Thirty years after shelving Chrome Dreams, Neil Young has taken to his official Web site to announce plans to release a new album entitled Chrome Dreams II. The forthcoming album — which was previewed for Reprise Records last week and is due October 22nd — contains ten songs, three of which were previously written. Two of the tracks are epics, clocking in at 18:30 and 13:00. Young’s current backing band on the record includes Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, bassist Rick Rosas and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith. The Blue Note Horns are on one track and a children’s choir is on another. Young will launch a North American tour to support the album that kicks off around October 13th. After the original Chrome Dreams was put aside, many of the songs appeared on subsequent Young albums, such as “Like a Hurricane,” “Powderfinger,” “Sedan Delivery” and “Pocahontas.” What does this mean for the twenty-years-in-the-making Archives: Volume 1 box set, due out February 14th, 2008? “This doesn’t push the box set back, according to [Neil Young’s manager] Elliott Roberts,” a spokesperson for Young says. “But don’t make me sign a blood oath on that one.”
[Photo: Agostini/Getty]
10 posts tagged “neil young”
Still reeling from the majesty that was Neil Young headlining the Hop Farm Festival last week, a youTube clip taken from Spanish TV of the guitar genius performing the same cover of The Beatles "Day In The Life" that he closed the Kent show with, has surfaced online.
You can watch the wondrous seven minute video below.
www.uncut.co.uk
Lofgren was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 24, 1951 to Swedish/Italian parents. Moving to the Washington, D.C.(Garret Park, Maryland), area as a teenager, Lofgren's first instrument was the accordion. He was also a competitive gymnast in high school [1], a skill that popped up later in his career.
Lofgren joined Neil Young's band at age 17, playing piano on the album After the Gold Rush. Lofgren would maintain a close musical relationship with Young, appearing on his Tonight's the Night album and tour among others. He was also briefly a member of Crazy Horse, appearing on their 1971 LP and contributing songs to their catalogue.
Grin
He used the Neil Young album credits to land his band Grin a record deal in 1971. From 1971 to 1974 the band released four albums of catchy, hard rock, with guitar as his primary instrument. Though Lofgren wrote the majority of the group's songs, he often shared vocal duties with other members of the band. After the second album Nils added brother Tom Lofgren to the fold as a rhythm guitarist. Though Grin was a success with critics they failed to hit the big time.
Solo Career, Part I
In 1974 Grin disbanded. Lofgren's self-titled debut solo album was a success with critics (a 1975 Rolling Stone review by Jon Landau labelled it one of the finest rock albums of the year), and he achieved progressive rock radio hits in the mid-1970s with "Back It Up", "Keith Don't Go" and "I Came to Dance". His song "Bullets Fever", about the 1978 NBA champion Washington Bullets, would become a cult favorite in the Washington area. Throughout the 1970s Lofgren continued to release solo albums and toured extensively with a backing band that again usually included brother Tom on rhythm guitar. Lofgren's concerts displayed his reputation for theatrics, such as playing guitar while doing flips on a trampoline.
In 1971 he appeared on stage on the Roy Buchanan Special, PBS TV with Bill Graham. In 1973 he appeared with Grin on ABC on Midnight Special performing 3 songs live. In 1978 he appeared in "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" (The Movie). In 1987 he contributed the TV Show theme arrangement for Hunter. In 1993 he contributed to The Simpsons, with two Christmas jingles with Bart. In 1995 he appeared on PBS tribute to the Beatles along with Dr. John. From 1991-95 he was the CableAce Awards musical director and composer. In the early 1980s, Lofgren wrote and sang the "Nobody Bothers Me" theme.
In 1984, he joined Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as the replacement for "Miami Steve" Van Zandt on guitar and vocals, in time for their massive Born in the U.S.A. Tour. Following the tour he appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, to promote his 1985 solo release Flip. The E Street Band toured again with Springsteen in 1988 on the Tunnel of Love Express. In 1989 Springsteen broke up the E Street Band, and they remained mainly inactive for the decade after 1989, but both he and Van Zandt rejoined when Springsteen revived the band in 1999 for their Reunion Tour, followed by The Rising and another massive tour in 2002 and 2003 then again for the Magic album and world tour of 2007/2008.
![Two Hearts [Live]](http://a2.vox.com/6a00cd972dc0e24cd500fad6985cba0004-200pi)
Solo Career, Part II
Lofgren continues to record and to tour as a solo act, with Patti Scialfa, with Neil Young, and as a two-time member of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band. Many of the people he worked with on those tours appeared on his 1991 album, Silver Lining. During the 2000s he got his own "Nils Lofgren Day" in Montgomery County, Maryland (August 25). In 2006 Lofgren released Sacred Weapon, featuring guest appearances by David Crosby, Graham Nash, Willie Nelson and Martin Sexton. In 2006 he recorded a live DVD "Nils Lofgren & Friends: Acoustic Live". His concerts typically focus on his own material, with an occasional nod to Young or Springsteen ("Because the Night", "Man at the Top").
In June, 2006, Lofgren performed at the Benefit For Arthur Lee concert at New York's Beacon Theater, along with Robert Plant, Ian Hunter, Yo La Tengo and Garland Jeffreys, performing Love's classic song "Alone Again Or" plus two others. And in 2007, he appeared playing guitar as part of Jerry Lee Lewis' backing band for Lewis' Last Man Standing concert. Nils celebrated his long time collaboration with Neil Young by releasing "The Loner - Nils Sings Neil" an album of acoustic covers of Young songs in 2008.
It was the above release that brought Nils back into my radar again, so here is his solo version of Neil Young's "Mr Soul"
Whilst I enjoy a great deal of Neil Young's wide and varied music, I wasn't tempted to pay the high ticket price to attend his Edinburgh concert, but I am happy to bring you Uncut's concert review below.
Neil Young - Edinburgh Playhouse, March 3 2008
To paraphrase Dolly Parton, it must take a lot of care to look as chaotic as this. I’m referring not to Neil Young himself, not exactly, but to the astonishingly cluttered stage around him, dressed to look like – well, backstage, really, behind the scenes at some lost old-time opry.
There are klieg lights and spots strewn around, cables and stands everywhere, a huge, antique wind-machine with wooden blades, variously battered musical instruments apparently abandoned at random, and a single, ominous, baffling red house telephone of roughly 1974 vintage. Everything looking worn and used and tested and true, and in no need of replacement. Oh, and, obviously, there is a man standing way at the back, turned away from the audience, silently painting amid a stack of large canvas backdrops.
It’s a stage-set, of course, and the first clue that, whatever he’s engaged upon amid the red-velvet splendour of Edinburgh’s venerable Playhouse theatre for his first UK gig in five years, Young, who makes his bizarre entrance trying to hide behind the painter as he carries a large canvas bearing a single “N” to an easel at the front of the stage, sees it as a performance in every sense of the word. The drama’s precise meaning will remain unclear to all but him, but it’s as compellingly weird, as hauntingly beautiful, as stormy and electrifying as anything he’s ever done.
Even by his own considerable standards, Young, wearing the kind of loose, off-white suit a US Defence Secretary might favour for a field visit to Iraq, appears to be in a strange mood. The audience bays but he ignores them, utters not a word. Sometimes, when the shouting gets too loud, he throws his arms over his face, warding it off in a manner that suggests Marcel Marceau being spooked by a horse; at one point, he actually falls cowering to his knees.
He sits alone inside a circle of acoustic guitars – seven of them, plus a banjo – absently, fondly, touching one and then the other, as though waiting for them to tell him which one wants to go first. He dips his harmonica in a china teacup of water like a man dunking biscuits in a rest home. He looks shambling, distracted; and then he starts to play, and his focus and intensity sucks the breath from you.
The facts are that we get a solo acoustic set followed by an electric set, and anyone who has glanced at setlists from earlier in this tour will know that he has been throwing in songs from some of the most obscure corners of his catalogue. Knowing that in advance, though, does nothing to dilute the impact when, after a gorgeously warm “From Hank to Hendrix,” Young begins “Ambulance Blues.”
The abandoned closer to 1974’s desolate "On The Beach" is song he has barely, if ever, played live before this tour, but one that certain fans have tattooed on their minds. All the same, tonight, as he hunches over the ever-dying thing, it feels almost as though he is creating it on the spot, sucking each stray chorus out of the air, forever fading away, forever coming back in with one more last thought.
He follows it with three more songs you thought you would never hear him play: the unreleased “Sad Movies,” then, shambling to one of the pianos, a truly astonishing “A Man Needs A Maid” (substituting the recorded version’s orchestral fills with chilling, Dr Phibes-meets-"Trans" blasts on an aged electric keyboard), and “Try,” another unreleased song from the legendary aborted "Homegrown" album. Lurching from these into some of his most iconic “Neil Young” songs – “Harvest”, “After The Gold Rush”, “Don't Let It Bring You Down”, “Heart Of Gold” – the impression is of an iPod on shuffle, and on fire.
That frayed falsetto sounds as strong, as pure, as distressed as it ever has; close your eyes, you could be listening to an Archive recording from three, four decades ago. Listening, watching, I’m struck by a thought: will Bob Dylan ever take the chance to go so naked before an audience again?
Between songs, he keeps up his silent, shambling routine, wandering the stage like a man who doesn’t know where he is or why, sometimes standing and staring vacantly off at what the painter is painting, still working away at the rear of the stage. At one point, Young stands and holds his hands up to one of the little purple standing spotlights, warming them on the light – at first I think it’s a comment on the bitingly cold night leaking into the theatre from outside. An hour later, I’m not so sure.
We’re coming toward the end of a colossal electric set. Backed by veteran associates Ralph Molina, Rick Rosas and Ben Keith, Young, changed into a paint-splattered black suit, has been wailing and whaling away at the guitar he calls Old Black as if he might never get the chance to play her again. Dropping the stumbling gait he affected for the acoustic half, he’s leaning, grooving, stepping ass-shaking and almost pogoing as he tears out damn-near definitive workings of mangled warhorses including “Down By the River”, “Hey Hey, My My” and a towering “Powderfinger.”
He’s climaxing, though, with a voyage through one of his newest songs, “Hidden Path.” Largely written off as a meandering lowpoint on the "Chrome Dreams II" album, the song is transformed into a long, classic, violent stone jam to stand alongside any of the above. 15 burning minutes in, it’s seemingly endless, and you don’t want it to end. And, at its most intense, as he pulls at the howling riff, Young wanders to a massive klieg light that drenches the theatre in a blinding golden glow and stares into it, bathes in it, as though trying to climb inside the light. Thinking back to this little pantomime with the smaller light, I wonder, is there a connection here? What is he trying to say?
Who could ever say? Rummaging through the backstage of his mind, Neil Young, at 62, is, quite thrillingly, as vitally unknowable, as far out there and as far inside himself as he ever has been. I doubt even God knows what he has in mind for his six-night stand in London.
DAMIEN LOVE
ACOUSTIC SET
From Hank To Hendrix
Ambulance Blues
Sad Movies
A Man Needs a Maid
Try
Harvest
After the Gold Rush
Mellow My Mind
Love Art Blues
Don't Let it Bring You Down
Heart Of Gold
Old Man
ELECTRIC SET
Mr. Soul
Dirty Old Man
Spirit Road
Down By the River
Hey Hey, My My
Too Far Gone
Oh, Lonesome Me
The Believer
Powderfinger
No Hidden Path
Fuckin' Up
Cinnamon Girl
The singer, who this week is finishing up his North American tour with a six night stint at New York's United Palace, has revealed that he is to play eight shows in the UK from March 3 - including five nights at London's Hammersmith Apollo.
Young's current tour has seen the singer perform with the musicians who worked on his latest album 'Chrome Dreams': Ben Keith (pedal steel, dobro), Ralph Molina (drums) and Rick Rosas (bass).
Young will also be playing two nights in Paris, at Le Grand Rex on February 14 and 15.
Tickets for the UK shows go onsale Friday (December 14) with tickets from £55 - £75.
Neil Young will play:
Edinburgh, Playhouse (March 3)
London, Hammersmith Apollo (5/6/8/9/11)
Manchester Apollo (11/12)
More information from: www.neilyoung.com.
Pic credit: PA Photos
What I’d say about Neil Young, having twice interviewed him, is that he lives up to the legend, bracingly so. “The first thing you have to understand about me is that no one tells me what to do,” he tells me, by way of emphatic introduction when we meet originally in 1989. “What I’m saying here,” he goes on, his restless eyes fairly blazing, “is that I don’t give a damn. Never have. Never will.”
Something about the way he says this makes me think he’d like me to contradict him so we can have a row. I stay sensibly quiet.
“I do what I do,” he continues, “I can’t do anything else. If that means fighting with the record company over every album, every time I go out, then that’s the way it’s gotta be. It doesn’t really bother me. You can’t stand still. You don’t stop, ever. If you stop, you’re dead. And I’m not ready for that. So I keep going out there. “Hell,” he says finally. “That’s my job.”
Twenty years on, Young’s legendary truculence, the notorious contrariness, the sheer fuck-you bloody-mindedness he shares with Dylan, remains undimmed, as this month’s cover feature by Jaan Uhelszki, which starts on page 40, so vividly demonstrates. And this is why, of course, we love him and he continues to an unwavering affection bordering often on awe, even as his dogged waywardness has frequently tested the patience of his sometimes baffled fans.
In the end, though, we simply wouldn’t want him any other way.
As the great man adds the finishing touches to his mighty Archives retrospective, he talks to Uncut in surprisingly open fashion about pagan beliefs, his mother’s ashes, and the truth behind Chrome Dreams I and II. Young is also celebrated on this month’s brilliant free CD, which features 15 superb cover versions of his songs, from Sonic Youth, Paul Weller, Low, Cowboy Junkies and more
The chaos, the coke storms and the punch-ups! To promote a new rock doc telling their story, Daltrey and Townshend relive their life thru a lens
It was the reunion they said would never happen. ‘Mad King Richard’, Mc|Cabe and co have kissed and made up. The epic rockers tell Uncut why this time out they could be even bigger and better than before
Snapshot photo special: onstage and backstage at the festival that hosted Led Zep’s last ever UK shows. A fine supporting cast includes Keith Richards, Ron Wood, and Todd Rundgren in his leotard!
In our October issue, we featured the best ever live shows witnessed by our writers… now read about yours, from Dylan, Patti Smith and The Clash to Nico…
Re-energised after a rumoured breakdown and with a UK tour imminent, prodigious indie phenomenon Zach Condon takes us on a musical journey from the Balkans to Brooklyn
He’s bearded and he’s back! The rockin’ rebel talks us through his greatest albums to date
...your alphabetical guide to all the major new releases and reissues, including Levon Helm, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Eddie Vedder, Six Organs Of Admittance, Ray Davies, The Eagles, Citay, and many, many more
…all the best new cinema releases, including The Assassination Of Jesse James and Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited. Plus! Ben Stiller talks through his back catalogue, Victor Spinetti discusses life on set with The Beatles, there’s a preview of a new celluloid portrait of John Lennon’s murderer – and we’ve got the pick of all the latest DVDs, too…
Here is a track from the new neil Young album "Chrome Dreams II"
What we have here is easily Mr. Young's finest work in years, one that erases the memory of his well-intentioned but anemic 2006 protest album, Living with War.
The way, we know the way. We've seen the way
We'll show the way
To getcha back home
To the peace where you belong
If you're lost and think you can't be found
We know the way, we've got the way
We'll lead the way
To getcha back home
To the peace where you belong
The way, we know the way. We've got the way
We'll share the way
To bring you back home
To the peace where you belong
So many lost highways
That used to lead home
But now they seem used up and gone
They sure had the magic
When they were first found
But not this road
This road has never been closed
It's still brand new
The Way Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com
The way, we know the way. We've seen the way
We'll show the way
To bring you back home
To the peace where you belong
If you're lost and think you can't be found
We know the way. We've got the way
We'll lead the way
To getcha back home
To the peace where you belong
Where you belong, where you belong, where you belong
We know the way
To getcha back home
To the peace where you belong
When faceless and anonymous
Come to beat down your door
And say you're all washed up and done
You can just say they have nothing in store
To touch this soul
Because they just don't know
They just don't know
The way
The way, we know the way. We've seen the way
We'll show the way
To getcha back home
To the peace where you belong
The way, we got the way, we know the way
We'll lead the way
To getcha back home
To the peace where you belong
If you're lost and think you can't be found
We know the way. We've found the way
We'll share the way
To getcha back home
To the peace where you belong
The way, we know the way. We've seen the way
We'll show the way
To get you back home
To the peace where you belong
Neil Young 2007
Chrome Dreams IINeil Young To Release Sequel To Unreleased 1977 Album
-- Andy Greene
Neil Young's web page has released photo montage videos for four of the tracks from the album which you can view below :-
There was a chill in the air when I was out with the dugs this morning,
Pictures taken with camera in phone hence the poor resolution, here's a couple of appropriate songs to compensate.
If “Chrome Dreams” was a collection of great Neil songs that were subsequently dispersed across various disparate albums, “Chrome Dreams II” in part seems to be a collection of disparate, mainly great Neil songs that have been gathered together, somewhat belatedly.
We know – thanks to the unflinchingly accurate internet, at least – that the first three songs on this new album were all written and abandoned by Young at some point in the ‘80s. “Beautiful Bluebird”, a rheumy-eyed country amble, would have featured on the original, rejected version of “Old Ways”. “Boxcar”, a twanging and discreetly propulsive train song, was part of the shelved “Times Square” set that just predated “Freedom”.
There is no palpable reason why he’s sat on these two tunes for so long, but the mystery becomes more pronounced when track three arrives, and seems determined to never leave. This is “Ordinary People”, a heroically trudging narrative that lasts over 18 minutes and originates from the Bluenotes sessions circa “This Note’s For You” (if you look on Youtube, there’s some footage of Young playing the song live in 1988). My favourite Neil music has always been electric and long, with a sort of relentless, dogged purpose to it.
You could probably measure the pace of “Ordinary People” in swings of a wrecking ball, but there’s a difference between this and obvious comparison tracks like “Cortez The Killer” and “Like A Hurricane”. As each verse ends and Young steps up to solo, he’s joined by a blaring horn section, who occasionally duck out for solos themselves. When the sax player moves into the spotlight, and a piano line rolls through the mix, there’s an odd echo of ‘70s E-Street Band. It’s preposterous, and fantastic.
After this, the rest of the album is purportedly new music. Unlike “Living With War”, “Prairie Wind” et al, Young doesn’t stick to one style. Instead, he promiscuously wanders through a pretty wide range; it’s notable that his band here features one Crazy Horse (Ralph Molina), one Stray Gator (Ben Keith) and one Bluenote (Rick Rosas). Not all of these diversions are entirely welcome: “Shining Light” and “The Believer” have a limpid soul lilt that reminds me a little of my least favourite Neil album, “Are You Passionate?”; and the closing “The Way” nails the recurring theme of finding a path back to contentment, home, spiritual fulfilment and such, but does so with the aid of an inevitably mawkish children’s choir.
“Spirit Road” tackles the same issues much better, with a rattly belligerence and massed vocals that recalls “Living With War” and the best parts of “Greendale”. There are a couple more great rock songs on “Chrome Dreams II”, too: “Dirty Old Man” is a crude-as-hell garage gruntalong that reminds me variously of “Re-Ac-Tor”, some of “Ragged Glory” and “Piece Of Crap” from “Sleeps With Angels”. Even better, “No Hidden Path” is another epic workout (a measly 11 and a half minutes, if you’re counting), that very nearly matches “Ordinary People” for gravity, sustained intensity, and the sense that Young is still uncommonly close to the top of his game.
The whole thing adds up to an uncharacteristically satisfying hotch-potch. It’s a fool’s game to try and understand Neil Young’s infallibly contrary thought processes, but it sounds as if the preparation of Archives has inspired him to look at his career as a whole, to make more explicit the way it all fits together. After the righteous indignation of “Living With War”, the prevailing mood of “Chrome Dreams II” is of finding contentment. But what makes it so gripping is the number of contrasting ways that Young finds to make his point.
John Mulvey
Source:
YOUNG PLAYS NEW RECORD FOR REPRISE
NY Times, August 16, 2007
Continuing a tradition that goes back to 1969, Neil Young played his latest recording for Reprise yesterday. The recording was played for about 100 people in Burbank. Produced by "The Volume Dealers," NY and Niko Bolas, the recording runs 60+ minutes and includes two giant songs that time in at 18:30 and 13:00, respectively.
Drawing from three songs written previously, and 7 new songs, the latest Neil Young is a very diverse recording. A release date is unknown at this time. The title is Chrome Dreams II.
Chrome Dreams is a legendary NY album from 1977 that had originally been scheduled for release but was shelved. The original cover for Chrome Dreams was created by Neil's long-time producer and friend, the late David Briggs. Unfortunately, all original documentation and art for this album was lost in a fire that destroyed Neil's Malibu home in early 1978.
