-lost “Slowly Burning” and “Sell Out”. By the end of the disc he’s exponentially progressed as a songwriter.

The second disc (Topanga 1) covers the sessions for his first solo album, including alternate mixes and early versions of “Birds” and “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”. Then he meets Crazy Horse and starts working on that album. But first he does a club tour, which provides the basis for the Live From The Riverboat disc. Recorded three months after the Canterbury House show, his mood here seems a little cranky. Perhaps it’s the presence of Springfield bass player Bruce Palmer in the crowd? Whatever the case, he does a few different songs from his debut, plus an unfinished song called “1956 Bubblegum Disaster” and the “Whisky Boot Hill” section of what would become “Country Girl”.

Topanga 2 finishes Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and begins After The Gold Rush, but with a detour into Déjà Vu. Here we get the legendary outtakes “Everybody’s Alone” and “Dance Dance Dance”, the live rarity “It Might Have Been”, and “Sea Of Madness” with CSN. The Fillmore East and Massey Hall discs bookend Topanga 3, wherein Neil finishes After The Gold Rush (but leaves “Wonderin’” in the can) and tours (again) with CSN.

He’s truly hit his stride by the North Country disc, which covers the widespread recording sessions for Harvest. Highlights include “Bad Fog Of Loneliness” and “Journey Through The Past” with the Stray Gators, the first release of “War Song” since 1972, and an alternate mix of “Soldier”. (We also get the 15-minute version of “Words” that took up one side of Journey Through The Past.)

It’s an ambitious project, and one can be happy for Neil that he was finally able to see it come to fruition in a form he approved. It is, however, far from perfect. For starters, not all of the CDs are filled to capacity; this is likely to mirror the contents of the Blu-Ray or DVD, which would be full of all the extras. While outtakes abound, it doesn’t include every song from each of his solo albums up to 1972. Chronologically, “Love In Mind” from Time Fades Away belongs on disc eight, but as Neil has disowned that album, the version of the song on the Massey Hall disc should suffice. And of course, those who’d already bought the recent Fillmore East and Massey Hall CDs would be irritated that they’re here again. But hey, we’d been warned. And he didn’t owe us a damn thing. Meanwhile, the interminable countdown began for Volume II.

Neil Young Archives Vol. I: 1963-1972 (2009)—4