Posts Tagged ‘CSNY’

Neil Young’s 1973, Part I: Lonely Weekend, Last Dance, the Tonight’s the Night Acetate (& More)

Posted: April 24, 2018 in 1970s, 1973, CSNY, Neil Young
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I woke this morning to find an email from Neil Young (actually, Warner Brothers) in my inbox encouraging me to download Neil’s latest archival release, Roxy – Tonight’s the Night Live. The set, for those unaware, captures Neil and the Santa Monica Flyers in performance at the now-legendary Roxy Theatre in L.A. in 1973. They were the first band to play in the hallowed hall, though this set isn’t entirely the first show – it features material recorded from September 20th through the 23rd.

It’s a remarkable set, well worth the purchase (though it can be streamed over at the Neil Young Archives for free at the moment).

Of course, I like to contemplate, cogitate and ruminate before offering a review. So I thought, instead, I’d reach into my own digital archives while I give the set a few more listens. Back in the day (aka the late ‘90s to mid-‘00s), I should explain for newcomers, I oversaw a website also called The Old Grey Cat. The original aim was to create an online encyclopedia of my and Diane’s favorites – and we each had sections and features on many artists, and even – via live365.com, which at the time offered dirt-cheap plans – a radio show, of sorts. But the primarily focus of the endeavor quickly became my “Unofficial Neil Young Pages,” which delved into the world of bootleg CDs.

So, without further adieu, here’s a group review of three bootlegs that capture Neil in performance back in 1973 that I wrote in 1997. (Wow. Where did the time go?) The images are circa ’97, too. (As I note in my Da Boot flashback, Neil Young: The Best of the Unofficial Canon, I never listen to bootlegs nowadays.)

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Lonely Weekend: On the Way Home, Tell Me Why, L.A., Journey Through the Past, Borrowed Tune, Out on the Weekend, Harvest, Old Man, Heart of Gold, Lonely Weekend, New Mama, Alabama, Last Dance, Don’t Be Denied, Cinnamon Girl, Lookout Joe, Southern Man

Last Dance: Cripple Creek Ferry, Here We Are In the Years, L.A., Soldier, Out on the Weekend, Old Man, Heart of Gold, The Loner, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Time Fades Away, New Mama, Alabama, Don’t Be Denied, Cinnamon Girl, Lookout Joe, Southern Man, Last Dance, Are You Ready for the Country?

Broken Arrow: (BBC Sessions:) Out on the Weekend, Old Man, Journey Through the Past, Heart of Gold, Don’t Let Me Bring You Down, A Man Needs a Maid, Love in Mind, Dance, Dance, Dance (Tonight’s the Night acetate:) Tonight’s the Night, Mellow My Mind, Roll Another Number, Tired Eyes, Speakin’ Out, Walk On, For the Turnstiles, Bad Fog of Loneliness, New Mama, Winterlong, Borrowed Tune, Traces

Rock ‘n’ Roll Can Never Die: Tonight’s the Night, Mellow My Mind, World on a String, Speakin’ Out, Albuquerque, New Mama, Roll Another Number, Tired Eyes, Tonight’s the Night, Flying on the Ground Is Wrong, Human Highway, Helpless, Don’t Be Denied

In retrospect, 1973 may well be one of the most important years in Neil’s artistic development. Following Danny Whitten’s overdose death in November ’72, which occurred after Neil sent him home from rehearsals for the upcoming tour, a shaken Neil regrouped with The Stray Gators, and launched a three-month tour that was deemed ramshackle by the rock press and many fans enchanted with the mega-hit Harvest LP. The sets were generally short – 75 minutes or so – and the songs themselves were unkempt, fraying at the edges. By tour’s end, with Neil’s voice by then ravaged, David Crosby and Graham Nash flew in to provide assistance – the result of which can be heard on the live album which resulted from that tour, Time Fades Away. Neil has always characterized that album as an “honest” album – it documented “where he was at” at the time. It also contains stark, powerful songs that speak universal truths about the human condition. They’re plaintive, raw, the kind of material that isn’t readily accessible. Time Fades Away itself is part of the three-album arc that includes Tonight’s the Night and On the Beach, and is an important chapter in Neil’s evolution. That it hasn’t been released on CD as yet is a shame.

Lonely Weekend and Last Dance document two nights from what became the “Time Fades Away” tour. Six days separate Neil’s maiden Maple Leaf Garden concert in Toronto (1/15/73) and the appearance at New York’s Carnegie Hall, on Jan. 21st in 1973. Lonely Weekend‘s set-list includes “Journey Through the Past” coupled with “Borrowed Tune,” and an electric set that rocks: “Alabama,” “Last Dance,” “Don’t Be Denied,” “Cinnamon Girl,” “Lookout Joe” and “Southern Man” cap the night in fine form. Last Dance continues the pace unabated, adding in such live rarities as “Cripple Creek Ferry,” “Here We Are in the Years” and “Soldier.” The not-so-rare “The Loner” is another treat; Neil and the Stray Gators’ “cook,” to use an aged expression.

Both boots suffer the same relative flaw, however – they’re audience tapes and, as a result, the sonics are a bit flat. That said, they’re actually above average as far as audience tapes go and more than listenable. One’s no better than the other, but neither is worse, either.

1973 didn’t end with those shows, of course. By early summer he’d regrouped with CSN to record an album tentatively named Human Highway. The project collapsed soon thereafter due to ego conflicts (for a hint of what might have been, check out Winterland Reunion) and by August Neil was back working with the surviving members of Crazy Horse and Nils Lofgren, who sat in on guitar. Remember, too, that Bruce Berry (a CSNY roadie) died that year from smack. When Neil and the guys gathered at the recording studio, they’d drink tequila until the mood was right – and then stare into the abyss.

Or something to that effect. The acetate for the Tonight’s the Night Neil originally planned to release – but shelved instead – has come to light in recent years. Mine is titled Broken Arrow (not to be confused with the 1996 studio album of the same name) and comes coupled with an acoustic BBC performance from 1971. The first thing to understand is that it’s not the same album as the Tonight’s the Night released in 1975. Check out the lineup for starters: “Tonight’s the Night,” “Mellow My Mind,” “Roll Another Number,” “Tired Eyes,” “Speakin’ Out,” “Walk On,” “For the Turnstiles,” “Bad Fog of Loneliness,” “New Mama,” “Winterlong,” “Borrowed Tune” and “Traces.” It’s interesting, not necessarily weaker than the released version’s but – to me -nowhere near as intense. Maybe it’s the lack of “Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown” and the second “Tonight’s the Night,” the fact that the second half of this set, save for “Borrowed Tune,” isn’t really connected to the tragedies of 1973 per se. They’re good songs, don’t get me wrong, and Neil and the band do bring them all justice – “Bad Fog” and “Winterlong” both chug along rather nicely in the arrangements here, and “Traces” is one of the best unreleased tracks in Neil’s arsenal. At the same time, the songs also steal from the overall impact of the album’s overt theme concerning willful and not so willful self-destruction.

As a CD recording of an 25-year-old acetate (a vinyl test-pressing), there’s plenty of pops, crackles and hiss here. In other words, the sound isn’t very good. Of the three CDs reviewed here, it’s the one I’d least recommend to casual or new fans but the one I’d first suggest to fanatics.

Following that recording session, Neil did what he seems to do on a frequent basis: He hit the road. But if the concerts in the early part of the year were deemed “ramshackle,” these shows were–well, damned weird. “Welcome to Miami Beach,” he’d proclaim between songs. The songs, of course, were from the – at the time – unreleased Tonight’s the Night. As Rock ‘n’ Roll Can Never Die, which documents the November 3rd Manchester, England show, shows, he’d launch into the new material with…controlled abandon. It’s interesting to listen to; for one, unlike the acetate, the song cycle is much more in tune with the official product, with only “Borrowed Tune,” “C’mon Baby Let’s Go Downtown,” and “Lookout Joe” missing, and the other songs, while presented in a slightly different order, having the impact that acetate does not. The show also lays doubt to Neil’s alleged lack of coherence. Listened to from a distance of 24 years, and minus the visuals, he sounds in full control of both his faculties and his art–even when he’s heckled from the audience! “It’s great to be a rock ‘n’ roll star,” he says leading up to an intense rendition of “Don’t Be Denied.”

Don’t be denied, indeed. All four: A.

[More on Rock ‘n’ Roll Can Never Die can be found on Neil Young: The Best of the Unofficial Canon.]

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And one more, also from ’73 – my take on the aforementioned Winterland Reunion.

The songs: Helplessly Hoping, Wooden Ships, Blackbird, As I Come of Age, Roll Another Number, Human Highway, New Mama, So It Goes, Prison Song, Long Time Gone, Change Partners (bonus:) Down by the River

1973: It was a bad year, a sad year, a year for the history books. “The pall of the Watergate is upon us,” reflected Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmum in an address to the American Bar Association that August. So true. America, it seemed, was fraying at the seams. Not only was there the Watergate matter, but there was an economic crisis, an energy crisis–and, to bring the crises closer to home, an aborted CSNY reunion.

The foursome had come together on Maui in Hawaii, recording a bevy of songs (“Human Highway,” “Pardon My Heart,” “And So It Goes,” “Prison Song” and “Homeward Through the Haze,” among others) before … yep. The same-old, same-old ego-conflicts arose. “It would have been the best album we ever made,” Crosby told writer Johnny Rogan.

Winterland Reunion, then, is a hint of what could have been. On October 4th, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young convened on stage following a Manassas concert. What a show! On the surface, the all-acoustic performance is a ragged affair, but the undertow is strong enough to pull you in. “There’s no preparation. You’re getting it as it comes,” explains Nash before Stills launches  into the night’s closing song, “Change Partners.”

In short: What a show!

One highlight is Neil’s “Human Highway,” during which he and Stephen trade off verses. Other highlights: “Wooden Ships,” “Blackbird,” “As I Come of Age”…uh, wait. Let’s do it another way: See the track listing up above? Those are the highlights! Really. Soundwise, this is superb, with its only drawback being inexplicable one- or two-second drop-outs during a few of the songs.

The electric “Down by the River” – from The Music Scene in 1969–is another revelation, yet another example of the foursome at the peak of their powers. (A)

David Crosby, circa 1999

Posted: August 5, 2014 in 1990s, 1999, CSNY, Da Boot, David Crosby
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Da Boot collage

On February 13, 1999, I interviewed David Crosby for the second time.

The first, in August 1997, had occurred over the phone and was for my old website, also called The Old Grey Cat, and focused almost exclusively on the formation of his band CPR, which he’d recently formed with guitarist extraordinaire Jeff Pevar and his son James Raymond.

This time, though, the talk took place face to face, in Atlantic City, where Crosby was headlining at one of the casinos with partners Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. What I remember most: He prowled the room like a caged lion, pacing, pacing, pacing.

We talked for, maybe, 30 minutes, covering everything from his group CPR to CSNY, which was in the process of recording the Looking Forward album, and the hot topic du jour, President Clinton’s impeachment. The interview became the cover story for Da Boot, a fanzine I was involved with at the time; and it was eventually featured on my website, of course.

Me: With CPR, you’ve developed a more jazz-oriented sound.

DC: That was sort of there inherently from the beginning because both Peev and James are that level of players. They play very complex chords quite naturally. They aren’t really interested in playing ordinary stuff. Since I quite naturally go there vocally and we quite naturally build harmonies like that… there’s a certain element of more modern kinds of music in there. There’s some Crosby, Stills & Nash in there, too, just because there’s me in there.

Me: So CPR’s an ongoing unit?

DC: Absolutely. Actually, as much fun as I have with CSN and CSNY, I probably have even more fun with CPR. It’s a very, very special chemistry. Music isn’t about building blocks. It’s not like you get a pound of drummer and a pound of bass player and a pound of guitar player and mix and stir. It’s about chemistry. Real ones happen rarely. Out of 2000 bands that try in 2000 garages, one of them will have a real chemistry. And this one has it. If I could find a third band to do it I’d be in three bands. There’s no such thing as too much good music. That doesn’t exist.

Me: Speaking of great music, you’ve been in the studio with CSNY. How did that come together?

DC: I’m not sure why Neil’s doing what he’s doing. You’d have to ask Neil. But I’ll tell you how it works from my perspective. He walked in, had a Gretsch guitar. We played him a song. He liked it. He said, “Let me play on that.” We said fine. “Can I sing on it, too?” We said, of course. The guy plays and sings great. So we played him the next song. He said, “I like that. Can I play on that?” Eight songs later, I said, “what’s going on here?” He said, “It’s as plain as the nose on your face, Croz.”

Me: Were they songs CSN had already recorded that he came in and overdubbed or did the four of you record together as an ensemble in the studio?

DC: Both.

Me: I know you guys re-recorded “Turn, Turn, Turn” and some of your older songs…

DC: They’re not getting in. No, it’s going to be all new stuff. We have more new stuff than we can fit onto one album, already. The way it stands right now, we’ll do a 40-city tour starting in July.

Me: Speaking of Neil, on your last CPR tour, you guys did “Ohio.” What led you to do “Ohio” as opposed to any number of other Neil songs or any of your songs?

DC: That’s very close to my heart. I was there when he wrote it and the incident that inspired it is very large in my head. Here you have American students who were killed for doing something that they have a Constitutional right to do, which is the right of assembly, the right of free speech. They were killed for it. Murdered. None of the Guardsmen who were photographed shooting them ever did any time; they weren’t even taken to court. That justice does not sit well with me. I don’t want people to forget about it. [Nixon and his people] thought they were above the law. That’s why they did Watergate. They assumed they could get away with it. They assumed they could get away with shooting students and they assumed they could get away with bombing countries. That’s the nature of power. It corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Me: What’s your take on the Clinton impeachment?

DC: It’s the silliest bunch of shit I ever saw. In the first place, lying. Of course he lied – he’s a politician. “Politician” means “liar.” If you look up lying in the dictionary, there’s a picture of a politician underneath it. All politicians lie all the time. It’s their stock in trade. So for them to get all head-up and snooty and say “he lied” – they all lie, every day. That’s what they do.

Now the rest of it…for a guy who’s a Rhodes Scholar to be so fucking stupid that he can’t keep it zipped, it’s a fucking joke. Whoever’s handling him, whoever’s trying to keep him going…I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Washington, man, but they have girls there that look good enough to take home to mom who can suck a golf ball through a garden hose – and keep their lips zipped. There’s no reason he had to be messing around with [Monica Lewinsky]. It should have been, “Bill, third door on your left, you got 32 minutes.” If the guy’s desperate for it then take care of him.

Don’t fuck up our economy and our country, which happens to be working great. And the people made it as clear as a fucking bell. Everybody in the whole country said, “Excuse me, we don’t care! We don’t give a fuck who blew him. We like it that the jobless rate is down and…” They wrote it in fiery letters on the wall: Quit fucking up. We want the country to work. And it is. Admittedly that’s more Alan Greenspan than it is the President, but the President’s team is the ones who’ve got it working good. The Republicans are the people who gave you the Savings & Loan scandal. “Hey, let’s let a few people skim off the top 20 percent of the money in the country and then have us pay for it.”

Me: Talk about your low-interest loans…

DC: It’s a fucking joke, man. I’m met Clinton several times and I like him. He’s not a bad guy. He’s a charming guy and he’s very bright. He just doesn’t know how to keep his pants zipped.

Me: Will the CSNY album be out before the tour?

DC: Yeah. We’ll be in the studio everyday we’re not on the road for another month or so finishing it. We’re already starting to mix some tunes. It’s, uh, it’s going to be an amazing record. Neil came with all acoustic stuff. So there’ll be a definite quotient of acoustic music on it. I’ve got one basically acoustic and percussion kind of song, a very fast Latin thing called “Dream for Him.”

Me: You had that on the last CPR live album, Live at the Wiltern.

DC: We did it and it’s really good. Then they’ll be a couple where we all sat down and just got the track together. Nash has a couple of the strongest songs I remember him ever having. He has one called “Heartland” that just slays me. I can’t get it out of my head. And, of course, “Half Your Angels” which we’ve been doing for a long time.

Me: You seem to be undergoing almost a creative renaissance.

DC: Yeah. I think it has to do with my near brush with death and then the birth of my child and finding James. I used to write three things in a year that I really liked. This year I’ve written 13. I’ve got five pieces of lyrics in my bags that I haven’t even gotten the music to yet. And more come all the time.

Me: It’s almost as if you’re at that place where the muses are coming through you.

DC: I’m scared to say it but, yeah. I don’t know, but maybe the thing’s out there to be tapped all the time, but your own bullshit gets in the way. Before I was either too stoned or then I was too sick or then I was too scared…but lately all I am is pretty happy almost all the time. I wake up in the morning and here’s this little boy who’s 3 who loves me. And, uh, that’s pretty good shit, man, I haven’t found anything better. My wife and I have been together for 21 years now and we still love each other. I’m in two of the best bands in the world. I mean, how bad could it be?

CSNY 1974

Posted: July 19, 2014 in CSNY
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Most mornings, I fall out of bed by 5:30 or 6am, down a cup of coffee (or two) and then I’m out the door and on my way to work. It’s a scene played out everyday in most households, I’m sure, as is what follows: the endless commute. Traffic slows to a stop-and-go crawl, and what should be a zippy 30-minute ride dissolves into an hour-plus drive. And most days, come 5:30 or 6pm, when I’m out the door of my workplace, the journey home takes longer.

It’s when I do most of my music listening.

What struck me the other day, during one such commute: the sound quality of the archival CSNY 1974 release. It’s phenomenal. The songs leap from the speakers as if from the stage to the front row.

As far as the set itself…if you like CSNY you’ll find much in it to enjoy. If you don’t, you won’t. The performances are ragged, uneven and magical, often in the same song – and especially during Stephen Stills’ songs. His voice often sounds shot. His prowess on guitar, however, does not. He and Neil exchange some otherworldly exchanges. Witness: