Young at Heart 08 – Neil Young first album!

yaniv2974 hours ago

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Hello again! It’s Sunday, so time for another Sunday Sessions! And this time it’s the 8th installment of another long-running series – the Neil Young series, Young at Heart!

Young at Heart #08 focuses on Neil Young’s self-titled debut album, released in November 1968 – on his 23rd birthday, as it happens. If we’re being honest, at the time Neil hadn’t quite found his style – this was pre-Crazy Horse. Instead he teamed up with producer Jack Nitzsche, who filled this record with lush orchestral arrangements very much of their time, influenced by psychedelia. So this is early Neil looking for his style, not quite finding it yet, but his songwriting is already phenomenal. This is a strange, beautiful record – even if occasionally overproduced – that doesn’t sound like anything else in Young’s catalog. The Neil Young most people know, the one with Crazy Horse and the distorted guitar and the raw live feel, hadn’t quite arrived yet – this is the moment before.

On to the songs. “The Loner“ is the one track from this album that crossed over into lasting classic status – released as a single and often played live through the years. It’s a fuzzed-out, driving rock song, darker and more electric than anything else on the record, and it points directly toward Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. A classic tune and a great chart across all instruments.

The two remaining songs are both special to me for different reasons.

“If I Could Have Her Tonight“ is the lighter, more psychedelic side of the album – dreamy folk-pop with touches of the Beach Boys. The reason it’s special to me: as I was attending my first ever Neil Young concert, in Leeds in 2016, Neil played this song for the first time since 1968 – first time in 48 years. So I got to witness the comeback of this song, which has only been played 8 times in total since, and it’s a huge rarity I feel lucky to have seen.

“Here We Are in the Years“ is honestly one of my favorite songs. It’s the album’s most quietly affecting moment – a song about escaping the city for something slower and more pastoral, written by a 23-year-old with the weariness of someone much older. It has four different verses, each with a different melody and chord progression, none of them a clear chorus or hook – but they’re all so beautiful, and somehow it works and it’s probably a top 10 Neil song for me. I can’t believe it took me so long to chart it.

Also out (and overdue for a mention): Young at Heart #07 – Archives Pack!

Installment #07 came out a while back without a proper writeup, as RGW was down at the time, so let’s fix that. It’s an archives-focused three-pack drawing from two very different corners of Young’s career.

“Kansas“ and “Hawaii“ both come from the Point Dume sessions of 1975 – the same sessions that produced Zuma, recorded at David Briggs’ house in Malibu with the re-formed Crazy Horse (now including Frank Sampedro). Both songs also exist in acoustic versions on other unreleased albums – “Hawaii” on Hitchhiker and “Kansas” on Homegrown – but the full-band electric Crazy Horse versions here were left off Zuma and somehow ended up unreleased in either format until the Archives series. They’re loud, loose, and sloppy in exactly the right way.

“Interstate“ is a different kind of lost song. It comes from the 1984-85 International Harvesters tour – Young’s ornery, defiant deep dive into country music during a period when his label Geffen was actively trying to stop him from making country records. While the Old Ways record got mixed reviews, the tour was really great. The Harvesters were a full country band of seasoned veterans, and “Interstate” was one of the tour’s signature unreleased tracks, often described as one of Young’s most desolate lost songs. In 2011 Neil released a live album from those shows, A Treasure – but even that didn’t include “Interstate,” for whatever reason. It finally appeared on Archives Vol. III.