Journey Through the Past: Neil Young's Archive Arrive at Last
Posted Tue Jun 2, 2009 5:59pm PDT by Barney Hoskyns in Rock's Backpages
25 years after he first hinted at the project, the vast first installment of Neil Young's multi-media scrapbook – covering the years up to 1972 – is finally with us. And it's awesome.-- Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages
"I don't know that I have much to hide," Neil Young says in a 1971 home-movie interview included on Archives, Vol. 1. "Other than bein' a rich hippie..."
Young certainly doesn't hide much in this 10-disc monument to himself, which after all is only the first of several pyramids this rock pharaoh is assembling to enshrine his artistic legacy. No outtake, no scrap of scrawled lyrics, has been left unturned in the effort to encapsulate the Canadian's 50-year career.
Many diehard Neil Nuts had begun to wonder if the Archives would ever become a reality, so long have they been promised, postponed, rescheduled. Now the first volume is here, is disappointment inevitable? Actually, no. Tailor-made for the box-set culture that Dadrock has become, this exhaustive project is simply the most breathtaking retro-fest of recordings, photographs, video footage, press cuttings and other artifacts ever constructed. Suffice to say that Neil Nuts could lose several weeks of their lives in the multi-layered, omni-navigational experience it offers (particularly after they've figured out the slew of cunningly concealed features available in the sections marked "MORE").
Young has never been ambivalent about his elevated place in the greater rock scheme: that much was obvious as long ago as 1978's three-disc Decade. Watching the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young footage in Archives, it seems clear that half the reason CSN recruited Y was their need for a true Alpha Male in the mix. (Among the incidental pleasures herein: CSNY's impromptu Marx Brothers style comedy routine linking "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" to "Tell Me Why" at New York's Fillmore East...) Neither Dylan, nor the Beatles or the Stones, would have devoted the thousands of man-hours to ensuring their immortality that Neil--with the aid of in-house curators like Joel Bernstein--has done.
So why is Young, in the old L'Oreal phrase, worth it? For the simple reason that his talent evolved from the bloodless sub-Shadows instrumentals of Winnipeg garage combo the Squires via the earnest dreaminess of mid-'60s ballads like "Sugar Mountain" and the crackling combustion of Buffalo Springfield, into something so different from--and superior to--the soul-bearing orthodoxies of his singer-songwriter contemporaries. To be sure, Neil was a navel-gazer. But unlike most of his warbling peers he was a poet of almost otherworldly feeling--20% left-brain calculation, 80% right-brain instinct.
Among other things, Archives Vol. 1 charts and documents the transition from the fussy layering of the Springfield's 'Expecting to Fly' and 1968's Neil Young to the liberating rawness of 1969's Everybody Knows this is Nowhere. It's when Neil--in harness with disheveled stoners Crazy Horse and that wildcat rogue of a producer David Briggs--keeps things simple that he evokes and produces the most complex feelings: the fusion of grunginess and ethereality, grit and wistful lonesomeness, that's all but unique to him. The first of three 'Topanga' discs is where things get interesting: pre-Horse 1968 demos of Everybody Knows songs with Jim Messina and George Grantham show he hasn't quite arrived at the spooky proto-Americana of that album and 1970's ultra-lo-fi After the Gold Rush.
Anyone who already invested in the Fillmore East, Massey Hall, and Canterbury House live albums--and the Springfield Box Set, for that matter--may feel miffed by their inclusion in Archives, Vol. 1, though to placate them there is a new live disc from Toronto's Riverboat (the one name-checked on On the Beach's "Ambulance Blues") recorded in early 1969. In any case it would be grumpy to moan about the incorporation of those recordings--as well as a host of tracks from Young's original Reprise albums--into something so much bigger. The abundance of rarities more than compensates, with umpteen live performances and alternate takes and mixes, some familiar to bootleg junkies: discarded country rockers like "It Might Have Been" (live in Cincinnati in February 1970) and long-venerated Harvest outtake "Bad Fog Of Loneliness"; a solo "See The Sky About to Rain" from D.C.'s Cellar Door in December '70; the cajunish folk of "Dance, Dance, Dance" cut as a duet with Graham Nash in London in 1971. And so very much more.
Then of course there's video footage not even the bootleg fanatics will have seen: Neil sprawled on the grass outside his Broken Arrow barn, clutching a Coors and rhapsodizing about the "natural echo" in the hills around him; Neil with Jack Nitzsche and with manager Elliot Roberts in London, suffering back pain and fretting about the London Symphony Orchestra's contributions to "A Man Needs aA Maid." Plus you finally get the long-lambasted Journey Through the Past on DVD--a pretty ropey home movie made under the apparent influence of Zabriskie Point and Godard's Sympathy For The Devil but boasting some amusing backstage footage. The most poignant thing about it is watching the distant, self-absorbed Carrie Snodgress so obviously not in love with a good man who needed and deserved the affection he eventually got from his wife Pegi.
Archives, Vol. 1 is not takeaway music: if you buy the Blu-Ray or DVD sets--and buying the CD version is a totally false economy--you can't rip the music anyway. It's a massive multi-media scrapbook that all but demands you sit and pay attention. Which is no bad thing in an age when on-the-go Me-Tunes have become little more than incidental aural wallpaper.
Now when did they say Volume 2 was coming out?
Read dozens more Neil Young interviews and reviews at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 14,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.
"I don't know that I have much to hide," Neil Young says in a 1971 home-movie interview included on Archives, Vol. 1. "Other than bein' a rich hippie..."Young certainly doesn't hide much in this 10-disc monument to himself, which after all is only the first of several pyramids this rock pharaoh is assembling to enshrine his artistic legacy. No outtake, no scrap of scrawled lyrics, has been left unturned in the effort to encapsulate the Canadian's 50-year career.
Many diehard Neil Nuts had begun to wonder if the Archives would ever become a reality, so long have they been promised, postponed, rescheduled. Now the first volume is here, is disappointment inevitable? Actually, no. Tailor-made for the box-set culture that Dadrock has become, this exhaustive project is simply the most breathtaking retro-fest of recordings, photographs, video footage, press cuttings and other artifacts ever constructed. Suffice to say that Neil Nuts could lose several weeks of their lives in the multi-layered, omni-navigational experience it offers (particularly after they've figured out the slew of cunningly concealed features available in the sections marked "MORE").
Young has never been ambivalent about his elevated place in the greater rock scheme: that much was obvious as long ago as 1978's three-disc Decade. Watching the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young footage in Archives, it seems clear that half the reason CSN recruited Y was their need for a true Alpha Male in the mix. (Among the incidental pleasures herein: CSNY's impromptu Marx Brothers style comedy routine linking "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" to "Tell Me Why" at New York's Fillmore East...) Neither Dylan, nor the Beatles or the Stones, would have devoted the thousands of man-hours to ensuring their immortality that Neil--with the aid of in-house curators like Joel Bernstein--has done.
So why is Young, in the old L'Oreal phrase, worth it? For the simple reason that his talent evolved from the bloodless sub-Shadows instrumentals of Winnipeg garage combo the Squires via the earnest dreaminess of mid-'60s ballads like "Sugar Mountain" and the crackling combustion of Buffalo Springfield, into something so different from--and superior to--the soul-bearing orthodoxies of his singer-songwriter contemporaries. To be sure, Neil was a navel-gazer. But unlike most of his warbling peers he was a poet of almost otherworldly feeling--20% left-brain calculation, 80% right-brain instinct.
Among other things, Archives Vol. 1 charts and documents the transition from the fussy layering of the Springfield's 'Expecting to Fly' and 1968's Neil Young to the liberating rawness of 1969's Everybody Knows this is Nowhere. It's when Neil--in harness with disheveled stoners Crazy Horse and that wildcat rogue of a producer David Briggs--keeps things simple that he evokes and produces the most complex feelings: the fusion of grunginess and ethereality, grit and wistful lonesomeness, that's all but unique to him. The first of three 'Topanga' discs is where things get interesting: pre-Horse 1968 demos of Everybody Knows songs with Jim Messina and George Grantham show he hasn't quite arrived at the spooky proto-Americana of that album and 1970's ultra-lo-fi After the Gold Rush.Anyone who already invested in the Fillmore East, Massey Hall, and Canterbury House live albums--and the Springfield Box Set, for that matter--may feel miffed by their inclusion in Archives, Vol. 1, though to placate them there is a new live disc from Toronto's Riverboat (the one name-checked on On the Beach's "Ambulance Blues") recorded in early 1969. In any case it would be grumpy to moan about the incorporation of those recordings--as well as a host of tracks from Young's original Reprise albums--into something so much bigger. The abundance of rarities more than compensates, with umpteen live performances and alternate takes and mixes, some familiar to bootleg junkies: discarded country rockers like "It Might Have Been" (live in Cincinnati in February 1970) and long-venerated Harvest outtake "Bad Fog Of Loneliness"; a solo "See The Sky About to Rain" from D.C.'s Cellar Door in December '70; the cajunish folk of "Dance, Dance, Dance" cut as a duet with Graham Nash in London in 1971. And so very much more.
Then of course there's video footage not even the bootleg fanatics will have seen: Neil sprawled on the grass outside his Broken Arrow barn, clutching a Coors and rhapsodizing about the "natural echo" in the hills around him; Neil with Jack Nitzsche and with manager Elliot Roberts in London, suffering back pain and fretting about the London Symphony Orchestra's contributions to "A Man Needs aA Maid." Plus you finally get the long-lambasted Journey Through the Past on DVD--a pretty ropey home movie made under the apparent influence of Zabriskie Point and Godard's Sympathy For The Devil but boasting some amusing backstage footage. The most poignant thing about it is watching the distant, self-absorbed Carrie Snodgress so obviously not in love with a good man who needed and deserved the affection he eventually got from his wife Pegi.
Archives, Vol. 1 is not takeaway music: if you buy the Blu-Ray or DVD sets--and buying the CD version is a totally false economy--you can't rip the music anyway. It's a massive multi-media scrapbook that all but demands you sit and pay attention. Which is no bad thing in an age when on-the-go Me-Tunes have become little more than incidental aural wallpaper.
Now when did they say Volume 2 was coming out?
Read dozens more Neil Young interviews and reviews at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 14,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.
1. The discs are packaged in too tightly in the box. It's impossible to get them out one at a time unless you use tweezers.
2. Neil should have included the song-by-song commentary like he did on "Decades." Thoose remarks were interesting and insightful.
Did anybody get the Blu-ray? If so, have you received any new additions via internet?