Neil Young Spring Part Two: Find the Cost of Stardom

While Neil Young has been a popular artist for decades, there was only a very short period where he was a true star, with a name that people outside of the rock world would know. He later famously said of this period that he got tired of being in the middle of the road, and wanted to head into the ditch. In the early 70s, Young's folk music sound nailed the introspective, post-60s vibe perfectly, catapulting him to mainstream success. Young was not compromising himself to gain success, he had just inadvertently come into his own at the exact moment that his approach was the thing everyone was looking for. For that reason, the music still really holds up and does not sound like a time capsule.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 1969 (with Crazy Horse)

This right here is where Young is no longer in someone else's band or still feeling his way around. His first foray with Crazy Horse is killer top to bottom. There are the melodic hard rockers like the title track and "Cinnamon Girl," guitar workouts like "Down By The River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand," and spooky ruminations like "Running Dry." This is the only studio album with Young and the soon to be departed guitarist Danny Whitten together. I love his harmonies, and while the Horse is still great with both Pancho Sampedro and Nils Lofgren, Whitten had a wonderfully shaggy spirit that was never really replaced. More than anything, there is a confidence in this record that you can hear in the early live recordings but not in Young's earlier studio work. To me, this is the magic of Crazy Horse. To say they are not great musicians would be like saying Joan Crawford wasn't much of a mother. Nevertheless, they bring out Young's wild, creative, chaotic side. Young's work with Crazy Horse is why he is often considered a godfather of punk and grunge because he understood that feel and emotion and guts matter more in rock and roll than competence. There's plenty of other great Crazy Horse records, but maybe only one better (I'll get to Rust Never Sleeps eventually.) 

Rating: Five Neils

Live At The Fillmore East (1970), released 2006 (with Crazy Horse)

This was the first of the Archives releases I ever heard and it blew me away at the time and still does now. My only complaint is that it's too short! I'm guessing they did not have quality recordings of full concerts for this. The Horse smashes and thrashes and I enjoy the songs that feature Danny Whitten the most ("Wonderin'" and "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown.") The versions of songs from the prior album are pretty great, too. 

Rating: Five Neils

Deja Vu, 1970 (with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young)

Neil Young was ridiculously busy in 1970, putting out his own album while also joining Crosby, Stills, and Nash and touring with the band and solo. He gave that group the necessary grit that they had lacked on their first album, making Deja Vu far superior. Young's "Helpless" is an all-timer, and my favorite song on the record by far. I don't know if there's another song that describes the sense of all-consuming isolation you can feel as a child lying awake at night in a small town. Young's guitar and harmonies add a lot to the other songs and it's great to hear him and Stills duel at guitars again. The band followed this album with a huge tour, putting Young into the stratosphere of stardom, where he would not be comfortable.

Rating: Four and a half Neils

After the Gold Rush, 1970

While Crazy Horse's members play on this album, it's credited to Young alone. It's a dark and contemplative album, mostly sticking to quieter songs except for "Southern Man." The title song sounds cheesy today, but really encapsulates the rising environmental consciousness of 1970, the year of the first Earth Day. This is the first Young album I ever bought, included on side A of a cassette with Harvest on side B. I have a very distinct memory of one long, dark teenaged Nebraska night when I listened to "Don't Let It Bring You Down" and felt that song speaking to me in a moment of lonely melancholy. This is an album I have a very hard time listening to during the day. Some nights I would play it as I lay in bed, the jaunty "Cripple Creek Ferry" easing me into sleep. It's obvious here why Young would not be long for CSNY. The brooding melancholy does not lend itself to the hippie sunshine of "Teach Your Children." 

Rating: Five Neils

Live at the Cellar Door, recorded in 1970 and released in 2013

There are so many great live shows from this era that Young has released that it can be hard to differentiate them. This one has an interesting anomaly: "Cinnamon Girl" on piano. I can't imagine what it was like to be in that small audience and hearing Young lay down banger after banger, some of which had not yet even been recorded. He sounds tired and world-weary at points, probably exhausted by a year of whirlwind touring and recording. Despite that issue, he still sounds great.

Rating: Four and a half Neils

Carnegie Hall 1970, recorded in 1970, released in 2022

This show comes days after the Cellar Door shows, but on a bigger stage with a larger audience. This release is also part of Young's "official bootleg" releases, rather than the "Performance" series that Massey Hall and the Cellar Door fall into. Accordingly, the sound quality is not quite as good, especially in the earlier tracks on guitar. The songs on piano, however, are stunning. This album has my favorite version of "Birds." There's also a great moment where the audience is so inept at clapping along to "Sugar Mountain" that he asks them to stop (that really cracked me up.) 

Rating: Four and a half Neils

Live at Massey Hall (1971), released in 2007

This show from Toronto was among the first Archives releases. There are plenty of shows from this era with releases now, but this is my favorite. This performance comes just a month after the Cellar Door show, but he sounds far more invigorated in front of the larger audience. The fact that he's back in Canada adds something special, especially on "Helpless" and "Journey Through the Past." There are some fantastic early versions of songs that would later appear on Harvest. "Old Man" has a burning passion here that elevates that already wonderful song. Stripped of their later bombast, "There's a World" and "A Man Needs a Maid" are truly revelatory. If you only want to listen to one Neil Young release from this period in his career, this should be the one. 

Rating: Five Neils

Young Shakespeare, recorded in 1971 and released in 2021

This performance in the Archives series was recorded only three days after the Massey Hall gig. It's strange that Young released such a similar show, but hearing these concerts one after the other has brought home just how powerful Young had become as a live musician in this period. The stage banter is not as light as the last time around, and his voice is not quite as strong. If I heard it without hearing any of the other shows, I would think it was a revelation, however. This is probably my least favorite of the recent live releases, but it's still really damn good. 

Rating; Four Neils 

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Royce Hall, Recorded in 1971, released in 2022

This is another one of the recently released "official bootlegs." It was recorded in January 1971, the same month as the prior two albums on this list. Listening to them one after the other gets a little repetitive, so I hope I am giving this one justice. Young's voice sounds stronger at this show, and the version of "Needle and the Damage Done" would later appear on Harvest. Unlike at Carnegie Hall, the audience knows how to clap along with "Sugar Mountain." Unfortunately, Young treats this beautiful song pretty flippantly. That fits the general laid-back vibe here. Some of the songs really shine. "Don't Let It Bring You Down" has an angry passion to it that I like. "Down By The River" has never sounded more anguished or threatening. 

Rating: Four and a half Neils

"I'm happy that y'all came down," recorded in 1971 and released in 2022

I thought I had listened to all of Young's recent "official bootleg" releases, but had overlooked this one. It comes from February of 1971, very soon after the Royce Hall show. In listening to these shows I've noticed that Young feeds off of the audience and their enthusiasm gives him a little extra bit of energy at the top. After joking with his audience he plays "Heart of Gold," the crowd unaware this unreleased song will be a number one hit in a year. I am not a fan of "A Man Needs a Maid" but this performance might have the most convincing version I've heard. "Don't Let It Bring You Down" is also especially powerful. Apart from the Massey Hall show this is my favorite of the live recordings of this era. I only had to knock it down half a star for the sound quality, which is still remarkable considering it's an audience recording.

Rating: Four and a half Neils

Four Way Street, 1971

In the 1970s there was a law that said that every rock band worth its salt had to record a double live album. The rock show itself had become a crucial "happening" and big business. In 1970 CSNY performed THE tour of the year, and this album is the artifact for those who wanted to remember and those who couldn't make it. Crosby, Stills, and Nash has always existed in that zone where the hippy meets the bougie, which is why Young's contributions are so key. Unfortunately, the live performances suffer from too much of a "hootenanny" vibe with an audience that doesn't know how to clap on the off beat. Nevertheless, when Stills and Young get a chance to cut loose the results are wonderful, as on the jammy version of "Carry On." I had not listened to this one before and won't revisit the whole album, but certain tracks are definitely superior to what's on the studio records.

Rating: Four Neils 

Harvest, 1972

This is a weird album considering it was the biggest seller of 1972 and Young's biggest hit record. It combines a song recorded live, some mellow country-tinged stuff recorded in Nashville, two songs featuring the London Symphony Orchestra, and some guitar-heavy songs put together at Young's ranch. Not all of it works, especially the bombastic orchestra on "There's a World" and the rambling "Words." Furthermore, "Alabama" is just a warmed-over version of "Southern Man." This album became a hit on the backs of "Heart of Gold," which went to number one, and "Old Man," one of the best songs in Young's canon. Listening to the latter yesterday with new ears I was blown away by what a perfect song it is. I still remember how it stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it as a teenager. Its power has not dimmed in the slightest. The Nashville touches provided by the Stray Gators (especially steel guitarist Ben Keith) gave these songs a quiet power that ensured they would be heard by a lot of ears. The early 70s was the heyday of the sensitive singer-songwriter, and Young put out "Heart of Gold" at the right exact moment for fame. Even the title and sepia tones of the cover feel warm and inviting. This album brought all the normies to the yard, and Young would soon decide to "head into the ditch" from the middle of the road, in his words. In that regard, "The Needle and the Damage Done" points the way forward to some years when his lyrics took a much darker turn. 

Rating: Four and a half Neils

Archives Volume I, recorded 1962-1972 and released in 2009.

The Archives box sets aren't albums per se and include a lot of the albums listed, so I am using this place to discuss the material in the box from this period that was not on its own album. For instance, the almost psychedelic version of "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere" is pretty delightful. Some of these songs would appear live, like the fun "Dance Dance Dance." As far as I'm concerned, Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series is the only other similar project that matches this one for revelations. One of these days I am going to get the physical media version. 

Rating: Five Neils