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Neil Young: From country to rock
During the rehearsals for the tour that would produce the Time Fades Away live album, it became evident that Danny Whitten could not function as a musician due to his drug abuse. On November 18, 1972, shortly after he was fired from the tour preparations, Whitten was found dead of a heroin overdose.
In the second half of 1973, Young formed The Santa Monica Flyers, with Crazy Horse's rhythm section augmented by Lofgren on guitar. Deeply affected by the drug-induced deaths of Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, they recorded
Tonight's the Night in 1973, a dark, maudlin record of unhinged blues and out-of-tune ballads that Reprise did not see fit to release until two years later. The album received mixed reviews at the time, but is now generally well regarded by critics and seen by some as a precursor to punk rock.
By the time
Tonight's the Night was released, Young had also recorded On the Beach (1974), another blues-influenced record but more focused, based loosely around the theme of the downside of fame and the Californian lifestyle. Like Tonight's the Night it sold poorly, but both would become critical favourites and may represent Young's most original work. A review by Derek Svennungsen of the 2004 CD re-release calls it "mesmerizing, harrowing, lucid, and bleary".
http://www.independent.com/a&e/soundfury904.htm The mood of these albums was reflected in the tour for
Tonight's the Night, a drunken and frequently shambolic affair that divides fans to this day.
Young reformed Crazy Horse as his backup band, this time with Frank Sampedro on guitar for 1975's
Zuma. A return to the hard rock of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, its songs mainly concerned failed relationships, with an exception being "Cortez The Killer", a retelling of the Spanish conquest of South America from the viewpoint of the Aztecs that caused the record to be banned in Franco's Spain. The next year he reunited with Stephen Stills for the album
Long May You Run, credited to the Stills-Young band, but the accompanying concerts were cancelled mid-tour when Young walked out, later sending Stills a telegram that read:
"Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil."
In 1976, Young performed with The Band, Joni Mitchell, and other rock musicians in the high profile all-star concert The Last Waltz. The release of
Martin Scorsese's movie of the concert was delayed while Scorsese re-edited it to deemphasise the lump of cocaine clearly visible hanging from Young's nose during his performance of "Helpless".
1977's
American Stars 'n' Bars was another country-tinged affair, originally planned as a sequel to Harvest and entitled Homegrown. The record, with sweet harmonies from Emmylou Harris and Young protege Nicolette Larson gave few clues as to Young's next step. Looking to avoid retreading the same musical paths, he set out on the lengthy "Rust Never Sleeps" tour, dividing each concert between a solo acoustic set and an electric set with Crazy Horse. A direct response to punk rock, the tour proved Young to be one of the few performers who understood the new trends and could adapt, although the recordings never really matched the intensity of the actual punk singles of the time. A new song, "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" compared the changing public perceptions of Johnny Rotten and the recently deceased
Elvis Presley, once dismissed as a dangerous influence himself but later hailed as an icon. It also coined the infamous phrase "It's better to burn out than fade away", which would return to haunt Young some years later. Rotten, meanwhile, returned the favor by playing one of Young's records on a London radio show. The accompanying albums
Rust Never Sleeps (new material, recorded in front of a live audience but essentially a studio album) and Live Rust (a mixture of old and new, and a genuine live record) captured the two sides of the concerts. A movie version of the concerts, also called "Rust Never Sleeps", was released in 1979, and directed by Young under the pseudonym "Bernard Shakey".
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