Wednesday 15th November

There is something special about just the few individuals who are true artists and geniuses.  Even when Neil is depressed he creates superb music.  After the initial flush of success in the very early Seventies, it seems that Neil wanted to turn his back on fame and maybe fortune too.  He could have, I am sure, carried on creating beautiful replicas of ‘After The GoldRush’ and ‘Harvest’.  Or he could have continued sharing the credits and the applause in CSN.  But instead he produced a string of ‘downer’ albums.

‘Time Fades Away’ is an album of live cuts of unreleased songs recorded in 1972 and released a year later.  The mood is very different.  No longer hopeful, lyrical and gentle, but almost angry.  It seems almost like he was doing a ‘Dylan’ and telling his audience to look elsewhere for a hero.  In 1974 he released ‘On The Beach’, a desolate album of bluesy mostly acoustic tracks; in fact, three of the tracks are called …Blues’.  The cover shows Neil, his back to the camera looking out to the sea, with a half-buried Cadillac in the foreground.  And washed up seems to sum the mood of the album.  A year later and he released ‘Tonight’s the Night’, maybe his bleakest record to date.  It was recorded in 1973 before ‘On The Beach’ but the record company refused to release it until Neil finally won.  It sounds as if Neil and his session players were locked late at night and drunk in the studio and were bewailing the life they were leading.  In fact, they were grieving for Danny Whitten, guitarist of Crazy horse and a roadie Bruce Berry, both overdosing recently.

In 75 Neil released Zuma, another brilliant album featuring one of his best songs ‘Cortez the Killer’, which would go on to be a live favourite.  H teamed up again with Stephen Stills for his next album, the much gentler ‘Long May You Run’.  1977 saw one of his best records ‘American Stars and Bars’ the cover portraying the pun perfectly.  By now Neil seemed completely back on form, great melodies and great singing and playing.  Favourite songs – ‘Saddle Up The Palomino’ and ‘Like a Hurricane’.  A welcome return followed by ‘Comes A Time’ which was gentler, more like Goldrush or Harvest, a lovely collection of songs.  And Neil finished the decade with another collaboration with Cray Horse ‘Rust never Sleeps’ which has the stark feel of a live album overdubbed in the studio, it is full of classic Neil Young songs.  ‘Hawks and Doves’ completed the Seventies.  Another majestic album and quite country sounding. Neil was back on form and selling lots of albums again.  He had also released a retrospective double album in 1977 which featured several unreleased songs he had discarded along the way.

But as always with Neil, things weren’t likely to stand still.  The Eighties beckoned, and like many artists from the Sixties and early Seventies, Neil would find the new decade challenging – to say the least.