Neil Young's "Ditch Trilogy" Poll

beach

Tonight's the Night's dimmed because we've all bought the OTB reissue and ripped vinyl copies of TFA, but it's really the one that most sustains a mood while still remaining beatwise and concise. On the other hand, "See the Sky About to Rain" and OTB's entire second side compresses and expands everything Big Star ever did.

neil hates time fades away.

On The Beach's stock has risen a lot in the last decade, but of these three it's still Tonight's The Night.

i'm one of those people who thought that tonight's the night was godhead for a long time and now i never play it. but on the beach, man, i could play that every day.

I'M A VAMPIRE BABE

On The Beach. I used to love Tonight's the Night, but what scott said.

Time Fades Away has great performances, Tonight's The Night has great songs, On The Beach has both.

they all have both. it took me a while to get into Tonight's the Night and Time Fades Away, but On The Beach was love at first listen so..

To clarify - when I think of those albums I think of those aspects of each first. They all smoke - my favorite Neil period by far. Only thing close to these for me is Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

you people who're suddenly above tonight's the night I hope the time never comes when you need it again

imo there will never be a day when anything can touch it

fuckin' "new mama" one of those songs where I can remember the exact taste of the air in the room the night it cracked some brittle thing inside me which is an emo-ass thing to say but what can I tell you, the heights of emo to which I aspired during my time with that record were pretty fuckin airy

my favorite Neil period by far

absolutely

I'd rank em

1) on the beach
2) time fades away
3) tonight's the night

I've listened to on the beach so much, I prolly listen to tfa more nowadays

but still, beach

tonight's the night

would also like to rep for the ditch antilles

journey through the past
tonight's the night acetate
live @ the bottom line 1974

bottom line show is one of those things that first made me realize that i could worship neil young and not just be a casual fan. i thought it was really special.

That show is the Citizen Kane Junior Blues bootleg, right?

Tonight's the Night, no question

yup

xp

Thanks Edward. I don't have it in front of me so wanted to make sure my memory was straight. Great, great show, and he better put the whole damn thing on the next Archives box.

neil probably hates that one too

"Tonight", bored with ILM's OTB worship

I'm not anti-On the Beach, but other people are definitely hearing things in it that I never have. Tonight's the Night for me, thx.

"On the Beach" is fantastic but it's become a cliche

very hard to decide between beach and tnt... i almost think that the stuff in Shakey, about the David Briggs OG mix with all the banter between songs, slightly spoiled TNT for me, because i am so fascinated by this earlier incarnation that has, afaik, never been bootlegged? and OTB has some lovely upbeat songs alongside its darker stuff (and its darker stuff is positively MURDEROUS).

i think i need to think abt this.

aw fuckit only one of these has 'tired eyes'

On The Beach for the second half, but I'm already regretting my vote: the second half is beautiful and desperate and also self-absorbed, so I use it like a drug when I am wallowing. But Tonight's The Night is an empathetic album, about his friends' dissolution as much as his own. "He tried to do his best but he could not"---darkest hole of the album b/c it's true of all of us. "Please take my advice"---we won't, Neil knows it, he knows he won't take his own advice. But he joins with his brothers in the chorus to try anyway. This album breaks me up.

I agree, OTB is a bit too rock star whiny in places. Not that I care about Neil Young's lyrics all that much.

tonight's the night...sends a chill up & down my spine

aw fuckit only one of these has 'tired eyes' 'albuquerque'

oh it had been far too long since we had a Neil Young thread!

Thoughts:

Time Fades Away - So ragged and strange-sounding. For being a live album recorded in stadiums, it sounds really reverb-less and dry! Piano ballads aside, not the most *tuneful* thing Neil has done. Some of his most anguished vocals though. He definitely sounds edgy! Maybe one of his most Dylan-influenced albums? Always thought that the title track was his version of "tombstone blues"

Tonight's the Night - Incredible throughout. What comes to mind is Neil's guitar here -- so thick and bottom-heavy. Drop Drop D? The riffs on "World on a String," "Albuquerque," "Tired Eyes" ... Even though the purist in me wouldn't mind having the original Briggs mix/sequencing, the songs from earlier sessions/shows are great ("Borrowed Tune", "New Mama", "Lookout Joe" "Downtown"). They really add to the overall picture. For all its darkness, I think there's actually a great sense of humor on this record -- gallow's humor, for sure, but it's still funny in parts.

On The Beach -- The record that made me fall deeply in love with Neil's music. As noted, the second side might be his best three song stretch. So many great sounds -- the keyboard in "See the Sky," the howl in "Revolution Blues", the guitar solo in "On the Beach", the tambourine & harmonica in "Ambulance Blues" ...

I don't go to any of these albums for the guitar playing, unlike some Neil albums

"Time Fades Away", the song, is really great. He's right about time, too. I like "L.A." a lot too but I think it sounds better on some boots of that era.

The versions of "L.A." and "Journey Through the Past" on that 2007 live album blow the album ones away.

The Massey Hall show? Don't think "LA" is on that one.

It was "Love in Mind," my mistake.

The version of "L.A." I'm most thinking of is on the Lonely Weekend boot, January 15, 1973.

is that the solo acoustic version? I like that one, too.

love all three...or love two and like time fades away...but yeah there was a period of time when i listening to like nothing but tonight's the night for like a year it seemed

Tonight's the Night

yeah, tyler, that 1-15-73 show has the usual 1973 structure, and "L.A." is in the acoustic part of the show.

love how the music in "LA" is written like some majestic paean but the lyrics are just snarky putdowns

xpost I think that boot is probably the essential TFA tour bootleg. TTN essential boot = Manchester, UK. And as others have noted above, the incredible OTB show is the Bottom Line one.

yeah, I'm fascinated by those 1973 shows, and you're right, I think: the Manchester show you're talking about is the 11-3-73 show, right?

don't have it in front of me, but yeah, I think that's the one ... there's a part where one of the mancunians yells: "you must be JOKING!" and Neil says: "you might be onto something there ..." the songs aren't as loose/long as some other bootlegs, but they're pretty intense.

yeah that's the boot...it's on the last song, "Don't Be Denied"

I really love that song. Haven't heard the boot, though.

it will be exciting for this era to be mined for the next archives ...

... like, the whole bit about Joni Mitchell at the Tonight's the Night sessions! Weird. And then there's the lost ditch album, Homegrown ...

yeah neil better deliver with this era on the archives.

increasingly i'm feeling REALLY burned by the archives box, especially after the CD and vinyl reissues of the first four albums...and frankly i've gotten better rarities from doom and gloom from the tomb.

ha, thanks, M@tt ...
yeah, i was feeling a little burned recently, too. i mean, i love it, but i can only imagine it being a lot better. i just feel like he *really* should've gone down the route of reissuing the albums separately with a bonus disc of unreleased material + keep releasing performance series things. it actually has gotten me thinking about whether an artist being in charge of his/her own legacy/back catalog is a good thing! because at this point, the Dylan bootleg series is preferable, and Bob doesn't have shit to do with that, I imagine. Other than collecting a check.

tonight's the night > on the beach > time fades away

is the performance series still an ongoing thing? i looooooove the fillmore east album but i haven't heard the others

new performance series is out next week! 1992 Harvest Moon tour ... They've all been pretty great. Massey Hall is essential, I'd say. The Sugar Mtn. disc a little less so, but still awesome.

they are out on vinyl, yes? that is what i want for xmas

i think they are. they might be ridiculously expensive tho

yeah they're like 30 40 bucks each
i like the sugar mountain one more than massey hall, mainly for the stories he tells.

yeah he's pretty chill and funny on the Sugar Moutain disc, whereas the Massey show is more "I am brooding rock god Neil"

i think they are. they might be ridiculously expensive tho

― tylerw, Tuesday, December 1, 2009 1:43 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha, that is why i am asking for them for xmas!

yeah the sugar mountain one is ridic priced....

the massey hall show is towering IMO, just amazing

I'm a Neil dilettante really-- not long ago all I really knew was Zuma, Decade, Tonight's The Night, Gold Rush and some later smatterings. But Tyler's awesome awesome oddball comps have put me on a big NY kick lately.

So today I sat down and listened to all three of the trilogy in sequence. This is my first time hearing TFA at all and my first time hearing most of OTB.

TFA drags in places but has tremendous peaks in the title track, Yonder Stands The Sinner, Don't Be Denied and The Bridge. OTB has an amazing sound, definitely the most sonically appealing of the three for me, and right now the inscrutable guitar solo on 'Vampire Blues' seems like the best thing ever to me. TTN seems to wear the most masks, with a lightness that conceals real dark shit, the most elusive and I definitely don't 'get it' yet.

Between Beach and Tonight's then, with further listening needed.

These are three of the best records ever made by anyone I don't give a fuck what anyone say. I could listen to "L.A." all day and all night long and not get tired of the hook.

it's really hard for me to make a choice here. i am going for tonights the night cuz it was "albuquerque" which is where i was born and i feel like OTB is getting enuff love on this thread.

TTN is my favorite Neil album, but I have to be in a certain frame of mind to listen to it. OTB I can enjoy almost anytime.

Recently I acquired a crappy rip of TFA, which I hadn't heard in 30 years, and it's been in constant rotation ever since. I wonder why Neil hates this album so much?

Yup, the version of C'mon Baby Let's Go Downtown on Massey is incredible.

All three albums are among Neil's very best and TTN and OTB are utterly esssential, but TTN edges it for me. It's my favourite Neil album period. Somebody upthread commented on what an empathetic album it is, and he's absolutely right. This album is man emotion in rock at its best - a little maudlin, a little drunk, but empathetic and touching. It fuckin' rocks as well. So many bits on this album that just slay me... the way Neil's voice breaks when he sings "Ain't got nothin' but this feeling" in Mellow My Mind; Cryin' Eyes, the bit about watching the skaters in Borrowed Tune (Lady Jane is the tune he took from the Rolling Stones, right? Neil's version is vastly superior); the riff off C'mon Baby; "He tried to do his best but he could not" in Tired Eyes; Nils Logfren's stinging guitar breaks in Speakin' Out; the sense of dread in Albuquerque's chord sequence...

OTB is all kinds of awesome too. Rick Danko and Levon Helm lay down such a tight, tense groove on Revolution Blues, very different to anything they did with The Band. It's a shame they didn't do more with Neil. Danko's bass is incredible - they way he leaps up the frets with those gulping high notes is almost like Holger Czukay, but he also maintains a powerful low end. It's a stunning group performance.

yeah, i hope that some more recordings with Danko and Helm show up on the Archives -- I think there's something in Shakey about at least one unreleased song with Helm on drums.

Oh wow, I'd love to hear that. I should add that Homegrown is great too, although songs like Sedan Delivery definitely benefited from the faster, punked up treatment he gave them on Rust Never Sleeps.

Oh, just looked up Homegrown on Wiki and Sedan ain't on it. I must have a very odd version of Homegrown. Such is the way with bootlegs, particularly ones from Slsk.
Levon Helm is on a Homegrown song called Separate Ways apparently.

I think what you have is "Chrome Dreams" ... "Homegrown" has never been bootlegged, though songs from it showed up on Neil's albums through Hawks & Doves, I think.

and yeah, it's "Separate Ways" i'm thinking of -- a great song that he debuted live like 20 years after he recorded it apparently.

All three of these albums have very distinct strengths for me - Tonight's The Night is the most emotionally raw NY record (that I've heard) and it's the best of the three in terms of sustaining an overall mood (albeit a harrowing one); On The Beach has the greatest variety in terms of displaying Neil's various strengths and it has the highest peaks in terms of individual songs (title track and 'Ambulance Blues'); Time Fades Away strikes the best balance in terms of great songwriting and rough, sloppy playing, plus the live aspect gives it an extra edge - it's also the one I've got heaviest into (for a large part of summer 2008 basically), so it gets my vote.

x-post Yes, you're right. Chrome Dreams it is. I think it has a version of Homegrown on it, hence the confusion.

Time Fades Away is a beautiful artifact. I picked up a VG+ copy for £10 around five years ago, complete with the lyric poster. It doesn't seem to be so highly prized, whereas, before the CD reissue, OTB would fetch around £50. Some great songs too - the Bridge is lovely and Don't Be Denied is one of my favourites.

Feelin left out on all the "second side of OTB" talk. Much as I love the record, I could totally take or leave those last two tracks. I understand that's not a popular opinion tho.

could anyone help a dude find the manchester 73 live boot, as a cursory search of the interwebs has yet to turn up the necessary mp3s

voted Tonight's the Night

as much as i do like most of time fades away, i would really fail to understand someone voting for it over the other two...it's just fundamentally not as good IMO.

Yeah, Time Fades Away is great, it just doesn't have as strong songs as the other two. It's obviously got an incredible vibe, and plenty of wonderful stuff, but it's not a masterpiece like TNT and OTB.

Stevie, if no one's gotten in touch with you, I can probably upload that Manchester show at some point ...

Pls upload it somewhere I can get it too thx!!!

Lemme just wrap up Jazz Week on Doom & Gloom and I'll put it up there ...

much appreciated tyler, thanx!

d&g rules btw, basically everything is some shit I love

yeah love the shit outta yer blog, man.

no doubt.

btw tyler, i KNOW i have that damn jayhawks CDR and i WILL find it but we are doing some work on the house and everything is in total disarray.

This is off topic but Tyler I just listened to your upload of Neil's SNL performance of 'Rockin In The Free World' and it gave me goose bumps all over my body. I remember watching this when it aired originally and it was easily the least genial performance of anything I've ever seen on TV. I remember NY broke at least half the strings on his instrument by the end. Thanks for including it in your In The 80s comp!

tonight's the night's my favorite album by him, so that. side 2 is some of the funniest shit ever on record. when his voice cracks in "tired eyes" i still crack up after all these years

wait which CDR? i've got some jayhawk live show (showbox in seattle) of unknown etiology

thanks for the kind words, ILM-ers. Plenty more Neil Young to come, fear not! After the Manchester show, I'll get around to doing an overview of my fave Neil bootlegs from 1976 ...

Neil's SNL performance of 'Rockin In The Free World'

his solo performance of "harvest moon" on SNL was really awesome too

yeah those SNL things are nice. to bring it back on topic, though, i wonder if there's any footage of the Tonight's the Night tour in Neil's archives? Would love to see that sleazy band in action. I think in Shakey, it says that there isn't much ...

Yeah, dying for some performance footage of the Tonight's the Night tour in the UK. Or maybe just audio, even. Will check in to the DoomGloomTomb blog.

gbx i have a really good boot of the hard to find vinyl only first jayhawks album on bunkhouse record that a friend of mine had done at a friend's recording studio through the board....lost highway was gonna reissue it on CD but never did

whoah that sounds cool

tonight's the night is some serious middle of the night, driving down country roads smoking cigarettes kinda music.

i dig the other two but it's not even close imo

middle of the night, driving down country roads smoking cigarettes kinda music.

― jØrdån (omar little), Wednesday, December 2, 2009 12:46 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is basically my favorite kind of music

would love to see various "the rough guide to the ditch trilogy" track listings here -- condense it down to the most hair-raising 65 minutes or whatever

someone do that plz and ysi thx

(i've only got On The Beach!)

this would be an inneresting poll

1. "On the Beach" – 6:59
2. "Motion Pictures" – 4:23
3. "Ambulance Blues" – 8:56

I'd be down for doing a ditch mix

yeah, do that

Since it's out of print and Neil refuses to release it on CD: http://musicartstyle.blogspot.com/2009/11/neil-young-time-fades-away-1973.html

While Time Fades Away is "lesser" than the others, it is totally worth hearing and it seems ridiculous that Neil keeps it out of print. I've always thought that maybe it's just a little too "personal" or something.

Like he just wants the memories connected to those songs to fade away.

if that were true he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of preparing an HDCD release

prolly more related to sound quality issues

like he wants that "time" to also fade away

tho the scrapped HDCD release sounded just fine

who knows

-\(O_o)/-

^ emoticon for head-being-crushed-by-neil's-weird-decisions

The official reason for no CD release of TFA is both sound quality and performance--Neil has said he doesn't like either.

Yeah, that's definitely what he said recently ... Still weird though -- I'm assuming that he is the one who put the album together and wanted it released in the first place. I'm sure that the record company would've loved a more conventional live album from him at that point, but Time Fades Away is not that! It's just weird that you can go on to Amazon and order 'Everybody's Rocking" but can't get "Time Fades Away."

I guess in a recent interview, he said he was going to "re-create" TFA on the Archives using different performances. Whatevs!

He won't, though.

well it'd be truly nuts if he just skipped that tour for the next archives ... it is wild, though -- he could have a 10-disc box just covering 73-74. So much activity -- TFA, TTN, OTB, Homegrown, CSNY ... The mind boggles. It'll probably be terribly disappointing .... :(

i've been listening to TFA cos of this thread and i realised that i always imagine these songs as being recorded at huge outdoor festivals, but they weren't, were they? not sure if it's the sound of the thing or the ~~vibe~~ that makes me think of wide open spaces.

yo - i just put up the three "ditch trilogy" bootlegs mentioned above over at http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/ Enjoy!

you star - thank tyler

ditch mix coming soon

awesome!!!

i've been listening to TFA cos of this thread and i realised that i always imagine these songs as being recorded at huge outdoor festivals, but they weren't, were they? not sure if it's the sound of the thing or the ~~vibe~~ that makes me think of wide open spaces.

― jabba hands, Thursday, December 3, 2009 4:13 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not big outdoor shows but they were recorded at live shows, digitally i think which neil said was one of the reasons it hasn't been reissues which is a lie probably

digital wouldn't even exist then, would it? a lot of the album was recorded in the winter of 1973, Jan.-Feb ... I have a theory that the reason the tour was such a bummer is that they were traveling through the midwest/Canada in the middle of winter!

you haven't heard of the compufuck?

per wiki, this is probably accurate:

Along with the soundtrack to Journey Through the Past, Time Fades Away remains the only officially released Neil Young album unavailable on CD, which may be due to technical issues: Time Fades Away was recorded directly from the soundboard to final 2-track masters using the Quad-8 CompuMix, the unreliable first digital mixing soundboard—against the wishes of producer David Briggs, who referred to it as the "Compufuck" but was forced to yield to the desires of Young. This resulted in a murky-sounding release; because the final mixes were those rough cuts, the album cannot be remixed for improved clarity:

actually the tour was a bummer cuz danny whitten died shortly after being dismissed from the touring band

but yeah, the difficulty in getting time fades away up to neil's audio standards are bound up in the way it was recorded, there's nothing to "mix down" from because the only thing left is the mixed masters

same thing goes for journey through the past

ditch trilogy is fueled by

not only the actuality, but the timing of whitten's death
neil's difficulty dealing with post-harvest fame
general post-woodstock malaise

also tequila

and yeah, i know whitten's death is the main catalyst for the darkness of this era, just saying that playing sheds in toronto and milwaukee in january can't have helped the mood much!

was reading this excerpt from a melody maker interview w/ young from '85 about the ditch trilogy and came across this:

I was pretty down I guess at the time, but I just did what I wanted to do, at that time. I think if everybody looks back at their own lives they'll realise that they went through something like that. There's periods of depression, periods of elation, optimism and scepticism, the whole thing is.... it just keeps coming in waves.

You go down to the beach and watch the same thing, just imagine every wave is a different set of emotions coming in. Just keep coming. As long as you don't ignore it, it'll still be there. If you start shutting yourself off and not letting yourself live through the things that are coming through you, I think that's when people start getting old really fast, that's when they really age.

^ seems like he was very connected to this on the beach/waves breaking metaphor for things, if he was still talking about it 10 years later, which put me in mind of the wave passage from fear and loathing in las vegas, 1972:

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

I've been listening a lot to the bottom line '74 version of "roll another number (for the road)"

when he starts singing it, to a crowd that had likely never heard the song before, the audience picks up on its rollicking "everybody must get stoned" vibe and starts clapping along like it's a hootenanny

now, I might be forcing an imaginary narrative framework over events, but I find it interesting how the audience loses its steam and stops clapping shortly after he hits the lyrical bomb in the chorus - "my feet aren't on the ground, but I'm standing on the sound of some openhearted people going down"

the second verse is even more pointed in its denial of hippie freewheeling, by the time he says "I'm a million miles away from that helicopter day" about woodstock, you can hear a pin drop, no hooting and hollering here

with the right kind of ears you can almost hear the high-water mark, that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back

yeah that whole show is kinda like that -- the crowd yuks it up on "Long May You Run" and even chortles at the "you're all just pissin' in the wind" line in "Ambulance Blues (which IS funny) ...

I think they're yukking it up during "long may you run" cause neil mentions it's about his car

which is kind of funny, when compared to how it sounds, his typical heavy maudlin loved-and-lost stuff

but yeah, a lot of his material from this era is about shoving the audience's laughter back down its throat

ditch mix y'all

http://www.sendspace.com/file/zsh19g

Woo-hoo! (Even if I have all the stuff, it's nice to have a curated collection)

here's the track list

01 borrowed tune (tonight's the night)
02 time fades away (time fades away hdcd)
03 revolution blues (on the beach hdcd)
04 albuquerque (tonight's the night)
05 relativity invitation (journey to the past)
06 love in mind (time fades away hdcd)
07 tonight's the night part ii (tonight's the night)
08 greensleeves (live at the bottom line 1974)
09 ambulance blues (on the beach hdcd)
10 mellow my mind (tonight's the night)
11 l.a. (time fades away hdcd)
12 new mama (tonight's the night)
13 on the beach (on the beach hdcd)
14 tired eyes (tonight's the night)
15 for the turnstiles (on the beach hdcd)
16 yonder stands the sinner (time fades away hdcd)
17 motion pictures (live at the bottom line 1974)
18 soldier (journey through the past)
19 beach boys - let's go away for awhile (journey through the past)

thx bro 4 real

http://www.hulu.com/watch/110736/late-night-with-jimmy-fallon-neil-young-sings-fresh-prince

f u i lol'd :-/

ok that is pretty funny

sendspace dl rates been sucking it lately, so... ditch mix via mediafire, this bummerz 4 U

http://www.mediafire.com/?ym5zemoiwy5

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

thx bro 4 real
--being being kiss-ass fake nice (gbx)

ur welcome, glad ya dig it

Say what you will about Dave Marsh, but this is a helluva review of Tonight's the Night:

"I'm sorry. You don't know these people. This means nothing to you."—Neil Young, in the liner notes.

Tonight's the Night finds Neil Young on his knees at the top of the heap, struggling to get back to his feet. The musical difficulties of last year's On the Beach have been resolved as directly as possible by a return to recording with Crazy Horse and Nils Lofgren, with whom Young recorded his 1970 masterpiece, After the Gold Rush.

Yet even Crazy Horse isn't what it once was: Lead guitarist Danny Whitten died last year of a drug overdose. The track on which he appears, "Come on Baby, Let's Go Downtown," recorded at Fillmore East four years ago, serves as a metaphor for the album's haunted, frightened emotional themes. Musically, Whitten's guitar and voice complement, challenge and inspire Young. The rest of the album strains to keep up.

It does so only occasionally but the effort is almost quixotically exhilarating. The successes—the ironic "Tired Eyes," the deceptively sweet "Albuquerque," the thunderous "Lookout Joe" and the two versions of the title song—are Young's best music since Gold Rush. Lofgren's guitar and piano are forceful and direct, Ralph Molina's drumming apt on both the rockers and the weepers (the latter driven by Ben Keith's steel guitar). Young's playing, on piano, harp and guitar, is simple but constantly charged.

Still, the album shares with On the Beach a fully developed sense of despair: The stargazer of "Helpless" finds no solace here. The music has a feeling of offhand, first-take crudity matched recently only by Blood on the Tracks, almost as though Young wanted us to miss its ultimate majesty in order to emphasize its ragged edge of desolation. "Borrowed Tune," for example, is set against Young's stark harp and piano. The tandem guitar and bass on the opening version of the title song sounds like the crack of doom itself and Young's singing—especially on the concluding version — alternates between sheer panic and awful Old Testament threat. "Tonight's the night," he shouts, threats, begs, moans and curses, telling the story of roadie Bruce Berry, who ODed "out on the mainline." Sometimes it feels as though Young is still absorbing the shock of his friend's death, sometimes as though he is railing against mortality itself, sometimes as though he's accepted it. But never as though he believes it.

More than any of Young's earlier songs and albums—even the despondent On the Beach and the mordant, rancorous Time Fades Away—Tonight's the Night is preoccupied with death and disaster. Dedicated to the dead Berry and Whitten, its cover, liner and label are starkly black and white. The characters of the songs are shell-shocked, losers, wasted, insane, homeless—except for the ones who are already corpses. The happiest man in any of them, the father in "New Mama," acknowledges that he's "living in a dreamland." Ultimately, he too is tracked down by the ghosts from outside as he sits staring out at his frozen lake.

Young is simultaneously terrified by this pernicious landscape and fascinated by the disgust and lust it evokes. The only resolution seems to be ennui and the ritual of the music, which pounds incessantly, until the sanity of everything, including (or maybe especially) the singer and the listener, is called into question. Tonight's the night, all right, but for what? Just another kick?

Searching for a way to make sense of it, a lost Raymond Chandler story, "Red Wind," offers a clue: "It was one of those hot, dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen." This is desert music, for certain, and the roughest part of the desert at that.

What finally happens, in "Tired Eyes," is material for a novel; in fact, as Bud Scoppa has pointed out elsewhere, the similarity to the plot of Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers — a novel which shares Young's obsession with heroin and the refuse of the war—is startling. "Well, he shot four men in a cocaine deal," Young sings matter-of-factly. "He left 'em lyin' in an open field/ Full of old cars with bullet holes in the mirrors."

The whole album has pointed to this, song after song building the tightness with the endless repetition of phrases—musical and lyric—until the rasp of the guitars on the rockers and the sweetness of the singing on the weepers begins to grate, aching for release. Young's whole career may have been spent in pursuit of this story—remember the sinister black limousines lurking in the shadows of "Mr. Soul" and "Broken Arrow"?—but it is only now that he has found a way to tell the tale so directly.

Much has been made of Young's turn from pretty melodies on the last three albums. On this album, there are hints of the same kind of beauty that, overused, finally bloated Harvest with its own saccharine excesses. "World on a String" and "Roll Another Number" wouldn't have sounded out of place on that album, except that they would have exploded its pretensions.

If the songs here aren't pretty, they are tough and powerful, with a metallic guitar sound more akin to the abrasiveness of the Rolling Stones than the placid harmonies of CSNY. The melodies haven't disappeared (as they seemed to on On the Beach), but they are only sketched in, hints of what could be.

There is no sense of retreat, no apology, no excuses offered and no quarter given. If anything, these are the old ideas with a new sense of aggressiveness. The jitteriness of the music, its sloppy, unarranged (but decidedly structured) feeling is clearly calculated. The music draws us in, with the wonderful guitar line crashing through the ominous "Lookout Joe," with the steel guitar on "Albuquerque," the almost folkish suggestion of melody that drives "Tired Eyes" but—and here is where it is new—it also spits us back out again, makes us look at the ugliness on the surface and beneath it.

Yet the musical change doesn't reflect a similar toughening of subject matter, though that is what the casual listener might think. The tensions have always been there. only they are now unrelieved. To suggest, as some have, that Young's current music is an apology for the sweetness of his success—much less to suggest that he has only recently discovered a world in opposition to the rock scene—is to ignore the bulk of his work. The titles alone tell the story: "Broken Arrow," "Out of My Mind," "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" (with no hint that anything can mend it again), even "Helpless." "Ohio," Young's other great CSNY contribution, speaks explicitly of the same horrors: "What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground/ How can you run when you know?" Finally, those four dead in "Ohio" equate directly with the four dead coke dealers in "Tired Eyes": casualties in different battles of the same war.

All of this is half incoherent because all of the names Young could put to it are clichés. It is the measure of Young's achievement that when he sings, so calmly it's spooky, "Please take my advice/ Open up the tired eyes," it brings this message home to us in a new way. Suddenly the evil is no longer banal but awful and ironic, in simultaneous recognition that the advice is silly, or that if taken, it might not help or it might only aid in enlarging the wounds.

Crying over the death of his real and imagined friends, Neil Young seems at once heroic and mock heroic, brave and absurd. Like the best of both, he leaves us as he found us, ravaged but rocking.

DAVE MARSH

(Posted: Aug 28, 1975)

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/neilyoung/albums/album/197063/review/5940431/tonights_the_night

i just e-mailed that to two of my best non-ILX friends. thanks for the post.

Yeah, Missta Marsh he sure pretty thorough.

Still, as far as Neil's concerned, I'm a Beach boy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow

close!

time fades away really does deserve more than 3 votes imo!!!!

eh, like M@tt said upthread, Time Fades Away is great, but I couldn't imagine voting for it over the other two ...

i've gone through phases...

I kinda instinct voted OTB right off, but an hour and one TFA re-listen later I was ready to finally make the switch. LA and title track were killing me.

I voted Tonight. On the Beach is amazing, but most often I just listen to the 2nd side. Tonight I want to hear the whole thing straight through.

LA is incredible.

results are hilarious. Laughable that 'Tonight's the Night' didn't win this. Absolutely laughable. Hipsters are cute but ultimately there for source of ridicule.

This poll means about as much as the shit I took ... anyway, I'm gonna pour myself a glass of wine and work practice the chords on 'Mellow My Mind' and 'Albuquerque' again, good job on "discovering" 'On The Beach', ILX. My mint LP cost me exactly one dollar from the Reckless Records in Lakeview on Broadway in '96, maybe? nobody cared about that record. anyway, you youngsters are cute

i always liked on the beach but man, tonight's the night is like the royal scam gone darker and more country and minus the humor to lighten the mood and with the added grimness of the fact that the dead guys and the drug burnouts are neil young's personal friends.

right on, Omar ... so true, it's kinda like 'On the Beach' is almost a parody of 'Tonight's the Night' when I really think about it. Like, Neil wanted to self-consciously TOP IT's vibe, or something. Anyway, I love both records, but if you actually look at songwriting and so forth, there is no question that 'Tonight's the Night' was a herculean effort. I mean, yeah it's easy to smoke up and put on 'On the Beach', but come on..

but yeah, this is just ILX stuff, i pay it no mind. everybody knows that 'Tonight's The Night' is the classic Neil LP..

anyway, you youngsters are cute ― Stormy Davis

ya talkin to me?

Stormy's always picking on youngsters!

ol reliable

youngster hipsters like me and scott seward prefer on the beach haha

as do/did i. ha.

Well, Stormy, I don't wanna rain on your parade too much, I enjoy a bit of self-rightousness as much as the next folk, but here goes:

Glad I could skew this towards OTB.

I am not young, I had a cassette copy of that record forever (as well as Tonight's the Night) and had a whole lot of trouble finding a copy of OTB for a reasonable price, but I was certainly no record-hound fanatic or pro, just tried stores for a long time before finding a decent copy to buy (this was 90s pre-internet era). I was listening to Tonight's the Night a bunch right before I saw this poll as well, great great album, but ... I would take On the Beach any day of the week. Just what I would rather listen to if forced to choose. Project upon us OTBers all you will, of course, wouldn't be much fun if someone didn't get all ornery in here. Just wish I could force all music discussions for the next 6 months at least to refrain from the hipster-speak. It's lazy and boring.

http://stuffthatmoves.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/andy_rooney.jpg

^^^ i think he voted for Time Fades Away, btw

Try to get back by eight
(or preferably seven so you can catch 60 Minutes)

i am young and maybe a hipster and my favorite neil album is comes a time so fuck you guys <3

See Stormy, blame us over the hill farts! We suck, not the youth.

I'm grizzled and old (at least here) and voted for On The Beach. It's not like the others suck or something; as I said upthread it's my favorite period of Neil by leaps and bounds.

it's cool guys, like EZ Snappin says above, I adore all of these records. just real cognitive dissonance that OTB wins. I dunno. LOVE it. but it's more of a mind spiel record from Neil than the precise, jaw-dropping songwriting from Neil on 'Tonight's the Night' ( I guess I may be the new Geir, I dunno), however drunkenly delivered .. (oh yeah, this is what makes me *not* Geir in that I am so in awe of Neil's chordal choices/songwriting on 'Tonight's the Night" while simultaneously delivering the whole package as this wasted, drunken romp. I dunno. Nothing can match it's vibe. and OTB really does seem a smidgen mannered, after the initial blow of TNT)

Oh please, fuck this stupid "Tonight's the Night is like a darker Royal Scam" bullshit.

I bought Tonight's the Night having read all the reviews about how brilliant and "harrowing" it was. It is -- but not remotely in any way that you'd expect, and as a result, took me forever to appreciate. There probably isn't a single "tune" on it that's up there with his best. You'd have no idea that the title track became what it did live on Live Rust. Songs that begin promising ("Borrowed Tune" starts off like it's about to be the next After the Gold Rush) end up so bleary-eyed and raw they become something else entirely -- not singer-songwriter intimate, but uncomfortably intimate and borderline embarrassing. As the artwork indicates, it really is some stoned dude on stage saying, "I got somethin' to say..." And so he does.

i don't find anything embarassing on tonight's the night. the songs are amazing, stormy otm pretty much. i like on the beach tho.

i am old btw

child please

xpost

I bought Tonight's the Night having read all the reviews about how brilliant and "harrowing" it was. It is -- but not remotely in any way that you'd expect, and as a result, took me forever to appreciate. There probably isn't a single "tune" on it that's up there with his best.

Jesus.

This poll result is soooooooooo ILM.

Just bought TFA at the weekend - the title track and LA are so great.

I'm arguing on *behalf* of TTN, dude, not suggesting TTN isn't all it's cracked up to be. I just mean that its power isn't so much in its craftsmanship (or what we normally think of as craftsmanship -- melodies, etc.) as much as its blown out aesthetic (which suggests its own craftsmanship, of course). I mean, by comparison On the Beach sounds as if it features Tom Scott and Steve Gadd.

OK, I get that.

all three are great records. i'd put time fades away just below tonight's the night for sentimental reasons, and for the sake of objectivity i guess because it was such a personal artistic watershed for neil (no tunes? really?), he followed its reprise-the-opening track gambit on his second overall best album, rust never sleeps, and his comeback album after his bullshit 80s synth drek, freedom. really don't get how anyone could like on the beach even close to as much as the other two, but still it's a great album and a big world out there

Neil Young Recordings

App made by Jack M. Clark using Gift Creator

1. Choose a gift to send:
(click on images to view full size)

Hawks And Doves

sent: 365

Live Rust
sent: 368

Rust Never Sleeps
sent: 860

Comes A Time
sent: 470

Decade
sent: 444

American Stars'n'Bars
sent: 249

Long May You Run
sent: 595

Zuma
sent: 598

Tonight's The Night
sent: 560

On The Beach
sent: 1,069

Time Fades Away
sent: 346

Journey Through The Past
sent: 220

Harvest
sent: 1,357

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
sent: 704

Neil Young
sent: 446

2. Now pick friends to give it to

You can't argue with science

surely those results have more to do with OTB previously being way more UNAVAILABLE than any of those other ones

Not when applied to Facebook apps.

x-post

facebook users harbor pent-up demand for an album that's been widely available for 6 years now

i don't get it! what does this app do?

It makes little replicas of the album appear on the wall of the person you send it to. Just another little gift app that people waste time with.

neil hand delivers copies of the albums to your friends

Unless you ask to send Time Fades Away, which causes him to come to your house and confiscate any vinyl or MP3s of said album in your possession.

that was a bug, it's working now

btw i've been a longtime user of the neil gift app!!! it is good for getting chicks.

chicks are always impressed with facebook gift app prowess iirc ... mix it w/ a healthy knowledge of Neil Young bootlegs and you are good to go.

off topic, but the other facebook gift app that the ladies love is "electroacoustic music gifts."

Totally on topic, as it is the season to give.

How does Zuma fit into this discussion? It rocks a little harder, but still has the same burned out vibe as Tonight's the Night and On the Beach.

Zuma is the I'm-single-and-loving-it album. He's over the malaise.

i love Zuma, and it's patchwork nature, with CSNY harmonies and Crazy Horse jams on the same record. wonder if that bugged crosby.

Zuma is my favourite NY album

was just talking to friend who thought that Zuma should be grouped in with the previous three albums. I think the main difference is in the guitar playing -- Zuma's where we get our first real glimpse of what "Neil Young" guitar playing would be. Not that he hadn't played plenty of lead guitar beforehand, but Zuma's got those big wind-blown solos that would become his trademark.

And those chunk-a-chunk chords.

yeah, totally -- but lyrically, it is as "down" as many of those ditch records ...

He was hardly Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky before that

true

isn't Zuma the only one with just Crazy Horse?

(out of the four I mean)

Tonight's The Night is Crazy Horse

yeah but it's got Nils and stuff on it. . . I dunno. Zuma seems like a separate thing to me!

Zuma is Crazy Horse. TTN has Nils Lofgren, Ben Keith, David Briggs on it?

Zuma is the first with Frank Sampredo

Zuma's the only one credited to Crazy Horse ... and even that has CSNY and a recording from previous sessions ... It's funny - most of the Crazy Horse records are actually hodgepodges ...

they're all hodgepodges

time fades away has stuff from '71 on it, "l.a." was written in the late 60s

the TTN acetate from '73 has "winterlong", "walk on" and "for the turnstiles" on it

"don't cry no tears" from zuma had been kicking around for a decade, and he played "pardon my heart" at the 74 bottom line show, which is mostly TTN and OTB material

the 3 proper ditch albums are as different from each other as they are from zuma, so the demarcations aren't really clear, and are in fact pretty artificial

it's almost like neil would just record and record and record, making compilations of his own stuff, trying out different arrangements of things, rather than go into the studio with a set of songs to record and release

"walk on" sounds like it could fit right on TTN

it was actually from the Harvest era, right?

wiki says "see the sky about to rain" was harvest-era, not sure about "walk on"

that's what i was thinking of.

"walk on" sounds like it could fit right on TTN
So does "For the Turnstiles."

the TTN acetate from '73 has "winterlong", "walk on" and "for the turnstiles" on it

The three records, along with Zuma, are in a class of their own.
But can anyone suggest artists or albums that approximate the same burned out vibe?

townes van zandt and skip spence?

Big Star Third/Sister Lovers

david crosby - "if i could only remember my name"

See this thread.

Those are all good. No Other, and to my ears, Aja, embody it, as well.

What about contemporary artists? Jeff Tweedy tries too hard. Jason Molina comes a little closer, but his work can be a slog. Will Oldham?

Oakley Hall are worth a look. Kurt Vile, My Morning Jacket's early stuff always gets these comparisons. I kinda like the Tennessee Fire, I guess.
mmmm not a whole lot, really.

If you're broad enough in your sonic palette, you can follow Tim F and others' suggestions in the thread on exhaustion I linked to, and find contemporary suggestions from dance music broadly understood.

my morning jacket is so muppety and barfy

Yeah, I don't have any of their records, I don't know.

i think Wilco's Being There is a pretty transparent attempt to do a Tonight's The Night/Exile on Main St. kinda thing. And it's good! Not as great as those records obviously. I guess Being There is like 13 years old now, isn't it.

i love MMJ (esp At Dawn and It Still Moves) but i think they're more everybody knows-era than ditch.

Cool turn of direction for a cool thread...

And to briefly turn it back to a previous direction...

(no tunes? really?

I'm not saying TTN doesn't have "good tunes" -- just that none of them ranks up there with his best. But the point is, the record isn't about tunes, per se -- it's about the overall vibe and aesthetic. I mean, you can hear the guy who did Gold Rush on there pretty clearly, skills intact -- but on the whole, it literally sounds like he passed out or sank into a brutal depression in the middle of writing these songs.

All that said, song-for-song, I find On the Beach (to which Marsh, btw, gives two stars in the Rolling Stone Record Guide) a more rewarding listen.

Tuneless? Not with "Tonight's the Night," "Speakin' Out," "Borrowed Tune," "World on a String," and "Downtown" one after the other.

q, for this thread i guess: has anyone else written lyrics that so explicitly engage their contemporaries? NY seems to explicitly name-check so many other artists and his own life and times, in a way that seems totally unlike any other songwriter i can think of

am i wrong?

whaddaya mean, like, talking about Woodstock on Tonight's The Night?

no, like actual song lyrics!

i was talking about song lyrics -- "I'm not going back to Woodstock for a while" -- from "Roll Another Number."

oh ha.

i mean, he talks explicitly about CSNY, Bob Dylan, roadies that died, etc.

or "I'm singing this borrowed tune, I took from the Rolling Stones"

also, anyone who thinks TTN is "tuneless" needs to get this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51iX2JgAEyL._SS500_.jpg

and learn how to play "Mellow My Mind" and "Speakin' Out"

...although, holy fuck, I had no idea those things had finally gone out of print. seems like they've been around forever, and what prices!

yeah, i've always loved the melody of "Speakin' Out" -- how it sort of tricks you into thinking it's a straight-up blues progression, but then throws in some really lovely little accents.

Who called TTN "tuneless"?

re. other albums with this same "burned out vibe": one reason I think the contemporary rootsy albums listed (e.g. Wilco) fail to reach that same vibe is that none of their authors/performers are as good as Neil Young. But more interesting to me is that the other artists listed fail to understand TTN's vibe. To burn out you must have burned in the first place. Neil's burn out is in response to his fame (with CSN, with Harvest) and the 1973 tour. It's easy enough to be mopey and take a bunch of drugs and declare yourself burned out and ready to write a burned-out album. But that's not why Neil was burned out.

This comes together for me when I think of "Borrowed Tune". Neil sings that he's singing a borrowed tune because he's too wasted to write his own. Implicit is that if he weren't wasted, he could write a tune as good as the Rolling Stones (as they did in 1967, no less). That's a bold claim! But what sells the song as burnout is that you know he could write such a tune. Could Jeff Tweedy or Jason Molina sell such a boast? Listen to Tweedy on "Somebody Else's Song", on Being There, an album mentioned as a contender above: "I sound like what's-his-name". Tweedy sells what he can sell: at best a vague boast, at worst self-deprecation. Whereas Neil, even in his waste, is selling a star.

^think that this warrants an otm.

yeah booming post!

Hey Trip Maker,
Thanks for the tip on Oakley Hall. It's not exactly what I was looking for, but they crank out some damn fine artsy roots rock with nice long jams. Reminds of Eleventh Dream Day.

No sweat! Glad you dig it.

about tweedy -- uncle tupelo had a lot more to offer people into neil than wilco ever has. anodyne (especially its title track, the last song, and "chickamauga") are square in the crazy horse tradition

i think they are. they might be ridiculously expensive tho
― tylerw, Tuesday, December 1, 2009 1:43 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha, that is why i am asking for them for xmas!

― crazy farting throwback jersey (gbx), Tuesday, December 1, 2009 1:48 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Not sure if Time Fades Away has its own thread:

http://www.uncut.co.uk/neil-youngs-time-fades-away-rumoured-for-record-store-day-release-news

The two songs I gravitate towards now are "Love in Mind" and (especially) "Journey Through the Past"; in high school, it was the title track and "Don't Be Denied."

MSRP $500 (includes PONO download code)

I think I'll stick with my 35+-year-old copy--still plays fine.

pretty awesome record. thanks again. It was a blast to finally read Shakey and go through Archives vol 1 and the ditch trilogy. hope I'm still around for vol 2.

Found this on the Steve Hoffman forums. Kind of interesting:

I just ran across this thread today ... and joined so I could set the record straight, so-to-speak. I conceived and developed Compumix while I was chief engineer at Quad-Eight in the early seventies. It was the first successful console automation system in a time when floppy discs and other data storage media taken for granted today didn't exist. Compumix I (as it would be called later when newer technology was available) automated fader and two switch functions per channel for 16 channels. This digital data was turned into a bi-phase PCM data stream that was recorded on a spare track as the mix engineer worked. On a second pass, the engineer could select one or more channels to "update" (the use of -15 dB as a reference point was established by my design). This copied both original and updated fader moves to another spare track. Layers of updates could be bounced back and forth between these two tracks until the final mix was made. As in the case of Neil Young and "Time Fades Away", the mixdown would "run itself" and the board's output run directly to a disc cutter (as was done by Neil at the Lacquer Channel. I stayed at Neil's ranch for several days to help ... it was most enjoyable to hang with Neil. Anyway, the audio tracks themselves were never digitized ... all they "saw" was a VCA (dBx 202) between multi-track tape out and console line inputs. The audio path was all analog (the system could properly be called digitally-controlled analog). The drawbacks to Compumix were two: 1. obvious requirement for two "spare" tracks, and 2. a short time delay for every bounce of data between tracks. If it took 10 updates to "get it right", there would be small time lag in fader moves. But some other systems under development had serious issues with level stability and required pristine performance for the data channels on the recorder (ours could play error-free from a cassette!). The system sold very well, to clients like Advision London, A&M Records, Jack Clement Nashville, Mowest, Sound Labs (Armin Steiner), Ken Nordine, Neil Young, and others.

- Bill Whitlock, 25-year president & chief engineer for Jensen Transformers & AES Life Fellow

huh....that's interesting

i think david briggs called it the Compufuck.

I've owned Time Fades Away for a while but last week I saw a vinyl copy in almost perfect shape for $15 and I had to buy it. Very rare for me to do that, but i thought, if nothing else I want to give this record to somebody. And I'm listening now and it's in INCREDIBLE condition, I'm happy when new vinyl records out of the shrink wrap sounds this good. And though it'll always make sense why it's 3rd here, this is a brilliant record. Top, say, 7 Neil for me.

Has its very own Facebook group, just like Danny Whitten would've wanted:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/124529420890827/

ha! (I still joined)

I may too. I've joined Ball Four and general baseball-discussion groups, and also the Christgau-acolyte Expert Witness group (all-Wussy, all-the-time). The problem is I get bombarded via e-mail with notices. I've clicked "notices off" on the drop-down menus, and still I get them.

Where does the version of "Journey Through the Past" in Inherent Vice come from? I'm so used to the original, I thought at first it was a cover, then soon realized it was Neil.

Don't know but there's a previously unreleased version on The Archives Vol 1, maybe it's that one?

Yeah, it's the Archives version.

Then I have it...I should investigate my own records.

how does it differ from the Time Fades Away version? (ps I am not buying the Archives just to find out)

it's a full band version -- an outtake from the harvest sessions. it's great! i actually think that "journey" and the Harvest version of "bad fog of loneliness" in place of man needs a maid and there's a world would make for a stronger album overall. i like the orchestral numbers but they always seem out of place there.

word

Quite a bit different in execution--closer to country?

yeah, kinda breezy

have we done a big NY albums/songs poll, and if not why not, and when?

A World of Constant Strangers: The Neil Young Results Thread