Neil Young

Greendale ranks as one of the more elaborate projects Neil Young ever conceived, a concept album inspired by Thornton Wilder's Our Town which was accompanied by a film telling the record's story – the film was then used as a backdrop for a theatrical production featuring Young and Crazy Horse. Nearly 20 years after the album's 2003 release, Young revisited the project through the aptly titled Return to Greendale, a live effort capturing a September 4, 2003 concert held in Toronto just a few weeks after the August appearance of Greendale…

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.

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.

Return to Greendale is the next installment in Neil Young’s Performance Series and features a concert (audio and on film) from the historic and unique 2003 tour supporting the release of the Neil Young with Crazy Horse album Greendale. On the 2003 tour, Neil Young and Crazy Horse were joined on stage by a large cast of singers and actors to perform the story Neil Young wrote about the small town of Greendale and how a dramatic event affects the people living there. The ten songs from the powerful original album are performed in sequence, with the cast speaking the sung words - adding to the intensity of the performance.

Storytone arrived at the end of a year that already saw another new Neil Young album – that would be A Letter Home, a collection of folk covers recorded at Jack White's Voice-O-Graph direct-to-vinyl recording booth at Third Man Records – which itself was only the tip of the iceberg that was Neil's 2014. That spring, Young launched a high-end digital audio system called Pono, which was followed by the summer news that he was divorcing Pegi, his wife of 36 years, an event that led to a fresh feud with David Crosby that then led to Young saying he would never play with CSN again and, if that weren't enough, Young also published his second book, Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars, just prior to the release of Storytone.

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.

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…

Finally the release of Neil Young's Carnegie Hall 1970. Young has selected this concert he played at New York’s Carnegie Hall on December 4th, 1970 as the inaugural release from his Official Bootleg series. The show rounded off a seminal year for Young who had released the After The Gold Rush record just 3 months earlier in September which followed on from the Déjà Vu album he recorded as part of Crosby, Still, Nash and Young in March of the same year.

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.

This box set continues the chronological re-releasing of Neil Young’s Official Releases, remastered where analog tapes exist. Volume 4, released as a 4 LP box and 4 CD box. The ORS Vol 4 collects an eclectic set of decade-spanning sounds. Hawks & Doves (1980) revisits his folk roots and explores some of his most country-leaning offerings; the blistering Re•ac•tor (1981) showcases a stomping set of heavy, overdriven rock with Crazy Horse; and This Note’s for You (1988) casts Young as a big band leader, belting out intricately arranged blues. The Eldorado EP (1989), a 5 track mini-album, previously only released on CD in Australia and Japan, is full of feral distortion and earthy crunch featuring Young backed by The Restless (Chad Cromwell and Rick Rosas). It includes two thundering tracks — “Cocaine Eyes” and “Heavy Love”— not available on any other album, along with different versions of 3 tracks that appeared on Freedom later the same year.