Page 29 - the NOISE September 2012

“A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.”
— Lester Bangs
Neil Young, Interview on Night Flight: “Why I Hate Celebrity Culture” INSET: Neil Young in 2011 at the Bridge School Benefit; not amused, with BC Premier Gordon Campbell.
RECESSION, WHAT RECESSION? OR
F*CK YOU, NEIL
Time for me to show my hand /Let them know just who I am /’cause I’ve been down and back again. –“So Tired”
My 7th grade buddy Kevin said: “I don’t know ... that guy’s voice is kind of funny and some of the songs are real slow and his guitar playing is ridiculous, but ... I just can’t stop listening to it, I don’t know why.” His older brother had passed down his record collection and I had raced over. Kevin put on side one of Decade
and it was all over for me.
Through decades of listening to music you
learn to separate the art from the artist. Lou Reed writes great songs, some of them heart- breakingly lovely, but he’s kind of an asshole. Johnny Ramone was a borderline Nazi right- wing jerk, but his guitar playing is the essence of rock and roll, at its core, a rebellious art form.
Music fans expect their idols to be the liv- ing embodiment of the persona in their songs. They end up disappointed that the creator of this beautiful thing could be as mean and petty and hypocritical and boring as the rest of us. As John Lennon once put it: “I gotta get up in the morning and have a sh*t just like ev- eryone.”
I have no illusions of who Neil Young may be as a person. He obviously cares deeply for his wife and family. Within his circle of friends, he’s probably a swell guy who’s fun to hang out with, hopefully less of a douchebag than most of his peers.
But I ain’t in that circle. My relationship to Neil Young is that of a fan and consumer. I pur- chase anything with his name on it. I’m not na- ive enough to expect every new record to be a masterpiece. From experience, I know there’s a good chance it may be fertilizer. I will buy it anyway.
Neil Young knows this, and I think at some point in the past he began to take his audi- ence for granted. Reprise could put out a CD of Neil gargling mouthwash or farting in the bathtub and it would sell at least as much as
Are You Passionate? but that doesn’t mean we won’t feel ripped off when we get home and play it. You can take advantage of your fans only so long before they turn on you, and that line is slowly climbing Neil’s hood ornament.
Let’s examine the Buffalo Springfield box set released in 2001. Apparently, Young was a huge pain in the ass to Atlantic Records (who were originally compiling it) until he was al- lowed to take over the project. None of his for- mer bandmates argued, having learned their lesson years ago.
For the most part, Neil’s version came out OK. The remastering sounds great, even on the demos and unreleased material. The handsome booklet enclosed has a detailed history, discography, gigography, and plenty of pictures and repros of articles. There’s some glaring typos, but not many. The unreleased- to-released ratio is decent.
The first problem is what’s missing. Part of Buffalo Springfield’s legacy is that none of their three studio albums captured the feroc- ity of their live shows. Oft-mentioned is the closing “Bluebird” jam where Stills and Young would go head-to-head, trading lead guitar lines with dazzling results. Sometimes “Blue- bird” would go on for over 30 minutes, with the audience still wanting more. But nothing ever made it to vinyl. The band’s live prowess only rested on word of mouth. Given a chance to rectify this, the box set comes up empty- handed.
According to the booklet, hours and hours of live Springfield tapes crudely recorded by fans were sifted through for possible inclu- sion, but all were deemed beyond salvaging. Thanks to the bootleg and file-sharing indus- tries, a handful of those recordings have sur- faced over the years. While the sound quality on some is horrible, several are quite good. Considering their age and scarcity, far from unlistenable.
And for once, the legacy isn’t a lie. Even on the worst-sounding bootlegs, it is clear that Springfield were a stompin’ first-rate live band. A few performances of “Bluebird” verge on transcendent, with the audience audibly freaking out over what they’re hearing.
Why would anyone involved with this
group NOT want to document this? True, even with digital scrubbing up the live recordings wouldn’t be on a par sonically with the studio material, but any fan plunking down cash for this set would be overjoyed at the inclusion of ANYTHING. Only an idiot would complain about the sound quality.
Speaking of “Bluebird,” also missing from the box is the 9 minute “studio jam” version, which attempts to recreate the Stills/Young guitar interplay of its live cousin. Unfortu- nately, relations between the two men were at a low ebb, and Young overdubbed his leads separately from Stills. The results aren’t magi- cal but they’re pretty damn good.
The alternate “Bluebird” was released on a 2-LP Buffalo Springfield collection in 1973. The album never made it to CD, but it stayed in print for years and affordable used copies can easily be found. Why isn’t this “Bluebird” on the box? It’s conspicuous in its absence, considering the track’s availability.
Another (possibly telling) omission is “Sell Out”, a fascinating Neil Young rumination on stardom. His Dylanesque wordplay (equal to
“Mr. Soul”) is nailed down by a singalong la-la- la chorus. It’s an astounding song, truly a lost classic. Why isn’t it on the box? When “Sell Out” eventually appeared on disc one of Archives, the la-la-la choruses had been crudely edited out, robbing the song of its hook. For God’s sake, WHY? It’s as if enough fans clamored for its release for Neil to say: “OK, here it is. But I don’t like this part anymore. *SNIP*”
Here’s the REAL issue with the Buffalo Springfield box, the one where Neil shows his hand. The first three discs are a chronological history of the band- 65 tracks total. Instead of the projected live material rounding out the set, disc four crams the first two Springfield LPs onto one CD. EVERY ONE of these 23 songs is already on the other three discs, the EXACT SAME VERSIONS. Without the live stuff to beef it up, the collection could have functioned as a 3-CD set. Disc four is disposable, it has no business being there. But what does the Buf- falo Springfield box retail at?
Sixty bucks. That’s $15 per CD, including the useless one of duplicate songs.
F*ck you, Neil.
The hype surrounding Neil Young’s Archives started around 1986 (it finally arrived 23 years later). It was originally titled Decade II and was slated for release in 1987, ten years after the original Decade. Unfortunately, Neil was at the height of his legal hassles with Geffen Records and the project was put on hold indefinitely.
Around this time, Graham Nash was com- piling material for a CSNY box set. Young ver- bally promised Nash access to whatever was in the vault, then reneged on this promise. The collection saw life in 1991 as a CSN box (no Y), with Young’s contributions limited to his already-released tracks. It was suggested that Neil was hoarding all of his best outtakes for the Archives.
In 1993, Geffen issued an odd CD entitled
Lucky Thirteen (Excursions Into Alien Territo- ry), a greatest hits etc. from Neil’s short time with the label. Several tunes were subheaded “from Reprise Records Neil Young Archives”, as well as “Archives Video Collection.” The CD booklet also tantalizingly included a list of 60 or 70 songs, about half unreleased and all from 1982 - 1987, presumably to be found on the upcoming Archives. This version obviously never materialized, and subsequent issues of Lucky Thirteen omitted any reference to it.
Young kept the Archives mythos alive and the hype kept growing. “I’m working on it” was his mantra for the next 15 years. Release dates were announced and postponed, announced and postponed.
In 2006 came a glimmer of light: Archives was on its way! For real this time, honestly. The first preview was Live At The Fillmore 1970, a well-recorded chronicle of the original Crazy Horse with Danny Whitten and Jack Nitzsche. The running time was a bit slim (just over 40 minutes, and no “Cinnamon Girl”?!?), but the cover bore a logo which said “NYAPS - Neil Young Archives Performance Series”. Well OK, there IS a logo ...
Next up in 2007 was Live At Massey Hall 1971, a solo set. The Archives release date was
pushed back again because Neil had just dis- covered Blu-Ray and was diving in with the same “gee whiz” approach he did in the 1980s with digital recording technology. Uh-oh.
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thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news magazine • SEPTEMBER 2012 • 29