Live recordings drawn from six acoustic shows Neil Young did in late 1970 at the Celler Door in Washington DC will be released on CD and vinyl December 10, 2013.
The album, Live at the Cellar Door, contains a rare version of “Cinnamon Girl” performed on piano.” The shows took place from November 30 through December 2, 1970.
According to a press release from Warner Bros. Records, “The album, which features Young performing on acoustic guitar and piano, includes tracks that are interesting for several reasons, such as stunning live versions of songs that appeared on After The Gold Rush (“Tell Me Why,” “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” “Birds,” “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” and the title track) and solo performances of the Buffalo Springfield songs “Expecting To Fly” (from their 1967 second album Buffalo Springfield Again), “I Am A Child” (from their third and final album Last Time Around and Young’s 1977 Decade compilation), and “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong,” from their 1966 self-titled debut.
“In addition, Live At The Cellar Door features early, raw performances of songs that wouldn’t appear until subsequent Young albums, including the rarity “Bad Fog Of Loneliness” (which appears on Live At Massey Hall ’71 – released in 2007– but was previously unreleased until the studio band version was included on Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972) and “Old Man” (released two years later on 1972’s Harvest album). “Down By The River,” also from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, rounds out the spectacular set.”
The track-listing for Live At The Cellar Door:
Side One:
Tell Me Why
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
After The Gold Rush
Expecting To Fly
Bad Fog Of Loneliness
Old Man
Birds
Side Two:
Don’t Let It Bring You Down
See The Sky About To Rain
Cinnamon Girl
I Am A Child
Down By The River
Flying On The Ground Is Wrong
In early 1973 Neil Young went on 62-date tour following the huge success of his album, Harvest, with the hit single “Heart Of Gold.”
Young surprised his fans by performing many new songs, as well as more familiar ones. He recorded the tour and released an album of eight live songs which he called, Time Fades Away.
He later regretted that album and it’s never been released on CD.
For a nice essay on the album, go to Ultimate Classic Rock.
Hear the entire album now, 40 years after its original release on vinyl.
Got hipped to this terrific footage from Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s four-night run at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in March 1976. Young performs “Tell Me Why,” “Stringman” and “Human Highway” solo before doing “Down By the River” and “Cortez the Killer” with Crazy Horse.
Thanks to JamBase and Dangerous Minds who pointed me to this clip. Watch it now before it’s gone.
Very cool footage of Young performing “Out On The Weekend,” “Old Man” and “Journey Through The Past” at Shepherd’s Bush Studios, February 23, 1971. Interesting to watch this performance and then watch Young at last weekend’s Farm Aid where he also sang “Old Man.” You can check out that Farm Aid set here.
If you saw Neil Young’s Farm Aid performance today (Saturday Sept 21, 2013) at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, you saw a superstar lose his cool as he tried repeatedly to talk serious to the audience about the domination of farming by corporations, about the connection between factory farming and climate change and, finally, about the suicides of Kurt Cobain and Phil Ochs.
Young opened his 40-minute acoustic set with a spirited performance of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind.”
His set was dominated by cover versions, as if the recent release of Bob Dylan’s Another Self Portrait had inspired Young: Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” (included on the original Self Portrait), Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby” (played on upright piano), Tim Hardin’s “Reason To Believe (played on pump organ) and Phil Ochs’ “Changes.” Young interspersed just two intense performances of his original songs among the covers: “Old Man” and “Heart of Gold.”
“Early Morning Rain”:
“Old Man”:
“Heart Of Gold”:
“Since I Met You Baby”:
The music was great, but Young was intent on delivering a message beyond the music. “The Farmers are on the front line of climate change…,” Young told the audience. “All that carbon that’s up in the sky. And believe me, this has a lot to do with what’s going on with all these radical weather patterns we’re seeing. It’s real. All the carbon that’s up in the sky, it used to be down here. Used to be in the ground. Used to be in the soil. Used to be down here under the crops. And then Monsanto and all the big chemical companies nnd the industrialists, they came and made factory farms and replaced family farms and they brought in the chemicals, made it so [family farms] couldn’t grow without chemicals. And the farmer, the little guys, tried to get a loan from the bank and the bank said. ‘We’ll give you a loan but you have to use these chemicals, what we tell you to use, or we won’t give you a loan.’
“That’s the truth,” he continued. “That’s what we’re living right now. Those chemicals have made it so we’ve lost sometimes more than half our topsoil. And it didn’t just disappear; it’s up there. We need to bring it down to earth…”
Some of the audience weren’t buying it, and just wanted more music. Young became agitated, and started talking some more about climate change.
“Colorado could be coming down the highway towards Albany right now,” Young said, referring to the recent storm in Colorado that caused nearly $2 million in property damage. “If you don’t believe me, you’re in denial. Wait a couple of months. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it down in New Jersey. You saw it in New York, saw it in New Orleans, saw it up in Canada, saw it in Toronto, saw it in Calgary, in the Midwest. It just keeps moving around like a ghost. We got to stop it…”
He sat down at his pump organ, started to play “Reason To Believe,” but he just couldn’t do it. It was like he was compelled to keep talking about what he felt was the point of the Farm Aid benefit concerts. So he got up and said to the crowd, “I’m not done. I don’t care. Somebody’s got to say something. Somebody’s got to say something. Don’t you want freedom of choice. Wouldn’t you like to burn something clean instead of something dirty? I would. A lot of people don’t believe it. Oh we got to have big oil, he’s out of his mind. I may be out of my mind but we still don’t need it. We got farmers we got the earth we got the sun we got the land. Let’s give it a chance.”
What followed was a funeral slow rendition of the Tim Hardin classic.
“Reason Of Believe”:
And then Young was talking again. “Life is short folks,” he said. “We all know that. There’s no time like right now. I was talking back stage with Pete [Seeger] before he came out here and he told me a tale about this friend of his. We lost this friend a long time ago ‘cause life is short. He killed himself. And Pete talked to him a few days before that happened and Pete said, ‘I wish I’d done something more to stop that from happening.’ I said, ‘Well don’t worry about that, there’s nothing you can do about it. Because that kind of thing happens all the time.’ It happened to me. I had a friend [Cobain], who was a singer and he was great. And he reached out to me and I tried to get back to him through his office. I tried for days and days and finally I gave up. Couple of days later he blew his head off. So life is short and you can regret things…
And that’s when someone in the ground yelled out “Come on, let’s go,” and Young freaked.
“Come on let’s go?” he said. “Did I hear ‘come on lets go?’ I’m on my way buddy. I work for me. So you know I’m trying to make a little point here. But this guy that Pete knew, he was one of the greatest poets that ever lived. He wrote this next song that some of you have probably never heard and it’s long as hell. I don’t know what to tell you… One of the greatest songwriters that ever lived. Phil Ochs was his name…”
And then Young ended his set with a beautiful performance of Phil Ochs’ “Changes.”
Watch Saturday’s Live Aid performances, including Young’s entire set.
Last week it was Neil Young taking a stand against the proposed Keystone Pipeline, which if build would transport tar sands oil from Hardisty, Alberta, through Montana and South Dakota to Steele City, Nebraska, according to Wikipedia. President Barack Obama has been delaying his decision regarding the pipeline.
Young spoke at a press conference in Washington D.C. with Senators Harry Reid and Debbie Stabenow. “I am against the Keystone pipeline in a big way,” Young said. “The fact is, Fort McMurray [Alberta] looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native peoples are dying. People are sick. People are dying of cancer because of this. All of the First Nations peoples up there are threatened by this. Their food supply is wasted, their treaties are no good. They have the right to live on the land, like they always did, but there’s no land left that they can live on. All the animals are dying.”
Today a video featuring Robert Redford protesting the pipeline was released on You Tube:
“The Keystone XL and tar sands expansion have no place in a clean energy future,” Redford said in the video. “I can understand why oil companies love tar sands. There is a lot of money to be made by strip mining and drilling the dirtiest oil on the planet.
“The oil industry is lobbying hard for President Obama’s approval to let the Keystone XL pipeline cross our border and move a river of tar sands to the Gulf Coast, where much of it will be shipped overseas,” Redford continued. “But why should the rest of us pay the price so that the oil companies can line their pockets? Developing the Canadian tar sands is destroying our continent’s great northern forest at a terrifying rate. It is producing enough carbon pollution to wreak havoc with our climate for decades to come. And the pipelines that carry this dirty fuel are a direct threat to our nation’s own drinking water supplies. If you ask me, tar sands oil is exactly the type of dirty oil we can no longer afford. It may be great for oil companies, but it is killing our planet. There is no energy security in that. The saner choice is clean energy.”
Neil Young showed up at his wife Pegi’s gig at Johnny D’s, a 300-capacity club in Somerville, MA last night, Sept. 11, and played this rocking new song. No word on the official title, but the lyric “drive my car” is in the chorus. So for now it’s “Drive My Car.” Sounds pretty great.