Neil+young

Back in the spring of 1975, Neil Young planned to release Homegrown, an album he completed at the start of the year, but he also had Tonight's the Night – a rambling, heavy record cut back in 1973 – ready to go. After playing the two albums back to back for a small circle of friends, Young opted for Tonight's the Night and shelved Homegrown for the better part of 45 years…

Any project in the works for two decades is bound to generate its fair share of myths and so it is with Neil Young's Archives, a series of a multi-disc box sets chronicling Young's history. Originally envisioned in the late '80s as a Decade II, the project quickly mutated into a monster covering every little corner of Neil's career…

Released in February 1972, Harvest was Neil Young’s third solo album and is one of the most successful and well-loved albums in his long career. The album was number 1 in many countries and features the worldwide hit single “Heart of Gold”. The 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Box Sets is released on vinyl and CD. The box sets include the original album, 3 outtakes from the Harvest sessions, two DVDs and a hard bound book.

Borrowed Tunes is a tribute album to Neil Young, released in 1994. The album was released as a two-CD set, one compiling acoustic songs and one compiling rock-oriented ones, although the two discs were also each sold individually. The album features a variety of Canadian musicians covering songs written by Neil Young. All profits from the album were donated to The Bridge School, which develops and uses advanced technologies to aid in the instruction of handicapped children. A second album called Borrowed Tunes II: A Tribute to Neil Young was released in 2007.

Neil Young's second solo album, released only four months after his first, was nearly a total rejection of that polished effort. Though a couple of songs, "Round Round (It Won't Be Long)" and "The Losing End (When You're On)," shared that album's country-folk style, they were altogether livelier and more assured. The difference was that, while Neil Young was a solo effort, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere marked the beginning of Young's recording association with Crazy Horse, the trio of Danny Whitten (guitar), Ralph Molina (drums), and Billy Talbot (bass) that Young had drawn from the struggling local Los Angeles group the Rockets. With them, Young quickly cut a set of loose, guitar-heavy rock songs – "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" – that redefined him as a rock & roll artist.

The old conventional wisdom on Neil Young used to be that he alternated between acoustic folk and full-on guitar skronk with every other album, but 2010’s Le Noise – the French affection in its title a tongue-in-cheek tip of the beret to his producer Daniel Lanois – melds the two extremes…

Given the quirkiness of Neil Young's recording career, with its frequent cancellations of releases and last-minute rearrangements of material, it is a relief to report that this two-disc compilation is so conventional and so satisfying. A 35-track selection of the best of Young's work between 1966 and 1976, it includes songs performed by Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and the Stills-Young Band, as well as solo work. In addition to five unreleased songs, Decade offers such key tracks as the Springfield's "Mr. Soul," "Broken Arrow," and "I Am a Child"; "Sugar Mountain," a song that had appeared only as a single before; "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere; "Southern Man" and the title track from After the Gold Rush; and "Old Man" and the chart-topping "Heart of Gold" from Harvest. This is the material that built Young's reputation between 1966 and 1972, although he is more idiosyncratic with the later material, including the blockbusters "Like a Hurricane" and "Cortez the Killer" but mixing in more unreleased recordings as the set draws to a close.