Neil Young is encouraging people to watch the documentary, “Under The Influence,” which is about how “corporations have usurped democracy by using their vast wealth to influence politics and silence the citizen voice in government.”
And he’s made available his new song, “Who’s Gonna Stand Up?,” which was recorded live in Liverpool on in July of this year.
This is all good. However, I’m disappointed in Neil Young because he, like many others who claim to be environmentalists, ignores the biggest cause of climate change in the world, which is the eating of meat and animal secretions (such as milk) and the use of products made from animals.
It would be good for Neil to watch the new documentary, “Cowspiracy,” and then encourage his fans to watch it too.
And if Neil gave up eating meat, he’d set a good example and he’d feel a lot better too.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” There’s info about it here.]
On November 25, 1976, The Last Waltz, a celebration of The Band, was held at Winterland in San Francisco.
Below is alternative footage with sound of the entire concert — in three parts. Over four hours worth.
Check it out.
Part One:
1. Introduction / Up on Cripple Creek 0:00
2. Shape I’m In 5:55
3. It Makes No Difference 10:15
4. Life Is A Carnival 17:28
5. This Wheel’s On Fire 22:51
6. The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show 27:26
7. Georgia On My Mind 31:20
8. Ophelia 35:05
9. King Harvest (Has Surely Come) 39:18
10. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down 43:26
11. Stage Fright 48:16
12. Rag Mama Rag 53:23
13. Introduction / Who Do You Love (with Ronnie Hawkins) 57:26
14. Such A Night (with Dr. John) 1:02:45
15. Down South in New Orleans (with Dr. John) 1:07:58
16. Mystery Train (with Paul Butterfield) 1:13:23
17. Caledonia (with Muddy Waters) 1:18:27
18. Mannish Boy (with Muddy Waters) 1:26:20
Part Two:
1. All Our Past Times (with Eric Clapton) 0:00
2. Further On Up The Road (with Eric Clapton) 5:39
3. Helpless (with Neil Young) 11:52
4. Four Strong Winds (with Neil Young) 18:01
5. Coyote (with Joni Mitchell) 23:52
6. Shadows And Light (with Joni Mitchell)
7. Furry Sings The Blues (with Joni Mitchell)
8. Dry Your Eyes (with Neil Diamond)
9. Tura Lura Lural (with Van Morrison) 44:10
10. Caravan (with Van Morrison) 48:15
11. Acadian Driftwood (with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young) 54:07
12. Poem (Emmett Grogan) 1:01:18
13. Poem (Hell’s Angel Sweet William) 1:02:41
14. JOY! (Lenore Kandel) 1:06:14
15. Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Michael McClure) 1:07:36
16. Get Yer Cut Throat Off My Knife / Revolutionary Letter #4
17. Transgressing The Real (Robert Duncan) 1:10:26
18. Poem (Freewheelin Frank Reynolds)
19. The Lord’s Prayer (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
20. Genetic Method 1:14:15
21. Chest Fever 1:20:25
22. The Last Waltz Suite: Evangeline 1:25:45
Part Three:
1. The Weight 0:00
2. Baby Let Me Follow You Down (with Bob Dylan) 4:54
3. Hazel (with Bob Dylan) 8:07
4. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) (with Bob Dylan
5. Forever Young (with Bob Dylan) 16:54
6. Baby Let Me Follow You Down (Reprise) (with Bob Dylan) 22:35
7. Everyone Comes Onstage
8. I Shall Be Released (with Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr & Ron Wood) 29:05
9. Instrumental Jam 1 (The Band with friends)
10. Instrumental Jam 2 (The Band with friends)
11. Don’t Do It 1:04:40
12. Bill Graham Outro 1:11:55
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” There’s info about it here.]
Neil Young is recording an album that will include songs with “big band arrangements,” according to music contractor Gina Zimmitti, who is involved with the project, and who posted photos and wrote about the sessions on the Facebook page for her company, Gina Zimmitti Music Contracting.
Zimmitti wrote that at one session, the musicians played “awesomely loud big band arrangements.”
Young has used an orchestra in the past, most notably on the songs “Expecting to Fly” and “Broken Arrow” recorded with Jack Nitzsche that appeared on Buffalo Springfield Again, and on the Harvest tracks, “A Man Needs A Maid” and “There’s A World” which Nitzsche recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra in London.
Violinist Marc Sazer has participated in at least one of the recent sessions and wrote on his Twitter page, “Recording with @neilyoung, great to have a great choir live in the room with us!”
Neil Young project today. Arranger/ conductor Chris Walden. Contractor Gina Zimmitti pic.twitter.com/cAkkAEciRH
The album is titled Storytone, according to arranger/conductor Chris Walden, who posted that information on his web site, along with a release date of November 4, 2014, but has subsequently removed that info from his site and replaced it with “untitled” and “2014.” Of course Neil Young is known for changing things at the last minute, so it’s possible that the title and release date could change, or even that Young could decide not to release the album at all.
Walden, according to Wikipedia, is known “for writing big band and orchestral arrangements for recording artists such as Michael Bublé, Diana Krall, Jennifer Hudson, Paul Anka, and Christopher Cross. He has been an arranger for ‘American Idol’ since 2007 and has worked for producers like David Foster, Phil Ramone, and Tommy LiPuma.”
The possible album title, Storytone, apparently refers to a rare early electric piano that Young may be using on the album.
Rare 1939 Storytone piano.
On the Piedmont Piano Company website is info about the Storytone piano pictured above:
This is an extremely rare and historically important instrument. The Storytone piano was built in 1939 in a joint venture between Story & Clark and RCA – the piano has normal strings and action but no soundboard – the sound is amplified by pickups and a speaker system making it the world’s first practical electric piano. The sound is very beautiful considering its design during the infancy of amplified instruments. As you can see the design is striking – art deco at its most radical.
Sessions for the album have taken place at Sony Pictures Scoring Stage and at EastWest Studios, both in L.A., during the last two weeks of August. Young concluded a tour of Europe with Crazy Horse on August 8 of this year.
Niko Bolas, who has worked with Young on such albums as This Note’s for You, Freedom and Living With War, is producing, according to Gina Zimmitti.
On August 19, Zimmitti posted:
“We don’t feel cheesy calling this one a ‘precious moment,’ and posted this photo:
Zimmiti wrote about this photo: George Doering, Chris Walden, and Neil Young (L to R). First day recording Chris Walden’s fantastic arrangements for Neil Young. — with Chris Walden at Sony Pictures Scoring Stage.
On August 23, Zimmitti wrote:
“2nd day of recording with Neil Young and producer Niko Bolas – this time for some awesomely loud big band arrangements by Chris Walden composer-arranger ! — with Chris Walden at EastWest Studios.”
She also posted this photo on August 23:
On August 27, according to Zimmitti, Young and the orchestra were back in the studio for more days of recording, this time working with arranger Michael Bearden.
Bearden has worked many successful musicians including Madonna, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, Chaka Kahn, Patti Austin, James Ingrahm, Babyface, Lenny Kravitz, Yoko Ono, George Benson, Natalie Cole, Anita Baker, Edie Brickell, Nancy Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Liza Minelli and Michael Jackson.
Speaking to Billboard earlier this year, Young said, “I have new songs that I’m working on, and I haven’t stopped doing that. I do it when I feel like it and I’m collecting them. And sometimes I play them live before they come out as a record, and because of the way everything is people hear them before they come out, on the Internet. But I still feel like I’m gonna make records of them.”
One song that Young performed live numerous times this summer with Crazy Horse in Europe is called “Who’s Gonna Stand Up And Save The Earth?”
“I’d like to make a record with a full-blown orchestra, live – a mono recording with one mic,” Young told Billboard. I want to do something like that where we really record what happened, with one point of view and the musicians moved closer and farther away, the way it was done in the past. To me that’s a challenge and it’s a sound that’s unbelievable, and you can’t get it any other way. So I’m into doing that.”
However based on the photos, these sessions utilized numerous microphones. Oh well.
Some of Neil Young’s fans are skeptical regarding the project.
At Steve Hoffman Music Forums, a fan using the name “P(orF)” wrote, “It’s sad because I’ve been listening to him for 45 years, but my only reaction when I hear he’s doing a new recording is ‘What’s the gimmick this time?'”
And “Babyblue” added, “Yep, more and more Neil seems to be more about the gimmick than the actual music. I can see how this could happen to a veteran musician (especially a creative and eccentric one like Neil). It probably keeps things interesting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always produce good music.”
But there were fans who defended Young. “Six String” wrote, “I’ll wait until I hear the music before passing judgement. It’s only a gimmick if it doesn’t work…”
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. It’s over sometime September 2, so if you want to enter, now is the time. Click here and enter.]
Incredible version by Neil Young and Crazy Horse of “Cortez the Killer,” Barolo Square, Barolo, Italy, July 21, 2014.
Thanks, Thrasher, for reminding me about this clip.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Bob Dylan at the Fisher Auditorium at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, on April 22, 1997.
“I Shall Be Released”:
Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello, “I Shall Be Released,” Tramps, New York, NY, July 26, 1999:
Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, fragment:
Neil Young with some help from his friends, Bridge School Benefit, 1999:
The Band, Festival Express:
Jeff Buckley:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
Of just buy the damn thing:
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Neil Young and Crazy-Horse at Bergenhus Festning, Bergen, Norway, August 1, 2014.
“Heart Of Gold”:
Another view, excerpt:
“Tonight’s The Night,” excerpt:
Plus The Waterboys, “The Whole Of The Moon,” excerpt:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Great performance by Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen of Bob Dylan’s “All ALong The Watchtower” at the Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul, MN on October 5, 2004.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
After a couple of minutes of talking, Eddie Vedder and Cat Power sing “Tonight You Belong to Me” and then Vedder sings “The Needle and the Damage Done.”
This happened at this past weekend’s Super Bock Super Rock in Portugal.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Neil Young, early ’70s. Photo by Michael Goldberg.
This is a hot live version of “Down By The River” performed by Neil Young and Crazy Horse at the Boston Tea Party, Boston, MA
on March 1, 1970.
Fifteen minutes!!
Fourteen years later, on September 27, 1984 at the Quality Seal Amphitheatre at the World’s Fair, New Orleans, LA, before playing the song, Neil Young said:
I’d like to sing you a song about a guy who had a lot of trouble controlling himself. He let the dark side side come thru a little too bright.
One afternoon he took a little stroll down thru a field and thru a forest, ’til he could hear the water running along there. And he met his woman down there. And he told her she’d been cheatin’ on him one too many times. And he reached down in his pocket and he pulled a little revolver out. Said “honey I hate to do this but you pushed me too far”.
By the time he got back to town he knew he had to answer to somebody pretty quick. He went back to his house and he sat down on his front porch. About two hours later the sheriff’s car pulled up out front. It started sinkin’ in on him what he’d done. The sheriff walked up the sidewalk, he said “come with me son, I want to ask you a few questions”.
As he heard the jail door shut behind him he sat down on a little wooden bench. And he looked out of the door – thru those bars – at this kind of wimpy looking sheriff out there. He started getting mad again and he realized what he had done.
There wasn’t nothing he could do about it now though. He just sat down and put his head down and he started thinking to himself “I’m all by myself here, there’s nobody on my side…..”
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
