The entrance is dragging similarly depressed as the “Lonely Boy” in “Out On The Weekend”, who, although his girlfriend “honestly loves” him, cannot find any joy (emp). Also in “Seperate Ways”, the opener of Neil Young’s “lost” album “Homegrown” released recently, the mood of the protagonist is quite lousy – however, there is nothing puzzling about it: he has a crystal clear process and tries to process his Keep spirits happy.
This theme, which was preceded in real life by the split between Young and his partner at the time, the actress Carrie Snodgress, continues through the album, which was recorded in the second half of 1974 and, as planned, in 1975 the fragmented “On The Beach “should have followed.
Feelings of guilt
Instead, the even more tattered, depressed longplayer “Tonight ?? s The Night” appeared, which in turn had been on hold for two years because the record company had long refused to release it. The reason that Neil Young held back “Homegrown” is that the songs were too close at the time. That doesn’t explain why it took 45 years – but the master helps us with the cataloging: “Homegrown”, he said, is the link between the albums “Harvest” and “Comes A Time”.
Neil Young
Homegrown
(Reprise/Warner)
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History is hidden in this statement. Neil Young, who at least created a prototype pre-grunge classic (“Mr. Soul”) with his first band Buffalo Springfield and launched a rough-edged and sometimes brutally insistent rock style with his second solo album “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” , at the beginning of the 1970s met with sensitive and sensitive ballads about the destruction of the environment, the destructive effects of hard drugs and the “promise of a real man” the nerve of time devastated after the failure of many promise of salvation in the 60s: “After The Gold Rush “(1970) and especially the multi-platinum-refined” Harvest “from 1972 became bestsellers and emphasized Young’s reputation as a” sensitive songwriter “.
Understandably, the record company wanted more of this material and was horrified by “Tonight ?? s The Night”, on which a young boy, tormented by guilt about the expulsion and prompt death of his guitarist Danny Whitten, resignedly resigned his constitution to the musical form with crooked crooked falsetto. Chronologically, “Tonight ?? s The Night” was the prelude, from the time of release to “Time Fades Away” and “On The Beach” the end of that series of records that went down in rock history as Young’s “Ditch Trilogy”, because they all refused to please and perfect.
Own cultivation
“Harvest” said Young in the Liner Notes to his compilation “Decade”, promoted to the middle of the street. But there he was bored and preferred to head towards the ditch (ditch) oriented. According to this metaphor, “Homegrown” would be in the middle of one Middle-of-the-Road-Trilogy that begins with “Harvest” and ends in 1978 with the agile “Comes A Time”, on the cover of which Young grins like a motivational seminar leader. The majority of the songs are kept acoustically – and like on “Harvest” (“Are You Ready For The Country?”) The gait is tightened with a title that in itself suggests cosiness and relaxation: “Homegrown” means grass grown on the farm.
The title track as well as the bittersweet “Star Of Bethlehem (with Emmylou Harris as a guest voice) has already been heard on the album” American Stars ?? n Bars “. Other tracks are already known, the beautiful” White Line “from” Ragged Glory “. Yes, even the laconic Spoken-Word-Story About the crash of a glider pilot, whose pilot falls exactly on a pair of lovers, had already been read in the supplement to “Tonight ?? s The Night”.
And that would be the general problem of such “novelties” with historical patina: The Novelty-Effect is quite reduced. It speaks for “homegrown” that it can still convince as an entity.
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