New/Old LP reviews:
Neil Young – Homegrown
(Reprise/Warners, 2020)

Normally when legendary artists (and/or their record companies) decide to unveil long-lost, never-before-released albums from decades past, caution is strongly advised, but, there are of course exceptions. Hearing John Coltrane or Jimi Hendrix pootling about for instance will pretty much never cease to be rewarding, however much the attempts to scrape more monetary value from their legacies may grate, and, though many (most) may disagree, I’d personally extend the same indulgence to Neil Young’s work up to the end of the 1970s.

Or, such was my justification earlier this year for blind pre-ordering this forty-five year old major label LP with a singularly unappealing illustration of a hippie eating a corncob on the cover, at any rate. In contextualising that decision however, we should make clear from the outset that, for Young’s fans, ‘Homegrown’ is far from just another iffy rehash of some nixed studio sessions or somesuch.

In fact, the legend goes that this completed LP was all ready to go back in 1975 – sequenced, mastered, cover art signed off etc – and was indeed being prepped for great things by Reprise, touted around the industry as Young’s ‘return from the wilderness’ after a lengthy spell of what then seemed like self-sabotaging, contrarian craziness - the natural successor to his multi-million selling, star-making ‘Harvest’ a few years earlier.

In typically perverse Youngian fashion however, Neil took the decision to withdraw ‘Homegrown’ from release just before it hit the pressing plants, not because the material was in any way sub-par, the story goes, but because it was in fact too commercial for his liking, instead instructing the suits to put out ‘Tonight’s The Night’, a set of recordings which had been kicking around for a few years at this point, considered too ragged, edgy and inebriated for a general release.

Actually, the truth is a bit more complicated than that… which is where things start to get interesting. In his definitive Young biog ‘Shakey’, Jimmy McDonough frames the story as follows (p.469):

“After some mixing was completed, [producer] Elliot Mazer headed off for England, where he played a tape of the album for the head of Chrysalis Records, who then told Mo Ostin he was sure they had another five-million seller. But then a funny thing happened. Young changed his mind.

Blame it on that blurry evening at the Chateau Marmont, where Young had played ‘Homegrown’ back to back with ‘Tonight’s the Night’ for a bunch of stoned musicians including Rick Danko. “At which point Rick the Prick said, ‘Go with the raw one,’” said Mazer, who was devastated when Young decided to jettison ‘Homegrown’ in favour of ‘Tonight’s the Night’.

There was another factor involved in the decision. Young had pulled back from the emotional nakedness of ‘Homegrown’. “It was a little too personal… it scared me,” Young told Cameron Crowe a short time later. “I’ve never released any of those. And I probably never will. I think I’d be too embarrassed to put them out. They’re a little too real.”

(I’m unsure whether or not I’ve mentioned it previously on this blog incidentally, but I recommend McDonough’s Neil Young book so highly that I’d advise you to read it even if you have zero interest in the life and work of Neil Young. Quite possibly the best book on music I’ve ever read, it’s such a fucking masterpiece of the biographical form that the incidental picture of the entertainment industry and the lifestyles of musicians in America during the 60s, 70s and 80s it paints along the way is worth the entry price alone.)

Anyway - the rest is history. ‘Tonight’s The Night’ was initially met with consternation and disappointment, but has since been widely hailed as a staggering work of genius. ‘Harvest’, with it’s easy-going country-rock sound and flat, rather muted production, meanwhile continues to divide hardcore fans, but I still think it’s an equally fine piece of work. And now, nearly half a century down the track, you’d better believe I was happy to sign up blind to grab myself a piece of the alleged ‘successor’ LP which skirts both of these great works, as well as sitting in close temporal/emotional proximity to two more of Young’s flat-out masterpieces (‘On The Beach’ and ‘Zuma’).

Indeed, on its first few dozen spins, ‘Homegrown’ seems to hold more value as a priceless historical artefact for Young-o-philes than it does for its surface level musical merit, making the Chrysalis guy’s talk of a “five million seller” seem pretty mystifying. (Possibly he was high? Just a thought.)

Anyway, it’s certainly no instant mindblower, that’s for sure, lacking as it does either the raw force of an ‘Everybody Knows..’ or ‘On The Beach’, or the indelible melodic grace of ‘Harvest’ or ‘After The Goldrush’, but… there’s a lot going on beneath the surface here.

Many of the recordings included on the album feel fragile, disjointed, or out-of-place, which lends a transient, inscrutable quality to the record as a whole. Something about it gets under your skin.

It’s a haunter, in other words - or at least, that’s my first impression. And, like any haunting, only by digging deeper, getting further stuck into the context surrounding it, can we really start to get to the bottom of things. So let’s do that. Strap yourselves in safely readers - I’m afraid this might go on a while.

Though ‘Homegrown’ ultimately has little in common with ‘Harvest’, there is nonetheless some kind of conscious connection between the two records.

Beyond just the homey, rustic artwork from Tom Wilkes (who also did the earlier album) and the single-agriculture-related-word-beginning-with-‘H’ title, ‘Homegrown’s opening cut ‘Separate Ways’ begins – in what surely must be a deliberate gesture – with an almost exact recreation of Harvest opener ‘Out on the Weekend’s forlorn, hang-dog shuffle.

This time however, the vibe is dark and foreboding, rather than merelt disconsolate and bored, as the rhythm section of Tim Mulligan and Levon Helm (no less) beat out a leaden, muddy trudge. Instead of Neil’s brash harmonica, the cripplingly beautiful melody on the intro is picked out on Ben Keith’s inimitable pedal steel, sounding, in McDonough’s words, like “..one of the loneliest sounds ever recorded”.

Despite this sonic nod to our hero’s albatross of a big-hit-album three years earlier, the feel this record is actually communicating couldn’t be more different. As ‘Homegrown’s hypothetical 1975 listeners would quote possibly have realised before even dropping the needle, had they taken the time to grok the song titles and noted album’s on-the-nose back cover dedication (“For Carrie”), we know we’re going to be hitting some choppy waters here.

The true connection between ‘Harvest’ and ‘Homegrown’ in fact is not one of continuation, but of opposition. Between them, they mark out the beginning and end of the relationship which bookended the most creatively vital period of Young’s life, essentially representing a kind of yin and yang of their creator’s treacherous emotional demonology.

Taken as a whole, I tend to think that Neil Young’s ‘70s output can be best understood as a kind of ‘innocence to experience’ tale, framed not only around the darkening, increasingly chemical hue of America’s ‘me decade’, wherein the ideals of the hippie era died a lingering, drawn-out death, but also deeply intertwined with the turbulence in Young’s own life, and in particular the changes wrought upon his personality by his tempestuous relationship with the actress Carrie Snodgrass, the bitter fallout from which eventually allowed his song-writing to attain the wider, more nuanced vision evident in his best work during the second half of the decade.

Written around the time that the two first met, the songs on ‘Harvest’ – bright and disarmingly melodic yet crippled by self-doubt, naïvely searching for love and acceptance – defines the ‘innocence’ part of our story almost too well. Therein, Neil “fell in love with the actress”; she was “playing a part that [he] could understand”. A few years of more-or-less hell later, ‘Homegrown’ hits the same relationship on the exit ramp, pieced together when things were at their very rawest, following the couple’s mutually devastating separation.

Shortly after completing these recordings, Young would hook up with the rejuvenated Crazy Horse in Malibu, and, in between getting blasted to their heart’s content on all the indulgences mid-70s Malibu had to offer, they recorded what came to be seen as the ‘official’ break-up album, the all-time catharsis-through-rock classic that is ‘Zuma’. Time time after that, he’d rake the ghost of his failed relationship over the coals yet again, finally regaining the steely-eyed, nihilistic persona (last glimpsed on ‘On The Beach’ in ‘73) which characterises the ‘experience’ part of our story, as he laid down the exceptional set of the acoustic demos belatedly released under the name Hitchhiker (those ‘H’s again) in 2017; an album which finds him sounding decades older, and centuries wiser, than the kid who recorded ‘Harvest’ just a few short years earlier.

Back to ‘Homegrown’ though, what we essentially have here is the previously invisible hinge upon which Thee Story of Neil Young in The 1970s pivots; the exact centre-point of the drama, left on the cutting room floor until now, cos it was just too much, man.

That’s not to say however that ‘Homegrown’ really plays as a ragin’, hang-wringing break-up album. Though some of the lyrics may be rife with uncomfortably personal detail, at the same time it often feels as if these songs were laid down before their writer’s feelings have really been allowed to sink in and coalesce.

As with such deconstructed masterpieces as Big Star’s ‘Third / Sister Lovers’ and Skip Spence’s ‘Oar’, heartbreak stalks around the edges of these songs, pain warping them from within. It’s as if the poor guy hadn’t even realised the extent to which he’d been fucked up by it all yet, but as always, the music knows.

III.

Straight out of the gate on Side # 1, ‘Separate Ways’ and ‘Try’ both at least attempt to give us the straight dope, sounding slurred and emotionally drained, even as their lyrics chase some white horse of reconciliation over the hazy horizon.

The inspired instrumental interplay between Young, Keith, Helm and Mulligan on the former song lends it a touch of that ineffable sublimity that defines the best of Young’s singer/songwriter-orientated output, whilst the latter - framed as a soggy, exhausted country waltz – pushes coherence way out on a limb, but just about keeps it together thanks to some interesting lyrical digressions, and crisp backing vocals from Emmylou Harris.

According to McDonough, some of ‘Try’s lyrics, including its stand-out “..shit Mary, I can’t dance” bit, incorporate phrases coined by Snodgrass’s mother, who passed away at almost the exact same moment her daughter’s relationship with Young imploded. Assuming there’s any truth in that, it’s certainly easy to see why Neil thought it better to keep this stuff out of the public eye for a while.

Equally personal, albeit in a slightly more obtuse fashion is ‘Mexico’, a brief (one minute forty) fragment of piano balladry, full of eerie, unresolved phrases left hanging in the air, recalling ‘Harvest’-era songs like ‘There’s a World’ or ‘Love in Mind’. Part of a seemingly endless series of numbers which find Young attempting to escape his troubles by taking imaginary trips to remote locales or other historical periods, this not-quite-song feels like musical thinking-out-loud, but it’s a testament to the strength of Young’s creativity during this era that even his half-finished ruminations remain eerily spell-binding.

In more concrete terms, ‘Mexico’ is also one of a number of songs on ‘Homegrown’ which touch uneasily on their writer’s recent experience of fatherhood, the spectre of his perceived failure to keep his new family together hanging heavy, as domestic responsibilities impinge upon the freedom he might otherwise have enjoyed as a newly single, itinerant rock star. (“Daddy is a travellin’ man..”, the song concludes uncertainly, as the final, ominous notes drift off into the ether.)

Skipping over ‘Love is a Rose’, a robust ol’ coffee-shop folk belter which can’t help but sound a bit out of place here (SO 1962, man), we arrive at ‘Homegrown’s title track, an incongruously light-hearted freak-rock shuffle which, though it ain’t exactly gonna blow anyone mind, is still far more palatable than the version which appeared on the ‘American Stars N’ Bars’ album a few years later.

On that album, it sounded like a smug hippie campfire sing-along that got way out of hand, but here, shorn of the more familiar version’s obnoxious backing vocals, it scrubs up pretty well, strummed/picked in a kinda interesting manner by Neil on a fuzzed out electric and Ben Keith on lap steel, backed up by a supremely groovy, light touch beat from drummer Karl T. Himmel. Suggesting a slightly more nuanced sentiment than the “heh heh, he’s singing about weed” vibe encouraged by the ‘..Stars and Bars’ recording, the song provides some welcome respite from the heavier themes explored elsewhere on this record… which is much needed, given that things get pretty far-out as we head toward the end of side # 1, to say the least.

Oddly reminiscent of some stoned out ‘skit’ track from a ‘90s hip-hop album, ‘Florida’ finds Young and Keith (who seems to have been acting as the star’s primary right-hand-man / emotional crutch at this point) conjuring eerie droning sounds from what the album credits tell us are “wine glasses and piano strings”, whilst muttering distractedly about a potential visit to the sunshine state (“palm trees n’ shit, y’know..”). Things take a darker turn however when Neil begins recounting what is evidently the memory of a dream, which concludes with his retrieving a baby whose parents have been killed in a freak hang-gliding accident. (Those following the underlying psychodrama may wish to note that the audio cuts out just as he begins describing a woman approaching him, claiming the child as her own.)

All of which effectively serves as an intro to what is possibly ‘Homegrown’s most remarkable moment, the inexplicably named ‘Kansas’, another fragmentary, close-miced solo vignette, accompanied this time by soft-strummed, tentative acoustic.

Distantly echoing the privileged masculine self-loathing of the oft-misunderstood ‘A Man Needs a Maid’, but recasting it in more oneiric, transitory territory, this one finds Neil waking up from a bad dream, next to a girl (but not THE girl?), whose name he is unable to recollect; “guess you’re the one I’m talking to this morning / with your mind so kind and your friendly body lying / in my bungalow of stucco / that the glory and success bought..”.

The cynicism of the lyric here is belied by the almost surreal, beach-at-dawn airiness conjured by Young’s minimal musical setting. It’s as if he’s settled into this identity as a self-pitying, profligate rock star only momentarily before he drifts off again into the breeze over the ocean, ready to take shape again in some other place and time.

The preceding skit, with its talk of lethal hang-gliding accidents, adds a sinister undertow to the song’s insistence (during the closest thing it manages to a chorus) that “we can go gliding, through the air, far from the tears you’ve cried..” – a strange sentiment indeed for the pot-smoking, alpha male millionaire to express toward a sleeping beach-house groupie, and far from a reassuring one, with the sickly-sweet pull of New Age guru-dom (and ‘Revolution Blues’) still lurking just a few miles back on the cultural highway. (I’m also reminded that Dennis Hopper’s character in ‘The Last Movie’ was named Kansas, but am probably just thinking about all this a bit too hard.) 

Dialling back the intensity somewhat, Side # 2 opens with ‘We Don’t Smoke It No More’, five minutes of heavy-lidded, last-gasp-before-unconscious 12 bar jamming which could have been pulled straight from the infamously debauched ‘Tonight’s The Night’ sessions. Sounding largely improvised, the lyrics could potentially be poking barbed fun at ‘70s rock stars’ favourite game of publically declaring themselves free of all those BAD drugs, whilst quietly sneaking to the bathroom to hoover up this week’s designated GOOD drugs, which prevent them from crumpling to the floor like weeping, incontinent man-children (a frequent pass-time of Young’s erstwhile cohorts in CS&N, incidentally).

There’s ragged magic here for the faithful, but more casual listeners might feel more inclined to prescribe a mug of cocoa and good night’s sleep to the players before they deign to hit ‘record’ again… a sentiment which could apply to this album as a whole in fact, excepting perhaps the following ‘White Line’, which sounds positively sprightly in comparison.

Augmented by some tasteful acoustic lead licks from Levon’s arch-nemesis Robbie Robertson, this recording – taped in London of all places, on one of the days surrounding CSN&Y’s disastrous 1974 Wembley Stadium concert – hits a real sweet spot that all Neil freaks should be able to appreciate, drawing a shaky (natch) throughline between the disarming melodicism of his early ‘70s work and the more weathered, emotionally nuanced balladry of the ‘Hitchhiker’/‘Rust Never Sleeps’ era.

After that though, it’s back to the gnarled, bonged out grunge with ‘Vacancy’, a sinister nightmare of frazzled, end-of-relationship paranoia (“I look in your eyes, and I don’t know who’s there”) which sounds like CCR suddenly losing the will to live mid-recording session, the double meaning if its title summoning visions of anonymous motel break-downs, even as it prefigures the harder, riff-based rock sound of ‘Zuma’.

Clearly giving voice to the side of Young’s personality which saw fit to knock it on the head with Carrie in no uncertain terms, ‘Vacancy’ is a murky, dispiriting rock song in spite of some great lead guitar work in the second half, revealing a disturbing edge when viewed through the prism of this album’s ongoing emotional narrative – all the more-so once it segues into the beguiling, gossamer psychedelia of ‘Little Wing’. 

This is another strange, fragmentary song which, echoing the ghosts of ‘After The Goldrush’s ‘Birds’, invites us to envision some kind of spectral, hippie goddess, who “comes to town when the children sing / leaves them feathers when they fall”.

A thing of extraordinary beauty, it’s an example of the way Young’s compositions, at their best, can completely disarm the listener’s critical faculties, allowing words which we might write off as cliché in the hands of other writers to fall like pollen over the shell of his hesitant chording, creating a song which sounds as if it could have existed for a thousand years, lost in the aether, until this sleepy, Kermit-voiced stoner tuned into just the right frequency and dragged it back down to terra firma.

Much the same can be said for ‘Star of Bethlehem’, an unsettlingly ambiguous ol’ time country tune which was subsequently revisited on ‘American Stars N’ Bars’. Lent greater significance here as it closes out one of its writer’s most personal LPs, the song’s declaration that, “your friends and your lovers won’t protect you / they’re all just passing through you in the end” chills the blood, whilst its gnomic conclusion forces us to consider the possibility that some coded message is being conveyed solely to the ears of particular listener here, as the casually irreligious Young brings matters to a close by musing that, “maybe the Star of Bethlehem wasn’t a star at all?”

So thin, troubled and wracked by unprocessed emotion are the recordings on ‘Homegrown’ that to try to conclude by placing it somewhere within the context of Young’s more familiar ‘70s catalogue, let alone offering an opinion as to whether you should or should not buy it, seems almost brutishly insensitive.

Cobbled together from what feels like a state of mind at the very edge of continued functionality, lost somewhere in the slipstream between waking and dream, many of these tracks feel more like automatic writing than conscious attempts at commercial songwriting, marking out a space in which stanzas fade away unresolved and voices sink into whispers, even as each scrape of finger against string or shuffle on the studio chair is painstakingly reproduced in cutting edge stereo.

For Young’s fans, this is a vital, fascinating and - yes - haunting glimpse into the mind of one of the 20th century’s greatest musical talents, captured at the exact moment his life hit a cataclysmic crossroads. For anyone else though, caution is advised – it’s all too easy to see why he thought better of putting this stuff in the public domain for over four decades. God knows, it might take us four more to really get the drop on it.

Labels: album reviews, comps & reissues, Neil Young, old LPs