A few years ago, UNCUT Magazine published a list called 50 Greatest Lost Albums, and this is the album that topped it on No.1. It remains the only Neil Young LP never to have seen a CD release (Journey Through The Past was a soundtrack/compilation), only a recent limited vinyl reissue. The reason why was never apparent to me: while not on a par with his classic albums of that era, it did contain some good songs and performances. Reading the relevant article on Uncut helps understand his frame of mind and partly explains the reasons behind his dissatisfaction with it. Most of the songs started life during rehearsals for the follow-up to his hugely successful Harvest LP. Today Young is an established artist who can release anything he fancies, but at 27 years old the record company pressure to deliver a Harvest clone must have felt overwhelming. Adding to the stress, he had just signed on to undertake the biggest tour of the time, in terms of length as well as venue sizes. He was working with the Stray Gators, a bunch of studio, mostly country-oriented, musicians who had accompanied him in Harvest but were never actually a real band. Maybe it was the wish to have a friend with him on the tour, or possibly he was worried because of his bad physical condition (he was still recovering from spinal surgery) and wanted to have another electric guitarist along as a backup. Anyway, he contacted Danny Whitten, his pal from Crazy Horse, and asked him to join his band. Whitten was Crazy Horse's main singer, guitarist and songwriter, but was fired by them due to his heroin addiction. He assured Young that he was finally clean, so the latter decided to give him another chance and flew him over to Broken Arrow ranch to join the rehearsals. Unfortunately, though, Whitten proved to be far from clean, was unable to learn his guitar parts and generally a complete mess. So Young gave him $50 and sent him back to L.A. Only a few hours later, Whitten was dead from a pills-and-alcohol overdose. That left Young devastated by sorrow and guilt for his friend's death, suffering from back pain, under pressure to deliver the follow-up to a masterpiece, and about to embark on the biggest tour ever attempted until then. On top of that, the musicians made constant demands for more money, exhibiting their discontent at every opportunity. Audiences were indifferent to his new songs, and during the last leg of the tour he even caught a throat infection that affected his singing ability, causing him to appeal to former bandmates David Crosby and Graham Nash to help on the vocal department. He also had to draft in CSN&Y's John Barbata on drums, because the original drummer couldn't cut it live. None of that helped his mood, or his performance. At the end of it, he was completely drained and utterly miserable. Returning to the ranch to finish the album with the now estranged Stray Gators was impossible, but he owed record company an LP. A number of shows were recorded with the intention of releasing a live album to commemorate what was expected to be a triumphant tour. There was now no way that would happen, so at the end they chose some of the new songs road-tested during the concerts, and released them as the Time Fades Away LP. The eponymous opener is highly reminiscent of Dylan circa 1965-66, a raucous folk rocker with whiny vocals, harmonica and clunky piano by Jack Nietzche. Young accompanies himself on piano and occasional harmonica on "Journey Through The Past", "The Bridge" and "Love In Mind" (the latter being the only track not recorded during this tour, but from a previous live date). Here he does remind us of The Harvest troubadour, specifically his naked and emotional performance on the Whitten-inspired "The Needle And The Damage Done". "Don't Be Denied" is another acoustic number, this time with a fuller sound. Ben Keith's pedal steel, Nietzsche's piano, and the whole band on backing vocals remind us of Harvest's mellow country sound, although Young's lead vocal is rawer. On the sarcastic "L.A.", ominous "Yonder Stands the Sinner" and long-winding "Last Dance", The Stray Gators seem to function like a substitute Crazy Horse, approaching that band's elemental hard rock. One wonders if a healthy Whitten really was the missing ingredient that could have transformed these songs. David Crosby and Graham Nash join in on guitar and harmonies on the latter two tunes. As you can imagine, the album didn't go down well with fans of the artists' mellow country rock sound. It stalled around the 20th position in the charts, a far cry from Harvest's No.1 but still respectable. Young hated it. He's called it "the worst record I ever made" but also added that "as a documentary of what was happening to me, it was a great record" - an ambivalent sentiment that explains his odd choices: on the one hand he refused to correct the sound using overdubs and other post production tricks. On the other he keeps it out of print, and has been quoted saying that he deliberately chose the "shittiest material possible" for the cover, hoping it'd disintegrate fast and people would throw it away. Apparently, post production is still an impossibility: the album was mastered down from 16-track directly to stereo with a console called compumix, there are no original master tapes to go back to. Seeing as it has been repeatedly bypassed during recent reworkings of Young's catalogue, chances are there will never be a wide re-release. Which is a pity, because -despite the artist's own opinion- the album's rugged, dark, uncompromising, sound has gradually acquired many fans. Critics consider it the first installment of his "ditch trilogy", followed by On the Beach (1974) and culminating on Tonight's the Night (1975)- a trio of haunted albums from a period of despair, loss and inner turmoil. Interestingly, as of last year, Time Fades Away isn't the only document from that fraught tour. Young retrospectively released another live album called Tuscaloosa, featuring more or less the same band (minus the CS&N contingent). The tracklisting mixes some of his new "difficult" songs with hits from Harvest and After The Goldrush. The fact that original recordings from that tour apparently still exist makes one wonder whether Time Fades Away really can't be recreated/improved upon or whether Neil Young's denial to revisit it is another of the man's peculiarities.
**** for Time Fades Away, Journey Through The Past, Yonder Stands The Sinner, L.A., Don't Be Denied,
*** for Love In Mind, The Bridge, Last Dance
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