Best Neil Young Piano Ballad Other Than "After the Gold Rush"

i think my fave is neil's solo piano version of "see the sky about to rain." but out of this list ... ummm maybe "philadelphia"?

I should have consulted with you on this first, knew I would miss some, feel free to vote "Other" I guess.

this is a cool comp of neil piano tunes played live over the years:
Disc 1
Track 101. Flying On The Ground Is Wrong [Dec 5, 1970 NYC] (6.9MB)
Track 102. There’s A World [Jan 21, 1971 Boston] (3.5MB)
Track 103. The Bridge [Feb 27, 1971 London] (5.2MB)
Track 104. Borrowed Tune [Jan 14, 1973 Buffalo] (5.7MB)
Track 105 .Soldier [Jan 21, 1973 NYC] (4.1MB)
Track 106. A Man Needs A Maid > Heart Of Gold [both Jan 22, 1971 Stratford] (8.4MB)
Track 107. Journey Thru The Past (3.9MB)
Track 108. Love In Mind [both Feb 23, 1971 London, BBC] (3.7MB)
Track 109. Sweet Joni [March 11, 1973 Bakersfield] (4.8MB)
Track 110. No One Seems To Know [March 5, 1976 Osaka, Japan] (3.8MB)
Track 111. Birds (3.3MB)
Track 112. Out Of My Mind [both May 26, 1978 early show San Francisco] (3.2MB)
Track 113. I Believe In You [March 28, 1970 Santa Monica] (4.4MB)
Track 114. Tonight’s The Night [Nov 17, 1992 Chicago] (6.9MB)

Disc 2
Track 201. Coastline [Jan 5, 1983 Santa Cruz] (5.1MB)
Track 202. Don’t Take Your Love Away From Me [March 22, 1985 Sydney] (5.4MB)
Track 203. Winterlong (5.6MB)
Track 204. Someday [both Dec 13, 1989 Rotterdam] (7.8MB)
Track 205. Helpless [April 28, 1989 Tokyo] (7.5MB)
Track 206. Campaigner [Feb 18, 1992 NYC] (6.0MB)
Track 207. Love Is A Rose (3.5MB)
Track 208. Are You Ready For The Country [both May 18, 1992 Cleveland] (3.4MB)
Track 209. Such A Woman [Sept 21, 1992 Los Angeles] (5.8MB)
Track 210. Speakin’ Out [Sept 22, 1992 Los Angeles] (4.6MB)
Track 211. Love Art Blues (4.3MB)
Track 212. Homefires [both Nov 22, 1992 Minneapolis] (3.8MB)
Track 213. After The Goldrush [Sept 5, 1989 NYC] (6.2MB)
http://bbchron.blogspot.com/2009/07/neil-young-piano-songs-1970-1992-live.html

Soldier, but it's not an option

I'll take this to be a poll on studio versions, & go with "Wrecking Ball" over "My Heart". Is this one area where he got better at pulling this off on record over time?

on that boarding house bootleg i posted on my blog a couple weeks back, neil makes fun of his piano songs. "oh, man they all sound the same."

I was going for officially released studio stuff yea, obv. missed a couple it seems.

whatevs, kind of an interesting list of songs. obviously neil goes to the piano and starts feelin all sensitive.

Yeah, I love all of these songs.

For me, "Love in Mind," then "Journey," then "Wrecking Ball." "Soldier" would be up there too. I almost think of "A Man Needs a Maid" as a piano ballad, if you can manage to block the LSO out of your mind.

I should mention that there are a number of songs from the second half of the list I don't know.

I wd probably rate Birds over anything on TFA, though Journey in the Past comes close...Wrecking Ball is pretty great, too.

plus Emmylou Harris covered Wrecking Ball--<3!

soldier

def. wouldn't have thought that "Soldier" would rate high here; I've always thought it's a low point on Decade, kinda tuneless for Neil.

"Here We Are In The Years" is def. one of Neil's best song titles (the song isn't up to its title, sadly).

If "Here We Are In The Years" fits, then I'd have also thought that "Harvest" fits, & I bet it would've received a bunch of votes.

The Bridge.
That one just destroys me. Especially in the context of the otherwise debaucherous Time Fades Away...

went looking for the Time Fades Away poll yesterday cause I swore there had been one but I guess not?

Time Fades Away is outstanding & if it's not top five Neil then it's very close for 6th

Is debaucherous good or bad? Time Fades Away is pretty great.

if there's no TFA poll someone should do one...

Was discussed some in this poll:

Neil Young's "Ditch Trilogy" Poll

Never voted in that...I'm really surprised Time Fades Away would fare so poorly. I would take it over On the Beach in a second, even though "Ambulance Fever" is my favourite song on either album.

"Love in Mind" over "Wrecking Ball."

I prefer "For the Turnstiles" and "Revolution Fever" myself...

actually, tbpf, I think "Journey" is a great song, but I think "Love in Mind" and "The Bridge" are two big reasons why TFA always comes off as the poor relation in the Ditch Trilogy, being that one of the outstanding features of the album is the sharp, personal, almost confessional nature of the lyrics, whereas the lyrics on those two tends more to the universal, and almost sentimental.

"Love in Mind" still has a great chorus though...

is ilx auto-changing the word "blues" to "fever"?

no i wz just poking fun @ clemenza

i apparently have a very dry sense of humor

haha, ok, i was confused for a sec

right on dude :D

I'm kind of surprised no one else is mentioning Birds though...I tend to think of the second side AtGR as better than the first.

oh yeah, birds is probably top 10 neil tunes for me. but i don't really think of it as a piano song? i don't know, i guess it is.

(hence why it's one of the greatest albums of all time)

(first side has Tell Me Why, which lords over 98% of all recorded music, but still...)

Is debaucherous good or bad?
good
(Tonite's the Night being the most debauched of them all.)

was gonna plump for my heart or a dream that can last, but its gotta be philadelphia.

borrowed tune for me. it's the first one i thought of as soon as i noticed the thread title.

no i wz just poking fun @ clemenza

Yikes! Can't believe I wrote "Ambulance Fever." There's a story there, a long one. Short version: coming out of high school, it was my goal in life to make a film about my high school years, and I was going to call it Ambulance Fever, in honour of Neil and alluding to another popular film of the period. I guess in my mind, my own title overtook Neil's somewhere along the way...

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

What happened to the "closing tomorrow" bump?

yeah! don't think i voted in this.