Album of the Week #30: "Live at Massey Hall" by Neil Young

John

The second instalment to be released in Young's Archive series has definitely hit the mark with me. Apparently it was supposed to have been the album between After the Gold Rush and Harvest but it got shelved until now. Better late than never. A crummy recording of this show has been circulating in bootleg land so it is nice to see it get an official and gorgeous sounding release.

Views?

DerekD Goldfish

Only heard it for the first time on sunday
I liked it
I will give a fuller review after 2 further listins

Andy-Pandy

I have had this on bootleg for quite a while now. I love it, great accustic versions of great songs. Will there be a video of the preformance, now that i would like. On neilyoung.com there is a nice little video intro, i'm not sure if its taken from a full video or if its just a promo for the album.

John

There's a DVD with the album but I haven't watched it yet. I think it's most of the concert (I think a couple of songs weren't filmed).

PiE

I aint heard this yet, thanks for reminding me.

John

Listening to this again today, I never noticed before but "Cowgirl in the Sand" on this CD sounds very, very similar to "Volcano" by Damien Rice.

dream brother

His guitaring on this album is out-of-this-world. Comparing to sloopy irish singer songwriters, Neil stands way ahead of them all!
On my way home and tell me why are prime examples of this!

John

My friend and I were talking about that, I have trouble playing some of his songs on my own let alone singing on top of them. His playing always sounds so effortless.

RE*AC*TOR

This is Neil Young at his peak. He was throwing out these songs at this point, kind of like Ryan Adams at the moment, except with Young the songs were for the most part instant classics.

This was Young probably at his happiest point in the early 70s. This was before his friends started dying from heroin overdoses, before the worst of the hassle with CSNY. He still had the kind of wide-eyed naive beauty to his writing.

He would never achieve this kind of raw beauty again. Tonight's the Night, Time Fades Away and On The Beach were distinctly darker (although the latter surely is his best album). Then he took a spin with the new crazy horse (without danny whitten) - who were never again on a level near Young (Danny Whitten was Young's best foil). Zuma, which I don't hugely rate was a clunky sounding record, and although it was an optimistic record, Young's tone had changed.

Anyway - this is an excellent live snapshot, miles better than the disspointingly short filmore east release. Still its not the equal of Dylan's Live at the Albert Hall release, but there's plenty more to come from Young, and having heard a lot of it in the bootleg collection I've amassed over the years - there are still better to come.

There's a great one that would equal Dylan's Albert Hall Record. It goes by Roxy Night or sometimes Tonight's Your Night. Basically, its on a UK tour, immediately after the release of Harvest. People were expecting that Neil Young (the Neil Young of the Massey Hall record). However, Neil had at this point entered his dark period, and instead he came out pissed on tequila, palm trees on the set, repeatedly welcoming everyone to Miami Beach. He played Tonight's the Night (the album) from beginning to end more or less - to an increasingly hostile audience. At the end, to boos, he said "ok here's a song you've heard before..." [Audience Cheers]. Young starts singing Tonight's the Night (the song) again.

Andy-Pandy

RE*AC*TOR wrote:

There's a great one that would equal Dylan's Albert Hall Record. It goes by Roxy Night or sometimes Tonight's Your Night. Basically, its on a UK tour, immediately after the release of Harvest. People were expecting that Neil Young (the Neil Young of the Massey Hall record). However, Neil had at this point entered his dark period, and instead he came out pissed on tequila, palm trees on the set, repeatedly welcoming everyone to Miami Beach. He played Tonight's the Night (the album) from beginning to end more or less - to an increasingly hostile audience. At the end, to boos, he said "ok here's a song you've heard before..." [Audience Cheers]. Young starts singing Tonight's the Night (the song) again.

Any idea where i could get a copy of this?

PiE

Andy-Pandy wrote:

Any idea where i could get a copy of this?

Seconded.

Got around to listening to Live at Massey Hall 3 or 4 days ago and it's been pretty much on repeat since then. Utterly brilliant.

lordgoat

Truly a masterpiece. A really wonderful record.