Track
listing
1. Out on the Weekend
2. Harvest
3. Man Needs a Maid, A
4. Heart of Gold
5. Are You Ready For the Country
6. Old Man
7. There's a World
8. Alabama
9. Needle
and the Damage Done, The - (live)
10. Words (Between the
Lines of Age)
Product Details
- Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
- Original Release Date: February 1972
- Number of Discs: 1
- Label: Reprise / Wea
Neil Young Biography
After Neil Young left the California folk-rock band Buffalo
Springfield in 1968, he slowly established himself as one of the most
influential and idiosyncratic singer/songwriters of his generation.
Young's body of work ranks second only to Bob Dylan in terms of depth,
and he was able to sustain his critical reputation, as well as record
sales, for a longer period of time than Dylan, partially because of his
willfully perverse work ethic. From the beginning of his solo career in
the late '60s until the late '90s, he never stopped writing, recording,
and performing; his official catalog only represented a portion of his
work, since he kept countless tapes of unreleased songs in his vaults.
Just
as importantly, Young continually explored new musical territory, from
rockabilly and the blues to electronic music. But these stylistic
exercises only gained depth when compared to his two primary styles:
gentle folk and country-rock, and crushingly loud electric guitar rock,
which he frequently recorded with the Californian garage band Crazy
Horse. Throughout his career, Young alternated between these two
extremes, and both proved equally influential; there were just as many
singer/songwriters as there were grunge and country-rock bands claiming
to be influenced by Neil Young. Despite his enormous catalog and
influence, Young continued to move forward, writing new songs and
exploring new music. That restless spirit ensured that he was one of the
few rock veterans as vital in his old age as he was in his youth.
Born
in Toronto, Canada, Neil Young moved to Winnipeg with his mother
following her divorce from his sports-journalist father. Young began
playing music in high school. Not only did he play in garage rock
outfits like the Esquires, but he also played in local folk clubs and
coffeehouses, where he eventually met Joni Mitchell and Stephen Stills.
During the mid-'60s, he returned to Toronto, where he played as a solo
folk act. By 1966, he joined the Mynah Birds, which also featured
bassist Bruce Palmer and Rick James. The group recorded an album's worth
of material for Motown, none of which was released at the time.
Frustrated by his lack of success, Young moved to Los Angeles in his
Pontiac hearse, taking Palmer along as support. Shortly after they
arrived in L.A., they happened to meet Stills, and they formed Buffalo
Springfield, who quickly became one of the leaders of the Californian
folk-rock scene.
Despite the success of Buffalo Springfield, the
group was plagued with tension, and Young quit the band several times
before finally leaving to become a solo artist in May of 1968. Hiring
Elliot Roberts as his manager, Young signed with Reprise Records and
released his eponymous debut album in early 1969. By the time the album
was released, he had begun playing with a local band called the Rockets,
which featured guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and
drummer Ralph Molina. Young renamed the group Crazy Horse and had them
support him on his second album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which
was recorded in just two weeks. Featuring such Young staples as
"Cinnamon Girl" and "Down by the River," the album went gold. Following
the completion of the record, he began jamming with Crosby, Stills &
Nash, eventually joining the group for their spring 1970 album, Déjà
Vu. Although he was now part of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Young
continued to record as a solo artist, releasing After the Gold Rush in
August, 1970. After the Gold Rush, with its accompanying single "Only
Love Can Break Your Heart," established Young as a solo star, and fame
only increased through his association with CSNY.
Although Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young were a very successful act, they were also
volatile, and they had split by the spring 1971 release of the live Four
Way Street. The following year, Young had his first number one album
with the mellow country-rock of Harvest, which also featured his first
(and only) number one single, "Heart of Gold." Instead of embracing his
success, he spurned it, following it with the noisy, bleak live film
Journey Through the Past. Both the movie and the soundtrack received
terrible reviews, as did the live album Time Fades Away, a record
recorded with the Stray Gators that was released in 1973.
Both
Journey Through the Past and Time Fades Away signaled that Young was
entering a dark period in his life, but they only scratched the surface
of his anguish. Inspired by the overdose deaths of Danny Whitten in 1972
and his roadie Bruce Berry the following year, Young wrote and recorded
the bleak, druggy Tonight's the Night late in 1973, but declined to
release it at the time. Instead, he released On the Beach, which was
nearly as harrowing, in 1974; Tonight's the Night finally appeared in
the spring of 1975. By the time of its release, Young had recovered, as
indicated by the record's hard-rocking follow-up, Zuma, an album
recorded with Crazy Horse and released later that year.
Young's
focus began to wander in 1976, as he recorded the duet album Long May
You Run with Stephen Stills and then abandoned his partner midway
through the supporting tour. The following year he recorded the
country-rock-oriented American Stars 'n Bars, which featured vocals by
Nicolette Larson, who was also prominent on 1978's Comes a Time. Prior
to the release of Comes a Time, Young scrapped the country-rock album Homegrown
and assembled the triple-album retrospective Decade. At the end of
1978, he embarked on an arena tour called Rust Never Sleeps, which was
designed as a showcase for new songs. Half of the concert featured Young
solo, the other half featured him with Crazy Horse. That was the
pattern that Rust Never Sleeps, released in the summer of 1979,
followed. The record was hailed as a comeback, proving that Young was
one of the few rock veterans who attacked punk rock head-on. That fall
he released the double album Live Rust and the live movie Rust Never
Sleeps.
Rust Never Sleeps restored Young to his past glory, but he
perversely decided to trash his goodwill in 1980 with Hawks &
Doves, a collection of acoustic songs that bore the influence of
conservative, right-wing politics. In 1981, Young released the heavy
rock album Re*ac*tor, which received poor reviews. Following its
release, he left Reprise for the fledgling Geffen Records, where he was
promised lots of money and artistic freedom. Young decided to push his
Geffen contract to the limit, releasing the electronic Trans in January
1983, where his voice was recorded through a computerized vocoder. The
album and its accompanying technology-dependent tour were received with
bewildered, negative reviews. The rockabilly of Everybody's Rockin'
(1983) was equally scorned, and Young soon settled into a cult audience
for the mid-'80s.
Over the course of the mid-'80s, Young released
three albums that were all stylistic exercises. In 1985, he released the
straight country Old Ways, which was followed by the new wave-tinged
Landing on Water the following year. He returned to Crazy Horse for
1987's Life, but by that time, he and Geffen had grown sick of each
other, and he returned to Reprise in 1988. His first album for Reprise
was the bluesy, horn-driven This Note's for You, which was supported by
an acclaimed video that satirized rock stars endorsing commercial
products. At the end of the year, he recorded a reunion album with
Crosby, Stills & Nash called American Dream, which was greeted with
savagely negative reviews.
American Dream didn't prepare any
observer for the critical and commercial success of 1989's Freedom,
which found Young following the half-acoustic/half-electric blueprint of
Rust Never Sleeps to fine results. Around the time of its release,
Young became a hip name to drop in indie rock circles, and he was the
subject of a tribute record titled The Bridge in 1989. The following
year, Young reunited with Crazy Horse for Ragged Glory, a loud,
feedback-drenched album that received his strongest reviews since the
'70s. For the supporting tour, Young hired the avant rock band Sonic
Youth as his opening group, providing them with needed exposure while
earning him hip credibility within alternative rock scenes. On the
advice of Sonic Youth, Young added the noise collage EP Arc as a bonus
to his 1991 live album, Weld.
Weld and the Sonic Youth tour helped
position Neil Young as an alternative and grunge rock forefather, but
he decided to abandon loud music for its 1992 follow-up, Harvest Moon.
An explicit sequel to his 1972 breakthrough, Harvest Moon became Young's
biggest hit in years, and he supported the record with an appearance on
MTV Unplugged, which was released the following year as an album. Also
in 1993, Geffen released the rarities collection Lucky Thirteen. The
following year, he released Sleeps with Angels, which was hailed as a
masterpiece in some quarters. Following its release, Young began jamming
with Pearl Jam, eventually recording an album with the Seattle band in
early 1995. The resulting record, Mirror Ball, was released to positive
reviews in the summer of 1995, but it wasn't the commercial blockbuster
it was expected to be; due to legal reasons, Pearl Jam's name was not
allowed to be featured on the cover.
In the summer of 1996, he
reunited with Crazy Horse for Broken Arrow and supported it with a brief
tour. That tour was documented in Jim Jarmusch's 1997 film The Year of
the Horse, which was accompanied by a double-disc live album. In 1999,
Young reunited with Crosby, Stills & Nash for the first time in a
decade, supporting their Looking Forward LP with the supergroup's first
tour in a quarter century. A new solo effort, Silver & Gold,
followed in the spring of 2000. In recognition of his 2000 summer tour,
Young released the live album Road Rock, Vol. 1 the following fall,
showcasing a two-night account of Young's performance at the Red Rocks
Amphitheater in Morrison, CO, in September 2000. A DVD version titled
Red Rocks Live was issued that December, including 12 tracks initially
unavailable on Road Rock, Vol. 1. His next studio project was his most
ambitious yet, a concept album about small-town life titled Greendale
that he also mounted as a live dramatic tour and indie film.
In
early 2005, Young was diagnosed with a potentially deadly brain
aneurysm. Undergoing treatment didn't slow him down, however, as he
continued to write and record his next project. The acoustically based
Prairie Wind appeared in the fall, with the concert film Heart of Gold,
based around the album and directed by Jonathan Demme, released in 2006.
That year also saw the release of the controversial CD/DVD Living with
War, a collection of protest songs against the war in Iraq that featured
titles such as "Let's Impeach the President," "Shock and Awe," and
"Lookin' for a Leader." Restless, prolific, and increasingly
self-referential, Young issued Chrome Dreams II late in 2007 and the
car-themed Fork in the Road in 2009. Later in 2009, Young finally
released the first installment in his long-rumored Archives series,
Archives, Vol. 1, a massive first volume that combined over ten CD and
DVD discs in a single box.