Neil Young song draft

[chancellor]

So I guess you haven't heard Are You Passionate or Storytone.

Storytone was the other one I'd have competing for the bottom. Are You Passionate got ripped pretty badly, but I just don't consider it anywhere near as bad as the other two. What really galled me about Long May You Run is that it sure seems like Neil just mailed it in on that most or all of that album.

[Erik]

Storytone was the other one I'd have competing for the bottom. Are You Passionate got ripped pretty badly, but I just don't consider it anywhere near as bad as the other two. What really galled me about Long May You Run is that it sure seems like Neil just mailed it in on that most or all of that album.

I wouldn't argue "all" but I can see the case for "most." No one was thinking clearly during those sessions -- I presume you've heard the story about how they fucked Crosby and Nash over?

AYP has no reason to exist and Storytone is a massive failure of execution. I don't think LMYR fits either of those descriptions.

[chancellor]

I wouldn't argue "all" but I can see the case for "most." No one was thinking clearly during those sessions -- I presume you've heard the story about how they fucked Crosby and Nash over?

Given Crosby's arrogance, pigheadedness, and general difficulty to work with, I'd have said "rightfully excluded"

[Erik]

64. Days That Used to Be (Ragged Glory, 1990; written and first performed in 1988)
Days That Used to Be is one of the few songs on Ragged Glory that would sound at home on almost any of Neil's albums. It's a folk-rock song amidst a sea of garage rock. Written in 1988 on the same boat trip that produced Sixty to Zero (which evolved into Crime in the City) and another tune I'll get to later, this one finds Neil in wistful mode, pondering the human costs of his dogged pursuit of his musical vision and navigation of the industry that made him famous. Its early performance history is a testament to its versatility; it debuted with the Bluenotes, then appeared in the acoustic sets of some of his early 1989 shows with The Restless (the Bluenotes without the horns), then was heard in the warmup shows for what would become known as the Weld tour, as well as in some of the early shows on that tour, including the one I saw (2/5/91 in Philly). Then it remained dormant until the 2014 Crazy Horse tour, a testament to the breadth of material Neil has to draw from.

[Erik]

Given Crosby's arrogance, pigheadedness, and general difficulty to work with, I'd have said "rightfully excluded"

I'm sure there was some of that, as Crosby was deep into his coke addiction by then.

Stills and Young began recording the duo album, then decided to turn it into a CSNY album and asked Crosby and Nash to come down to Miami. They did, interrupting sessions for their own duo album (which would become their third, Whistling Down the Wire). C&N added harmonies to what S&Y had already done, and recorded a few of their songs, including "Taken at All," which showed up on the CSN box set in 1991 and is about Nash's reservations over whether a reunion could work. But Crosby was not a prolific writer and was short on material, so S&Y sent C&N away so Crosby could write another song or two for the quartet album. While they were gone, S&Y (probably during another coke binge) decided they wanted to go back to the duo album idea, so they wiped C&N's vocals from their songs and told C&N not to come back. C&N were furious but ended up working together again with Stills the following year because money. C&N ended up including a duo version of "Taken at All" on Whistling Down the Wire.

[Erik]

I forgot to include Landing on Water in the discussion of worst Neil albums. Talk about a project where no one seemed to care.

[Erik]

63. New Mama (Tonight's the Night, 1975; written and first performed in 1973)
This is the one ray of hope on Neil's bleakest album. This brief, gorgeous tune appears to be about the birth of his oldest son, but Neil grouped it with songs he wrote around the same time about death and societal decay for the original 1973 version of Tonight's the Night (though it debuted earlier, first seeing live performance on the early 1973 tour that produced Time Fades Away). Neil also brought it to CSNY reunion rehearsals, which likely led to Stephen Stills covering it on one of his solo albums. The final line, "I'm livin' in a dreamland", takes on an entirely different context when surrounded by the other TTN songs, indicating this bliss isn't going to last.

[Erik]

62. Wrecking Ball (Freedom, 1989)
The last four tracks of Freedom is one of the best four-song sequences on a Neil album -- and the four songs, all of which will appear here, could not possibly be any more different from one another. If that doesn't speak to Neil's massive talents, I don't know what does.
One of Neil's best piano ballads -- it puts that one on Harvest to shame -- this is a lovely meditation on being loved despite all your flaws. "My life's an open book, you read it on the radio," indeed. Bonus points for a fantastic cover by Emmylou Harris.

[Erik]

61. Shots (Re*ac*tor, 1981; written and first performed in 1978)
Re*ac*tor is loud and noisy like many Neil albums, but much more staccato and repetitive. We learned many years later that this was on purpose, reflecting the training Neil and his wife had to do with their son who was born with severe cerebral palsy. This track is where the approach works best. It sounds like machine guns are firing, in tune with the lyrical theme. Neil didn't tour between 1978 and 1982, so this album wasn't promoted much and this song's genius went mostly unnoticed.
You'd think the song was always meant to sound that way, but it debuted in 1978 as an acoustic tune, on the same tour from which Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust were taken. That was a hell of a batch of songs.

[Erik]

60. Scenery (Mirror Ball, 1995)
Cortez the Killer is such an influential song that it has been used as a template by numerous bands. So we can't blame Neil for doing that himself. This, the final and best track of his collaboration with Pearl Jam, is the best example of Neil repurposing CtK into something that kicks ass on its own. That his voice becomes wobblier as the song's narrator gets angrier is a great touch.

[Erik]

Update on how my rankings compare with Rolling Stone's from 2014. They appear to agree more with Gregg than Chance re Long May You Run.

100. Lookout Joe (RS unranked)
99. Ramada Inn (RS #47)
98. Look Out for My Love (RS #55)
97. Get Back to the Country (RS unranked)
96. Homefires (RS unranked)
95. This Old Guitar (RS unranked)
94. Slip Away (RS #86)
93. This Note's for You (RS #42)
92. Mansion on the Hill (RS unranked)
91. Grey Riders (RS unranked)
90. Motion Pictures (for Carrie) (RS unranked)
89. Downtown (RS unranked)
88. White Line (RS unranked)
87. Ride My Llama (RS unranked)
86. Windward Passage (RS unranked)
85. Albuquerque (RS #39)
84. Everybody's Alone (RS unranked)
83. I've Been Waiting for You (RS unranked)
82. Winterlong (RS #45)
81. Sail Away (RS unranked)
80. When You Dance I Can Really Love (RS #83)
79. Lotta Love (RS unranked)
78. I Believe in You (RS unranked)
77. Through My Sails (RS unranked)
76. LA (RS #74)
75. Goin' Back (RS unranked)
74. Crime in the City (Sixty to Zero) (RS #82)
73. From Hank to Hendrix (RS #20)
72. Drive Back (RS #76)
71. World on a String (RS #65)
70. Sea of Madness (RS unranked)
69. Razor Love (RS #60)
68. On the Way Home (RS #46)
67. Long May You Run (RS #32)
66. Like an Inca (RS unranked)
65. Interstate (RS unranked)
64. Days That Used to Be (RS unranked)
63. New Mama (RS unranked)
62. Wrecking Ball (RS unranked)
61. Shots (RS unranked)
60. Scenery (RS unranked)

[Erik]

59. Live to Ride (unreleased; written and performed in 1993)
This song, about Neil's motorcycle, was the talk of his 1993 tour with Booker T and the MGs. The squalls he makes on his guitar about halfway through are glorious. But it didn't fit in thematically with Neil's next record, Sleeps with Angels, and then he forgot about it. At the very least, he should have returned to it when he finally got around to recording with the MGs for the mostly forgettable Are You Passionate?
This is the first appearance of a song I actually took in our Neil draft.

[Erik]

58. Prisoners of Rock 'n' Roll (Life, 1987)
This massively underrated Crazy Horse stomper really should have been saved for Ragged Glory. It's the exact same stuff. Instead, it's the one song on the previous CH collaboration (his final release for Geffen) that's not marred by questionable production decisions.
Everyone just does their thing, and Neil's lyrics are in fact about musicians needing the freedom to do their thing -- which he did not get during his time at Geffen.
It's even better live, and I was fortunate to witness it in 2003, where it was sandwiched among songs from side 2 of Rust Never Sleeps and fit right in.

[Erik]

57. Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown (Tonight's the Night, 1975; written in 1969 or 1970; first performed in 1970)
Including this may be cheating because it's more associated with Crazy Horse's Danny Whitten than Neil, but Neil co-wrote it and included it on Tonight's the Night, so that's good enough for me.
Whitten's death from heroin overdose was one of the events that sent Neil into an emotional spiral, during which he wrote most of the songs that ended up on Tonight's the Night. When his label finally decided to release TTN, a few songs were added to its tracklist, including this one, in which we hear in Whitten's own voice the gory details of being a heroin addict, set in a blazing live performance from Neil's 1970 tour with Crazy Horse, when the Whitten-era version of the band was at its peak. A studio version of the song (labeled only as "Downtown") appears on Crazy Horse's 1970 self-titled album without Neil -- a brilliant record that drives home the magnitude of what we lost when Whitten died.
Bonus points for a brief appearance in Phish setlists 20 years ago.

[Erik]

56. Too Far Gone (Freedom, 1989; written and first performed in 1976)
When I first heard Freedom in 1989 and got to this song, I thought "Damn, this is just as good as any country-rock song Neil came up with in the '70s." Turns out that's because he DID come up with it in the '70s, debuting it in the acoustic sets of his 1976 Japanese tour with Crazy Horse.
Why did he sit on this for so long? It would certainly have improved American Stars N Bars, Comes a Time, Old Ways, etc. Again, only Neil knows.
Given what we now know, it appears this was written as a way for Neil to express that he was beginning to come out of the torment and substance abuse that he went through in the mid 70s as a result of the end of a relationship and other things. The answer to "Can we really live our lives that way?" is a firm "no."