Neil Young

Background

The album is Young's first solo record after releasing three albums with Buffalo Springfield. After their final breakup, Young hired Joni Mitchell's manager Elliot Roberts to also manage his career. Roberts continued to serve as Young's manager until his passing in 2019. Roberts organized Young's first solo tour of coffeehouses and negotiated a record contract for Young with Reprise Records, a division of Warner.

The album also marks Young's first collaboration with record producer David Briggs. Young met Briggs in Topanga Canyon, then a nexus of music talent, while Briggs was living in Stephen Stills' old house. They met one day when Briggs offered Young a ride, and they quickly became friends. David Briggs would go on to produce the vast majority of Young's albums until his death in 1995.

Songs

According to Young in his memoir Waging Heavy Peace, the songs on the album represent a variety of different themes. Some of the songs had been recently written, while others dated back to his time with Buffalo Springfield: "The songs were gathered from the past and the future, mostly dreams, nothing concrete; they were mostly created as vehicles for record-making, like 'Here We Are in the Years,' or personal expression and longing, such as 'I’ve Been Waiting for You.' Some of them were stream-of-consciousness, like 'The Last Trip to Tulsa,' with no preconceived thought behind them. They were just songs. There was no big pressure on me at that time to top anything I had already done. That came later. The sky was the limit. I had no idea what was coming my way."

"The Emperor of Wyoming" and "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill" are both instrumentals. Young recorded many such instrumentals during his time with Buffalo Springfield. One such instrumental, "Falcon Lake (Ash on the Floor)" would be reworked into "Here We Are in the Years". "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill" is a string quartet performance of an instrumental Young had previously recorded during his time with the band. He would later incorporate the song into the "Country Girl Suite" on CSNY's Déjà Vu. Young would also revisit the melody of "The Emperor of Wyoming" during his mid-1980s country era, recording the song with lyrics as "Leaving the Top 40 Behind". Musicians on "The Emperor of Wyoming" were Neil Young – guitar; Jim Messina – bass; George Grantham – drums; Also – strings. It was Recorded at Wally Heider Recording Studios, Hollywood, on August 23, 1968, with production by David Briggs and Neil Young. "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill" was recorded at Sunset Sound, Hollywood, on October 17, 1968, with an unknown string quartet. It was produced by Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder, and Neil Young.

"The Loner" was released as a single. The guitar driven rock song employs D modal tuning, which Young learned alongside Stephen Stills, who used it on "Bluebird". Stills would later cover the song on his 1976 album Illegal Stills. The track's guitar sound presages Young's work on his next album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Young acknowledges this in a 1973 radio interview: "On my first album, I like "The Loner." I felt like I was getting into something different there, starting to." At the March 7, 1970 Fillmore concert with CSNY, Young remembers reading one early review of the song that wrote "this snappy little item should send Young rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of the Buffalo Springfield," which pleased Young and boosted his confidence in his solo career. The musicians on the track were Neil Young – guitar, pipe organ, vocal; Jim Messina – bass; and George Grantham – drums. It was recorded at TTG Recording Studios, Los Angeles, on September 28, 1968, with production by David Briggs & Neil Young.

Recording

The bulk of the album's songs were recorded at various Los Angeles studios with David Briggs between August and October 1968. Songs "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" and "Birds" were also attempted during the sessions. Studios included Wally Heider Studios, TTG Studios and Sunset Sound Recorders. The organ on "I've Been Waiting for You" was recorded at a church in Glendale where Young would also later record organ for "Country Girl" on Déjà Vu.

Young recorded much of the album through overdubbing of individual instruments, a process he has largely rejected since, preferring live performances of all instruments at once. In an April 1970 interview with Elliot Blinder for Rolling Stone, he explains the difficulty of such a record-making method, and his satisfaction with the result in the case of "I've Been Waiting for You": "All those things were played at different days, every instrument. On that cut, isn't it incredible? You see that's how it can work, every once in a while. Because when I put on the lead guitar I was really into it that day, you know, and all the moods I was in at all the times that I put those things on. See, what I do is, in the beginning, we put down acoustic guitar and bass and drums, that's the smallest track that I ever did, one guitar, bass and drums. And then the acoustic guitar had a bad sound and the bass wasn't playin' the right notes and was a little out of tune, so we did both of these over again; so then we have only one original thing that I'd done before and Jimmy Messina, who played the bass on it, played the bass part over, and then he made up a different bass part so we took off the first one completely and played a whole new one. And then we dropped the acoustic guitar, 'cause it didn't fit with the other things that I put on, so then there was nothing left except for the drums. The pipe organ was put on.... Part of these things were done in different cities. The vocal was done at a different studio. It does stick together though. It's very rare. It'd take you a long time to get a whole album of records like that, it's just not easy to do. I was satisfied with what I'd done, as much as I could be. But then when the mastering job came out on it, it blew my mind, because I couldn't hear what I'd done. But now it's been remastered and you can almost hear it. It was badly mixed."

"The Loner" was the first track produced by Briggs.

In the Decade liner notes, Young states that the track features "Jim Messina on bass. George Grantham on drums. I overdubbed the rest except the strings." The string arrangement is by David Blumberg. In the biography Shakey, Briggs states that "the unique guitar tone on both "The Loner" and "I've Been Waiting For You" was achieved by "putting Neil’s guitar through an organ Leslie, not even through an amp, just the Leslie into the board"

Release history

The first release of the album used the Haeco-CSG encoding system. This technology was intended to make stereo records compatible with mono record players, but had the unfortunate side effect of degrading the sound. Young was unhappy with the first release. "The first mix was awful", he was reported as saying in Cash Box of September 6, 1969. "I was trying to bury my voice, because I didn't like the way it sounded".

The album was therefore partially remixed and re-released without Haeco-CSG processing. Most of the songs from the original album were re-released as-is, only without the Haeco-CSG processing. Only three were remixed, which were replaced on the master tapes: "If I Could Have Her Tonight", "Here We Are in the Years", and "What Did You Do to My Life?". The words "Neil Young" were added to the top of the album cover after what was left of the original stock had been used up, so copies of both mixes exist in the original sleeve. Copies of the original mix on vinyl are now rare and much sought after by Neil Young fans who believe that the remix diminished the songs, especially "Here We Are in the Years". Young has made both mixes available for streaming on his Archives website.

Neil Young was remastered and released on HDCD-encoded compact discs and digital download on July 14, 2009, as part of the Neil Young Archives Original Release Series. It was released on audiophile vinyl in December 2009, both individually and as part of a box-set of Neil's first four LPs available via his official website. This box set was limited to 1000 copies. The remaster was also released on CD, individually and as Disc 1 of a 4-CD box set Official Release Series Discs 1-4, released in the US in 2009 and Europe in 2012. High resolution digital files of both the CSG and non-CSG albums are available to subscribers on the Neil Young Archives website.

Promotion

Young promoted the album through solo acoustic appearances at coffee houses and folk venues in New York, Ann Arbor, Ottawa and Toronto. In late October 1968, he appeared nightly for a full week supporting Joni Mitchell at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village. In November, he played three dates at the Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In late January and early February 1969, he played a week's worth of shows at Le Hibou Coffee House in Ottawa followed by a week at the Riverboat Coffee House in Toronto. Young would memorialize this time in the lyrics of "Ambulance Blues" on On the Beach. Compilations of his performances at the Canterbury House and the Riverboat would be released as Sugar Mountain – Live at Canterbury House 1968 in 2008 and Live at the Riverboat 1969 in 2009, respectively, as part of his Archives series.

In February 1969, Young would begin touring with Crazy Horse, with whom he began recording his follow up album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in January.

"The Loner" was released as a single, with the non-album track "Sugar Mountain" as the B-side. "Sugar Mountain" was recorded live at the Canterbury House.

Reception

Rolling Stone wrote "in many ways, a delightful reprise of that Springfield sound done a new way". In its retrospective review, AllMusic described it as "an uneven, low-key introduction to Young's solo career".

Track listing

All songs written by Neil Young, except "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill", written by Jack Nitzsche.

Track timings are from the original 1969 vinyl release, catalogue number RS 6317.

Personnel

Neil Young – vocals, guitars, piano, synthesizer, harpsichord, pipe organ, production

Ry Cooder – guitar, production

Jack Nitzsche – electric piano, arrangements, production

Jim Messina, Carol Kaye – bass

George Grantham, Earl Palmer – drums

Merry Clayton, Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Gloria Richetta Jones, Sherlie Matthews, Gracia Nitzsche – backing vocals

Unidentified – trumpet, trombone, tenor saxophone, French horn, clarinet, timpani, strings

Production

David Briggs – production

Dale Batchelor, Donn Landee, Mark Richardson, Henry Saskowski – engineering

Rik Pekkonen – arrangements, engineering

Danny Kelly – photography

Ed Thrasher – album art direction

Roland Diehl – cover painting