Archive AUGUST 2022 TAKE 303
“I’m taking the blame myself/For livin’ my life in a shell”
REISSUES | COMPS | BOXSETS | LOST RECORDINGS
NEIL YOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSE
Toast
REPRISE
IN 2000, Neil Young and Crazy Horse took up residence at Toast – a recording studio on San Francisco’s Mission Street. Awaiting overdue renovation, the district itself was in poor condition. The back door at Toast opened onto a view of derelict buildings; aside from a doughnut shop on the corner, their only neighbours were rats and the squatters. Inside Toast, the vibe was undetermined. As Young wrote in his memoir Special Deluxe, there were “some serious problems with my marriage” (to his then-wife Pegi). Instead of arriving at the sessions as usual with a handful of songs ready to go, Young apparently spent much of his time at Toast sitting on the studio floor, scribbling onto yellow pads, while the Horse watched TV and struggled to comprehend Toast’s lack of essential kitchenware. “Everything seemed temporary, even Crazy Horse,” Young wrote in Special Deluxe. “Although we had some great moments [in the studio] and the music was soulful, it wasn’t happy or settled.”
Taking a break, the band headed to South America for shows in Brazil and Argentina before returning to San Francisco, reinvigorated. This renewed spirit did not endure, however. “Eventually I gave up and abandoned the album,” Young wrote. “I was not happy with it, or maybe I was just generally unhappy. I don’t know. It was a very desolate album, very sad and unanswered.”
REISSUE OF THE MONTH
9/10
Instead, Young convened with Crazy Horse guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro and Booker T & The MGs to record a new album, , that included a handful of songs leftover from . Meanwhile, itself disappeared from sight, its existence never officially revealed until 2008. Since then, it has become part of a tantalising parallel history of Young’s activities stretching back through decades, alongside , , and . Young’s interest in releasing these ‘lost’ albums as part of his ongoing Archives series seems fell on and off the schedules, until he started talking seriously about it – notably to – when he reactivated Crazy Horse for and in 2012. Whatever we might think about Young’s capricious career swerves, he tends to work methodically within the fixed parameters of each project; so once his focus shifted away from Crazy Horse at the end of the Alchemy Tour, his interest in waned. With the latest incarnation of Crazy Horse currently active, has finally arrived. And what a magnificent album it is.
