20 neglected Neil Young gems

The songs in this list may fit any or all of the following criteria to attain their 'neglected gem' status; they aren't in the public consciousness but should be, they have never been anthologised by Neil, they are rarely if ever played live by Neil, they aren't mentioned enough by critics and are stuck unfairly in the shadow of a better known or more widely loved song (or songs) on the albums they hail from. So, roughly chronologically, here goes...

 

1. 'Flying On The Ground Is Wrong' Buffalo Springfield ('Buffalo Springfield') 1967

Neil admitted in a late 60's interview that he pinched the melodic ideas from Roy Orbison's 'Blue Bayou', and after giving them a few idiosyncratic twists of his own, came up with this gem. It's an opaque and cryptic examination of a troubled relationship, but lines like 'I wish I could have met you, in a place where we both belong' and 'if I'm bright enough to see, you're just too dark to care' still get to the heart without any trouble at all. A sweet bridge rises 'sometimes I feel, like I'm just a helpless child, sometimes I feel, like a king, but baby, since I have changed, I can't take nothing home'. I'm not sure exactly what's changed and what he can't take home, but anyone who loves this song could pin their own specifics in that spot. Neil certainly knows how to build a vessel for them. Richie Furay sings this officially released version, but Neil recorded a solo vocal/ guitar demo which appears on the Buffalo Springfield box set and has performed it live on occasion over the years.

2. 'Here We Are In The Years' ('Neil Young') 1968

A perceptive lament mourning the death of innocence and small town charms, and rueing the steamroller effect of rampant capitalism and crass commercialism. After a gentle, disarming piano led intro, the arrangement swells and Neil opines that 'people planning trips to stars, allow another boulevard, to claim, a quiet country lane'. A charming horn interlude is followed by a dead stop, then a drummed heartbeat, then his quiet reflection; 'so the subtle face, is the loser, this time, here we are in the years, where the showman shifts the gears, lives become careers...'. We may not see the slow rot set in and are just too often distracted with trifles and ambitions to notice the small, unique things disappearing. When we look back for them, it may be too late. 'Let us out of here' indeed. The fade out, with deep piano chords reverbing into oblivion, is the perfect final touch in a production that tugs, prickles and shimmers in all the right places. 'I've Been Waiting For You' is another one to (re)visit on 'Neil Young'. Bowie recognised it greatness with a cover 6 or 7 years back and Neil has been playing it again on tour this year.

3. 'Round & Round' ('Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere') 1969

A wall of chiming acoustics herald the arrival of one of Neil's most sublime songs. The steel string picking is audiophile delight and Robin Lane's harmony vocal, whether floating above Neil's, or worldlessly vocalising behind him, is perfection. When they both move beyond words in the outro, moaning and cooing sweetly together, it is just superb. 'Running Dry' is another fascinating and at times chilling song which usually gets passed over for the 'big three' from the album (Cowgirl, Cinnamon Girl & Down By The River)

4. 'Country Girl' CSN&Y ('De Javu') 1970

This is one of Neil's towering achievements. It was the song that really clinched it for me with Neil. I was ready to 'go steady' with him, so to speak. 'Philadelphia' piqued my interest in a big way, but this one put it beyond doubt. That film sent me scurrying to my parents LP's because I knew they had a shabby old copy of CSN&Y's 'De Javu'. The rustic faux-colonial cover art had always put me off listening to it prior to that, it positively screamed 'hokey folk'. I was thrilled to discover how wrong I was. 'Helpless' has always been the more famous, 'conventionally pretty' sister, as it were, but this lugubrious lass is the one I'm after. I reckon this 'Country Girl' is much sexier.

'Country Girl' is a great argument for Neil's greatness on every level of his craft. The vocal is rich and full of nuance, building from tender fragility in the early verses, to pained ecstasy in the apocalyptic climax, where he wails 'country girl, I think you're pretty, got to make you understand, had no lovers in the city, let me be your country man!'. It is one of his most passionate and accomplished vocal performances. With glass knife CSN backing, it is four-part harmony vocal heaven. The lyrics are among his most curiously enigmatic and gorgeously evocative, 'winding paths through tables and glass, first fall was new', just the first of many examples. The song structure is one of his most complex and masterfully dramatic. The arrangement, from foreboding timpani and vibes intro to wailing harmonica and organ drenched fadeout, is within spitting distance of genius. From the line 'if I could stand to see her crying' onwards, I get chill after sweet chill. With this ambitious and near symphonic epic, Neil sets himself in the rarified company of Orbison, Wilson & Spector. Comparable with Springsteen's 'Meeting Across The River' in the sense that they are styles they both handle brilliantly, but sadly, have rarely repeated.

5. 'L.A.' ('Time Fades Away') 1973

Some days this is my favourite Neil Young song. The gleeful fatalism is so black and bleak, yet utterly involving. The piano and steel dance beautifully around the fractured melody with the rhythm section striking a fantastic fuzzy lumber. 'When the mountains erupt and the valley is sucked into cracks in the earth, will it finally be heard by you, L.A.', wails a hoarse, frazzled Neil. Then he taunts 'city in the smog, city in the smog!! don't you wish that you could be here too?'. Actually, if it sounds as good as this there, I do! It's L.A. as festering wound and Neil is picking at the scab. A stunning live performance of a then new song from a live album of all new songs that remains, unforgivably, never released on CD.

6. 'Alburquerque' ('Tonight's The Night') 1973 - rel. 1975

This knocks me flat. It is one of the most desolate and deeply melancholy songs I've ever heard. The steel just rips at my heart. Of course I love it like an only child though. 'I've been starving, to be alone'. Jesus. The rain-trickle piano run leading into the chorus is the very definition of tasteful. Who knew the word 'Alburquerque' could sound so pretty and tragic. Neil rescued it from Bugs Bunny and slow death by comedy. THIS is American Country. Take note fools.

7. 'New Mama' ('Tonight's The Night') 1973

Whereas every other song on the album is suitably ramshackle and teeters tantalisingly on the verge of falling apart, this is the peaceful eye of the storm. Everything comes into clear focus. A hushed acoustic tune with tightly pitched and achingly fragile harmonies. The sun comes out for these few minutes, but even here it is brief and broken. Neil's song of bliss at the birth of his child is amazing because he makes happiness seem so hopelessly melancholy, the drops into minor don't help either! 'New Mama's got a sun in her eyes, no clouds are in my changing skies, each morning when I wake up to rise, I'm living in a dreamland'. Strum. Bam! The ground drops away. There is always 'the other' lurking nearby and he always acknowledges it; 'changing times, ancient reasons that turn to lies, throw them all away', he warns. Great, brave and honest songwriting. The accapella close is a thing of delicate wonder. The following track on the album 'Lookout Joe', a street-urchin ramble with a demented gospel bridge, also deserves your love and attention.

8. 'Revolution Blues' ('On The Beach') 1974

I love every facet of this. The cutting bile in the vocal...Neil's stellar and spooky guitar work. The other stars of the piece are the phenomenal Levon Helm and Rick Danko from 'The Band'. Crazy Horse could never have played this. It makes me wish Neil had worked with this rhythm section more. Shit, I nearly forgot Mr Crosby. Handy rhythm guitar work from him. What a line up! The skittish, nervy arrangement and cavernous sound are thrilling. I've seen barely twenty-somethings dance to this morbid 'sociopath funk' in a club. Clever clever DJ! I nearly knocked over a trail of fellow clubbers as I reported with haste to the dance-floor in salute. My favourite Neil Young song (most days anyway). Forget about the Charles Manson allusions. This song deserves so much more than to just be 'the song about...'.

9. 'Pardon My Heart' ('Zuma') 1975

The prettiest melody on 'Zuma' sumptuously wrapped in hushed backing vocals and a perfect acoustic guitar and minimal piano arrangement. 'You brought it all on, oh but it feels so wrong, you brought it all, no no no don't believe this song'. Gorgeously opaque and intriguing. The tickling piano and echoing, fuzzed out electric guitar solo are sublime. If you're not moved by this you must be stone dead.

10. 'Will To Love' ('American Stars 'n' Bars') 1977

This one divides fans in a similar way to 'Trans', loved by a passionate and discerning few and derided by many. What's not to like? Overlong? Nup, I'd say meditative. Over-extended metaphor? Yeah maybe, but who cares? he's written some daft lyrics in other well loved songs. Just listen to the hypnotic, watery dance of the acoustic and the vibes, the crackle of the open fire nearby, Neil's subdued moans and woozy 'la la la la's'. It's not for every occasion, but when it's time, it's time!

11. 'Lotta Love' ('Comes A Time') 1978

Nicolette Larson's sunny disco pop version was the hit, but this is the definitive article. Crazy Horse is in the mellowest form of its long life as Neil reels off pretty chords and shards of broken sunlight with off-handed ease. The bastard. 'So if you are out there waiting, I hope you show up soon, 'cause my head needs relating, not solitude'. The stops and starts squeeze the heart and the whole thing is one big sigh. Just lovely. While were at it, stop by 'Peace Of Mind' and 'Already One' next.

12. 'Sample & Hold' ('Trans') 1982

Buried under synth stabs and strangled by a heavy vocoder, you'd never know this contains one of Neil's most breathtaking melodies, specifically the 'we'll send it out right away, satisfaction guaranteed, please specify, the colour of skin and eye, we know you'll be happy' section. That is unless you actually bothered to listen to 'Trans' more than once and didn't frisbee it off a cliff or snap it in half. Neil knows it's a great melody because he tried to do it for 'Unplugged', but ultimately abandoned the idea. I'd be fascinated to hear how it sounded and why it didn't quite work. Anyway, I digress. Neil's tale of mail-order livin' lovin' robot maids is concurrently hilarious and poignant. 'Computer Age' & 'Like An Inca' are also neglected gems from this widely misunderstood album.

13. 'Get Back To The Country' ('Old Ways') 1985

A call to barns instead of a call to arms. A shit hot country stomper with one of Neil's terrific scalded cat vocals. 'When I was a younger man, got lucky with a rock 'n' roll band, struck gold in Holly-wood, all the time I knew I would..'. Cornball and hokey yes, but passionate and strangely vital too. I'd head down the barn for a hoe-down with him any night of the week.

14. 'Around The World' ('Life') 1987

One of Neil's most effective songs from his wobbliest decade. The production is ridiculously overblown and ham-fisted, but it works fine that way. I love the complete genre change from bludgeoning rock to glittery synth pop on the 'fashion change, style change' line. Very clever. Crazy Horse find a classic groove and beat you over the head with it just as you want them to. Neil's spoken 'chat up' section is hilarious; 'hey, you're out of sight, so skin tight, you're looking good tonight, hey', as a synth riff noodles behind him. From the same album, 'Mideast Vacation' is another neglected gem. Neil's trusty Les Paul 'Old Black' wrestles with crashing, squalling synths and the lyrics are most intriguing; 'I was Rambo in the disco, shooting to the beat' and even better 'when they burned me in effigy, my vacation was complete'. A real grower this one, give it a few tries.

15. 'One Of These Days' ('Harvest Moon') 1992

Thankfully Neil has remedied this songs relative obscurity by playing it on the 'Prairie Wind/ Heart Of Gold' show. One of his greatest sets of reflective, melancholy lyrics is set to a sweet, yearning melody and couched in a beautifully understated arrangement. The refrain 'One of these days, I'm gonna sit down and write a long letter, to all the good friends I've known' gets more insistent and heartbreaking as the song progresses. This one hits hard. One for the ages from a wise old owl.

16. 'Big Green Country' ('Mirrorball') 1995

The album was not liked by most critics when it was released, but by my reckoning there are at least 3 hands down classics on 'Mirrorball', and this is one of them. A pile-driving groove from Neil and Pearl Jam underpins one of his most stunning vocals. His voice gliding above the sinewy rhythm track with trademark sour lemon bite; 'Over the fields in the big green country, that's the place where the cancer cowboy rides, pure as the driven snow before it got him..'. Cinematic imagery. A slap in the face intro. Searing and cutting guitar work. Fantastic!

17. 'Out Of Control' CSN&Y ('Looking Forward') 1999

A gem of a piano ballad with a classic Neil Young self-absorbed, self-mythologising lyric ('tear myself down, build myself up, tear myself down again'). The moment where he breaks back into the chorus after the CSN crooned 'sky is fire, hell is blue' bridge, with 'that's why I'm..', and the chords turn themselves inside out, I get goose bumps every time. Melancholy mastery.

18. 'Horseshoe Man' ('Silver & Gold') 2000

I like this for similar reasons to 'Out Of Control', I just love Neil sighing and pining at a piano. Another gorgeous and deceptively simple melody with more aching and insightful lyrics; 'He takes the pieces in his hand, shakes them up like he doesn't care, he says that there will always be heartbreak, because love is everywhere'. Beautifully arranged and tastefully played. Ditto my final comment from 17.

19. 'Carmichael' ('Greendale') 2003

I love the leisurely 2 minute 45 intro with casual riffing & thick chords on 'Old Black'. Carmichael the cop is a sympathetic protagonist, and the line about no one parking in his car park for a year after he died is inspired and painfully bittersweet. I don't much like the album as a whole, but this one has some real pathos and enough melody to stand on its own, unlike most of the other dull three chord exposition plods. 'Bandit', with it's 'so loose it buzzes' low E-string, is also a shining light in a drab bunch.

20. 'Here For You' ('Prairie Wind') 2004

'No Wonder' was rightly judged to be the flawed (almost) masterpiece on 'Prairie Wind', and the title track and 'It's A Dream' (which were pleasant enough but overlong and repetitive) received much of the analysis. This track though is the emotional crux of the album for me, his open letter to his daughter Amber telling her he'll 'be there'. It escapes mushy sentiment with a sparse, warm production and plain, heartfelt language. The only time sugary strings swoop in is during the gorgeous bridge that features some of his finest lyrics of the decade; 'In the spring, protective arms surrounding you, in the fall we let you go your way, happiness I know will always find you, and when it does, I hope that it will stay'. The word 'stay' positively luxuriating and sunning itself over the kind of sublime chord change that I hadn't heard Neil nail in at least 5 years. I punched the air and whooped when I first heard that change. He'd made my heart fall from a sigh once again, only to catch it with an optimistic harmonica solo and a new verse.

Neil Young Album Reviews - 'The Doom Trilogy'

Archive reviews of the three albums that have collectively come to be known as Neil Young's 'Doom Trilogy', following the huge critical and commercial success of 'Harvest' in 1972. Arguably some of his very his finest work and frustratingly some of his least known and lowest selling...

‘Time Fades Away’ (1973) [archive review from 2005]

What an incredible portrait of an artist under pressure! After the huge success of ‘Harvest’, the demand for Neil was such that he was expected to grind through a seemingly endless tour playing to massive, expectant crowds. This live album chronicles some moments from that tour & not always the best ones. What a brave decision to release a rough live album containing all new songs directly after a world beating success. The songs are generally not among his finest, but they are truly perfect examples of songs written under immense pressure & the burden of great expectation. That is to say under the pressure of a now enormous fan base expecting him to equal or better 'Harvest', while he is being driven into the ground with the nightly grind of live shows, in a new city almost every day & living out of suitcases. This album is rough as guts but should be cherished for capturing the absolute truth of a moment in time. Neil deserves plaudits for ‘keeping it real’ & making no attempts to clean it up, or smooth it over (or bury it for that matter!). Neil’s’ voice shows all the strain of the months of live performances & the band nearly buckle under the pressure of performing so much new material to often critical and impatient audiences largely expecting faithful 'Harvest' reproductions. Who even has time to rehearse when you travel all day & play at night? A couple of these songs sound like the band first heard them at sound check that afternoon. Somehow though, against massive odds, it works.

The title track is a fast, countrified boogie about a middle aged man's broken down relationship with his drug-dealing son. It has an energetic, speed-freak abandon in the performance & Neil seems to be running on not much more than nerves. It is not a great song & the lyrics are sloppy & vague, but the sadistically gleeful feeling & energy carry it along. Who is this guy? Not the guy who sang that lovely ‘Heart Of Gold’, surely? ‘Journey Through The Past’ is a brief, teasing return to ‘Harvest’ stylings; a sweet reflection on the past very much in the expected mellow, confessional singer-songwriter style & it gives a false sense of security after the disconcerting title track. “Ah! there he is again”, ‘Harvest’ fans sigh with relief, “glad that’s over!”. But no! in crashes ‘Yonder Stands The Sinner’, a cracked-voice rant digging at religious hypocrisy with lots of out of tune whoops & interjections from the band. I love it! It is rough, cheeky, indignant & full of life.

Track four ‘LA’ is the high watermark for me. A jet-black humoured & disturbingly gleeful imagining of the apocalypse in Los Angeles. With a slow but determined slop rock grind, the song builds unflinchingly in intensity as it progresses. The steel guitar pleads & the piano tinkles in a beautiful dance around an aching, fractured melody. 'Don’t you wish that you could be here too?' Neil accuses rather than asks. If it sounds as good as this on those shaking streets, then damn the fucking earthquakes, I’ll be there! 'LA' is inspired, under-rehearsed, make it up as you go rock & roll at its best. This is one of my very favourite Neil Young songs. Definitely in my top 5. ‘Love In Mind’ shows that the melancholy romantic still lurks somewhere behind the frazzled madness & it’s a brief & beautiful solo piano ballad to end side one.

Beginning side two, the autobiographical ‘Don’t Be Denied’ is a bit of a let down. Some critics feel it is the highlight of the album & a canon classic. I find it painfully plodding & melodically impotent. I also find the repetition of the one chorus line ‘don’t be denied’ ad nauseum, lazy & dull. I suppose though he was trying to hammer the point home with no pretty poetry or rhymes that might distract you & let you forget it. By the by, the theme of repetition (in different forms & with different meanings) is one he returns to often, most notably in the albums ‘Reactor’ and ‘Broken Arrow’, with varying levels of inspiration & success. ‘The Bridge’ is another short piano ballad with a pleasing melody & it is lovely & heartfelt if not a bona-fide classic. It also has some sweet harmonica. Neils’ singing on the ballads is as sweet & beautifully pained as ever. The strain in his voice is not as evident as on the rocky shouters.

It is only on ‘Last Dance’ that the album tips over the edge of madness & total collapse that it had been brilliantly teetering on. It is even more rambling & sloppy than the rest of the album & without a tune to hold it together, it descends into utter confusion. Maybe that is where it had to go, as it does sum up the album perfectly in a way. It doesn’t make for good listening though. Listening to this track again as I write, there is some nice guitar work half way through & some stunning piano work, but overall it is still an ugly mish-mash.

Where is the blueprint for this album in rock history? Where is the map to help listeners to navigate it? I just know that this is a vital & precious album for the circumstances it brilliantly captures & for what Neil bravely let it be where precious few others would have.

‘On The Beach’ (1973) [archive review from 2005]

Is this album really worth all the fuss? Is it really the holy grail we all made out, or is it just because it was for so long out of print & so many people had not heard the lions share of the album until 2001 (apart from the two tracks on ‘Decade’) & could only judge it by repute & desperate hope. Well I had this on LP & knew it well, so I hope my opinion is fairly balanced. I should also say that the release of the also long unavailable ‘Reactor’ did nothing to change my opinion of that album & as for ‘American Stars & Bars’, well I’m going to go town on that one later, so I think this album is worth a lot of fuss.

Starting with the perky ‘Walk On’, a rebuttal to his critics who had savaged him for ‘Time Fades Away’ & the ‘Tonight’s the Night’ tour probably, it is a disarmingly open & breezy first track which gives little indication of what is to come. Neil catches our interest with breezy pop so that he can have our full attention when he starts to scratch at sores. ‘See The Sky About The Rain’ is appropriately titled. It is foreboding; the rain clouds are coming & they stick around for the remainder of the album, lifting only in the dying verses of the final track. ‘See The Sky’ has some trite lazy rhymes, & doesn’t really hit its stride until mid song, but when it does, it is superb. The chugging organ combined with Neils’ wordless wailing & moaning is just sublime.

‘Revolution Blues’ is the crucial track on this album. A snaky, simmering, muted rock song where the repressed rage shockingly bursts to the surface. ‘I hate them worse than lepers & I’ll kill them in their cars’. Much has been made of the Manson references, but what interests me more than playing ‘spot the reference’ to those events, is the bravery & willfulness of writing a song from a murderers perspective & so soon after the events that it supposedly alludes to. Who else would have dared? Good taste has been questioned, but not in question are the quality of the song & the performance. R.B. has some of Neils’ most incisive & evocative lyrics & is a vocal tour-de-force. Every nuance & phrase is just right as he spits out the bile & indignation. Absolutely stunning.

‘For The Turnstiles’ is another perceptive, observant & wise reflection on the world around him & the concepts of fame & success. It has some lovely tight, high country harmonies & steel & banjo work. This song is brilliantly concise & its relative shortness & modesty do nothing to diminish its greatness. It is another great Neil lyric, with too many great lines to pick just one. Closing side one is ‘Vampire Blues’, the weakest track on the album. The song deals with pressing themes such as ecological exploitation & capitalist greed, but despite the noble intent & its function in the overall sweep of the album, it is not particularly interesting melodically & is a little too vague & plodding for mine. The vocal is a good one, with some humourous moments & the organ stabs work well, but it struggles to hold me after the two sinewy, toned performances directly before it. Strangely though, for a song with this title & theme, it is light relief before side two!

Australian radio host Richard Kingsmill said in 1996 that the title track was the song his brother feels is the archetypal Neil Young song. His brother is probably right. It has a downtrodden plod, a melancholy, fatalistic tone & with lines like ‘the world is turning, I hope it don’t turn away’ and ‘all my pictures all falling, from the wall where I placed them yesterday’ it is pure Neil Young. He is the eternally blue boy whispering & moaning his woes into our souls where they resonate with our own. His voice slips up the register in the choruses & back down for the verses & it works a treat. I love the lazy bongos & the slow dripping guitar solo is supremely tasteful & oozes feeling.

‘Motion Pictures’ is so subdued it is almost as if Neil is turning his head away from us briefly & whispering to his ex-wife before once again resuming his focus on the listener in the next song. It is a hushed contemplation of & kiss-off to their failed relationship. There is some tasteful steel work again & this track continues the melancholic, reflective tone. It is subtly melodic, but has the hard task of sitting between the two sprawling & endlessly quotable epics sitting either side of it. Ultimately it is somewhat swamped. Which brings us to ‘Ambulance Blues’.

Attempts by Neil thus far in his career to end his albums with a supreme epic had failed in large measure. Think ‘Last Trip To Tulsa’ & ‘Last Dance’. Here though, the best is saved until last & this is probably rightly felt to be the greatest, most deeply textured & ponderable lyric of his career. A twisting acoustic, lyrical journey over ten minutes, it is Neils’ own ‘Desolation Row’ or ‘Tangled Up In Blue’. The lyrics are so loaded with vivid imagery & emotion that you could write a whole essay unravelling it. ‘Oh mother goose, she’s on the skids’. That line is perversely both hilarious & sad in equal measure. I love that line. It is a sort of ‘things ain’t cooking, in my kitchen’ moment; an unexpected savagely melancholy turn that has great effect when it hits. ‘An ambulance can only go so fast’; He realizes that sometimes even the best & most rapid help still takes time to arrive and sometimes it takes too long. Like Dylan’s ‘Tangled’, it drags us through several places, times & characters & conjures a complicated web of moments & moods & points of focus. To complete the picture, a weaving, weeping violin tracing beautiful lines around the weary vocal.

'Ambulance Blues' holds interest despite its mammoth length & by the end Neil seems to be at relative ease with his world & with himself again. He seems to have been able to shake off his souls disquiet & sadness. There seems to be resolution with the 'hook & ladder' critics who had dogged him in recent times, offering to 'get together for some scenes'. He also rejects all the damaging rock star ego bullshit that many of his contemporaries had been engulfed by, realizing 'there ain’t nothing like a friend, who can tell you’re just pissing in the wind'. ‘On The Beach’ is always in my top 3 Neil albums at any given time, probably just edged out by 'Tonight’s The Night’ as his all time greatest album. It argues a great case for him on every level of his craft; as lyricist, social observer, singer, guitarist, composer; and there are few weak links. It is a cohesive & truly great album.

‘Tonight’s The Night’ (1975) [archive review from 2005]

Recorded before ‘On The Beach’ but released after, messing up train spotters analysis of his artistic evolution at the time no doubt, this is THE great Neil Young album. It needs to be judged by different criteria than his other albums because of the context in which it was recorded & its intentions. On many other Neil Young albums, sloppiness & out of tune-ness would be far less forgiveable, and this album is guilty of both on a regular basis, but it is a triumph of pure gut feeling, emotion & inspired, brilliant spontaneity over & above style & polish.

The title track is by turns seductive & bone chilling. Neil eases us into the song with the enticing but somehow unsettling promise ‘Tonight’s The Night’ over & over before his voice cracks into the sorry tale. So much has been said about this song, & said very well, I don’t want to say much more except that it is a superb song & performance & it truly is ‘as real as the day is long’. ‘Speakin’ Out’, it just occurs to me, is something of a dark twist on a mid 70’s Beach Boys song off, say, ‘Beach Boys Love You’. Monolithic banging rhythm piano with lyrics like 'I went to the movies, the other night, the plot was groovy, it was out of sight, I sat with my popcorn, out looking for good times’. But it’s a twisted take on one & the chorus goes somewhere else entirely, but the start does sound like a mid 70’s overweight & zombified Brian Wilson banging out a warped nursery rhyme. This actually predates ‘Love You’ by four years though. But I digress. This has a great expressive & pained vocal & some sweet stoned piano tinkling & steel.

‘World On A String’ is a stomping dismissal of rotten old fame & fortune. The musicians all sing different lines on the refrain. A very early (maybe even first) take; they hadn’t properly worked out (or were too out of it to notice or care) which line went where & wrongly anticipated which line Neil would sing. It is hilarious & it epitomizes the rough & ready spontaneity of the album. ‘Borrowed Tune’ is singular & incredibly intimate; you can feel the ‘ice frozen six feet deep’ & the loneliness & emotional isolation. The sparse piano/ vocal arrangement let’s no frills or excessive instrumentation get in the way of the bleak & uncomfortable emotions. ‘Come On Baby’ is a frenzied, drug-addled rock out recorded live in 1970, with Danny Whitten on guitar & lead vocals. It is an inspired inclusion, brilliantly reminding us of what was lost & of the lifestyle that inevitably led to the loss. The topic, lyrics & performance are all perfect in a functional sense as well as the song being strong in its own right.

‘Mellow My Mind’ is an extremely whacked out country dirge & it is brave & brilliant that Neil didn’t attempt to fix his most strained & out of tune vocal ever ‘lonesome whistle on the railroad track, ain’t got nothing on those feelings’. Wow! ‘Roll Another Number’ continues the stoned, whacked out rambling, but to me is the weakest track. It’s a bit too much of more of the same & the melody doesn’t really grab. 'Albuquerque’ on the other hand is extremely evocative. I feel like I’m on a lost highway at night when I hear it: completely alone & desperately depressed with no idea where I’m going, nowhere to go & no one to care. It has a subtly beautiful melody & has some pained steel work. An under appreciated gem.

On ‘New Mama’, the sun bursts through the black clouds, but it is broken & brief. This one makes me teary sometimes. It is so fragile & beautiful & at times innocent sounding, but the lyrics reveal a wisdom & a sad knowing that can only come from experience & understanding of the ‘other’, the opposite of what he is talking about; what he has come from & gone through in recent times. The playing & harmonies are supremely tight & focused in this, making this song something of an oddity on the album, but not at all out of place. It gives the album balance & relief. ‘Lookout Joe’ is a fascinating, fuzzy, rumbling rock song. It has cryptic, Polaroid snapshot lyrics & a wonderful sludgy abandon in the performance & sound. The bridge lifts into a twisted gospel prayer & Neils’ lead guitar stabs gloriously falling back down from it. Another big favourite, this would make any Neil ‘best of’ that I had a hand in.

‘Tired Eyes’ I took an initial dislike to, probably because it seemed too rambling & too far removed from my frame of reference. It did not deserve my dislike though. It is crucial to the album. At this point Neil is so weary & so far gone, he doesn’t even bother to sing or maybe can’t sing anymore. He speaks the verses deadpan & seems to have no emotional reaction to the events of the song. He only lifts into song in the choruses with his whacked out band supporting him in fractured, uneven harmony. He sounds devoid of feeling & emotionally barren. The album ends with another version of ‘Tonight’s’; more rambling & wobbly than the first.

This album seems to have been a tribute offering to his friends lost & a catharsis for Neil so that he could move on for his own well-being & for those he loved & for those who loved him. After hearing it, you cannot doubt that he needed desperately the release of making this album. The album is also a warning; Neil put himself through a lot of pain & torment, in the manner of a method actor, to capture the feeling & (un)reality of the darker aspects of the music world & perhaps to warn others of its danger. Neil might just as well have slit his wrists into the boiling vinyl wax, for it is that brutal a journey. Nakedly emotional & unflinchingly honest, ‘Tonight’s The Night’ is a gift & a lesson to humanity.