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Post by the Scribe on Aug 8, 2020 1:20:02 GMT
 ultimateclassicrock.com/linda-ronstadt-neil-young/
For Linda Ronstadt, singing was always the easy part.
After all, she had such a powerful instrument that Ronstadt recalls Randy Newman calling her “Mighty Mouse,” because she “sang so loud.” That commanding onstage presence is spotlighted all over again on the just-issued Live in Hollywood, recorded in 1980 for the HBO network.
Other things, however, presented their own distinctive challenges – most notably an early-career stint opening for Neil Young in 1974. She was still terribly inexperienced, having just released her fourth album Don’t Cry Now, and the crowds were there to see someone else.
“As a club act, we weren't really ready for Madison Square Garden, but we did our best,” Ronstadt says in an exclusive interview with UCR. Larger venues ended up becoming a persistent issue, she notes. "They did a pretty good job of trying to make it all work," she recalls. "But in those hard, huge cavernous spaces, it’s hard to do really, really quiet, subtle music. You need a small theater for that."
Still, Ronstadt describes touring with Young as a positive experience. “It was good exposure for me. It really helped the record,” she says. In time, everyone developed a deep sense of camaraderie, as well.
“You know, when you’re finished with your show, you just want to get out of there and go home and do something else,” Ronstadt says. “I stayed every night for his show, which was almost two hours long. He had great players. He had Kenneth Buttrey for part of that tour playing drums, [and] Tim Drummond. It was really a great band.”
Listen to Linda Ronstadt Sing With Neil Young
Heart of Gold (2009 Remaster)
Ronstadt had already scored a No. 25 pop hit with the Grammy-nominated "Long Long Time," but initially gained wider exposure in rock circles while singing backup on Young's "Heart of Gold," the chart-topping single from 1972's Harvest. That kicked off a series of well-received collaborations, even as her solo star soared.
“Neil and I first met at the Troubadour, I think. But we did the Johnny Cash Show together and he was recording, so he asked me to come along and sing harmonies. James Taylor was doing the same show and James came along and we recorded on 'Heart of Gold' and 'Old Man' for the Harvest album. It was a great record and friends of mine were playing on it,” she recalls. “Kenneth was playing drums, so we were there all night long. We came out the next morning and it was snowing. I remember singing all night long and never getting bored. I love Neil’s music.”
Don’t Cry Now eventually went gold, producing the Top 20 country hit “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” Later in 1974, Ronstadt released Heart Like a Wheel, scoring her own No. 1 pop smash with "You're No Good." She returned to work with Young again in the early ‘90s on his Harvest Moon album.
More recently, Ronstadt has battled a new challenge: Parkinson's disease. She retired from music after revealing her diagnosis in 2013, and released her memoir Simple Dreams that same year.
A sporadic series of events called A Conversation With Linda Ronstadt followed the arrival of the book, and continued through last year. Ronstadt now says that it’s unlikely she’ll be doing any more. “It’s too hard for me to travel. It takes a lot out of me,” she admits. “I do best if I stay at home, in sort of a horizontal position. Vertical activity is not my favorite thing anymore."
But as an avid reader, she can point to at least one positive. “It’s so fun to do nothing,” Ronstadt says, with a laugh. “You can read all day.”
Read More: Linda Ronstadt Admits She Wasn't Ready for Stint With Neil Young | ultimateclassicrock.com/linda-ronstadt-neil-young/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral   |
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 8, 2020 1:26:31 GMT
Linda Ronstadt Recalls Dodging Manson Girls & Recording With Neil Youngwww.srqfm.com/uncategorized/linda-ronstadt-recalls-dodging-manson-girls-recording-with-neil-young/
Getty Images
Posted on May 20, 2020 by Pulse of Radio
Arizona-born and bred Linda Ronstadt went on to live the California dream — but she admitted she came within feet of a deep, dark nightmare. During a chat with Mojo magazine, the legendary singer revealed that she has an ugly connection to Charles Manson and his infamous Family, explaining, “They murdered my next door neighbor, Gary Hinman. We knew those girls. They used to hitchhike through the canyon all the time. After (the murder), I didn't go home for a couple of weeks. Eventually, I moved out. Topanga Canyon had a very dark undertone. A funky, dark place, with a lot of those communes; I always shied away from that stuff. And there were floods all the time. I moved to Beechwood Canyon, which was very handy for the Troubadour.”
In addition to her own string of '70s classics, Linda Ronstadt also sang backup on her friend Neil Young's 1972 Harvest album — including the era-defining tracks “Old Man” and the chart-topping “Heart Of Gold.” Ronstadt was asked what she remembers about the sessions, which also included James Taylor: “I can't remember why Neil wanted me to sing with him — I guess he just figured I was there and could do it — but we went in there and they were doing 'Heart Of Gold' and 'Old Man' and I thought they were such beautiful songs. I loved them. And I knew how to do harmonies — I'd listened to Buffalo Springfield harmonies and I knew how to get that 7th they always used. I don't think we started until midnight and it was dawn when we came out, and it was snowing. We came out to this beautiful snowstorm in the rising sun. It was really exciting. I just thought I had been part of something really wonderful.”
Linda Ronstadt On Hearing Truth In Voices :
Linda Ronstadt has admittedly shared a microphone with the best in the business — and she says that all our secrets and personal information are audible by the sound of our voices: “I can hear their life, I can hear the state of their health, I can hear, y'know, whether they feel good about singin' that note — I mean, you can hear so much. I don't always listen with that intensity — I can hear lying, y'know? I think people in law enforcement get really good, they have a talent for it to start with. My brother was, is a good singer, but he was the chief of police in Tucson for years and you do not ever want to tell him a lie, because he's gonna know (laughs) in one word. He's gonna know halfway through the sentence, you're lying. So, you can hear that kind of stuff in a voice. I don't think we have very well trained ears in a lot of ways.”
go to link above for audio
connection: Sharry mentioned on the forum that she met with Linda years ago about soundhealth. Info on Sharry:
conservatism.freeforums.net/thread/557/sharry-edwards-bioacoustic-biology-health
conservatism.freeforums.net/thread/586/light-sound
Old Man (2009 Remaster)
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 12, 2020 20:54:37 GMT
On this day in music history: March 18, 1972 - “Heart Of Gold” by Neil Young hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 1 week. Written by Neil Young, it is the biggest hit for the Canadian born singer, songwriter and musician.
Young is inspired to write the song during a period when he is in and out of the hospital being treated for a back injury. Forced to wear a back brace during much of the albums recording, Young is physically unable to play electric guitar, playing acoustic on many tracks instead.
“Heart Of Gold” is recorded at Quadrafonic Sound Studios in Nashville, TN in early 1971, while Young is in town taping an appearance on Johnny Cash’s weekly music variety series. “Gold” also features background vocals from Young’s friends James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.
Issued as the first single from his fourth solo album “Harvest” in January of 1972, it quickly becomes a radio smash. Entering the Hot 100 at #62 on February 5, 1972, it climbs to the top of the chart six weeks later.
The success of “Heart Of Gold” also drives the “Harvest” album to number one on the Billboard Top 200 on March 11, 1972, spending two weeks at the top. The mono 45 mix of “Gold” along with its original B-side “Sugar Mountain” are reissued as a limited edition 7" on Record Store Day in April of 2010. “Heart Of Gold” is certified Gold in the US by the RIAA.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 2, 2021 9:39:22 GMT
Neil Young Newsneilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2020/01/linda-ronstadt-and-neil-young-updated.html?m=1An unofficial news blog for Neil Young fans from Thrasher's Wheat with concert and album updates, reviews, analysis, and other Rock & Roll ramblings. Separating the wheat from the chaff since 1996.Sunday, January 05, 2020
Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young (Updated)
UPDATED: 1/5/20 - ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON Saturday, March 02, 2019
Linda Ronstadt 2013 interview on Neil Young via Hudson Union | YouTube.
There is a recent resurgence in interest of Linda Ronstadt's career in light of her recent Kennedy Center Honors and a new documentary 'The Sound of My Voice' (see trailer below).
Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young's careers briefly -- but beautifully and brilliantly -- intersected back in the 1970s and continued until the late 1980's.
Early in her career, Linda Ronstadt sang backup vocals with James Taylor on Neil Young's #1 song "Heart of Gold" from the multi-platinum album "Harvest". Later, Ronstadt opened for Neil Young's 1973 "Time Fades Away" tour.
www.thrasherswheat.org/tnfy/timefadesaway_album.htm
Linda Ronstadt covered Neil Young's "Birds" (from album After the Goldrush) on her 1972 self titled album. (See video above) Also, Ronstadt, with Nicolette Larson, sang on Neil Young's 1977 album, American Stars 'n Bars, with Linda Ronstadt on the tracks "Old Country Waltz", "Saddle Up the Palomino", "Bite the Bullet", "Hold Back the Tears", and "Hey Babe".
Linda Ronstadt also sang backup vocals on Neil Young's "Hanging on a Limb" and "The Ways of Love" on Freedom. She also sang on the Harvest Moon (Unknown Legend, From Hank to Hendrix, Harvest Moon, War of Man, One of These Days) and Silver & Gold (Red Sun) albums. (Thanks Babbo B. & Jeff G.!)
Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young - early/mid 1970's
In Neil Young's auto-biography "Waging Heavy Peace", he discusses Linda Ronstadt. In an interview with Linda Ronstadt on Hudson Union | YouTube she is asked about working with Neil Young. In this clip, Linda Ronstadt discusses how Neil Young's epilepsy condition impacted him. Her comments are even more heartfelt given Linda's own situation.
neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2012/10/heavy-review-of-waging-heavy-peace-book.html
neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2015/03/rare-photo-nicolette-larson-neil-young.html
From an interview with ultimateclassicrock.com on Ronstadt opening for Neil Young's 1973 "Time Fades Away" tour:
ultimateclassicrock.com/linda-ronstadt-neil-young/
www.thrasherswheat.org/tnfy/timefadesaway_album.htm
Linda Ronstadt: “Neil and I first met at the Troubadour, I think.
But we did the Johnny Cash Show together and he was recording, so he asked me to come along and sing harmonies. James Taylor was doing the same show and James came along and we recorded on 'Heart of Gold' and 'Old Man' for the Harvest album. It was a great record and friends of mine were playing on it. Kenneth was playing drums, so we were there all night long. We came out the next morning and it was snowing. I remember singing all night long and never getting bored.
I love Neil’s music.
As a club act, we weren't really ready for Madison Square Garden, but we did our best.
Larger venues ended up becoming a persistent issue. They did a pretty good job of trying to make it all work. But in those hard, huge cavernous spaces, it’s hard to do really, really quiet, subtle music. You need a small theater for that.
You know, when you’re finished with your show, you just want to get out of there and go home and do something else. It was good exposure for me. It really helped the record. In time, everyone developed a deep sense of camaraderie, as well.
I stayed every night for his [Neil Young] show, which was almost two hours long. He had great players. He had Kenneth Buttrey for part of that tour playing drums, [and] Tim Drummond.
It was really a great band.”
In Neil Young's auto-biography "Waging Heavy Peace", he writes that Linda Ronstadt once warned her protege Nicolette Larson not to get involved with him because "He doesn’t live in the real world". (Incidentally, Larson ignored Ronstadt’s advice and had her biggest career hit with the song Neil wrote for her “Lotta Love”.)
neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2012/10/heavy-review-of-waging-heavy-peace-book.html
neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2015/03/rare-photo-nicolette-larson-neil-young.html
Linda Ronstadt : Love is a Rose (In Concert - Atlanta 1977)
From Linda Ronstadt on her best albums: “I’ve got a huge jukebox in my brain” by Tom Pinnock:
www.uncut.co.uk/features/linda-ronstadt-best-albums-ive-got-huge-jukebox-brain-100926
Linda Ronstadt: There were a lot of great writers around then [early 1970's].
California is like a big lens, people would come from other places and California would focus them. A guy like Bernie would come from Florida, or Glenn would come from Michigan, or Don from Texas, and by the time they got to California the Californian sensibility would put its own little spin on things. Then it would be broadcast to the world.
Neil Young is another one – I still think he’s one of the best guys that ever came out of rock’n’roll, he’s just brilliant.
Linda Ronstadt - Live In Hollywood
www.amazon.com/Live-Hollywood-Linda-Ronstadt/dp/B07KLNHNP8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?crid=1LVST9NMNEMO9&keywords=linda+ronstadt+live+in+hollywood+album&qid=1551541099&s=gateway&sprefix=Linda+Ronstadt++Album+%E2%80%98Live+in+Hollywood%E2%80%99,aps,204&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=thrashesblog-20&linkId=a2d7ce6dccc843fc4ff6ba6c6d57d24f
Across The Border - Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young
Above video of Bruce Springsteen song, by Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and Neil Young. From the "Western Wall: Tucson Sessions" album.
Linda Ronstadt & Nicolette Larsen w/ Neil Young
American Stars & Bars sessions
Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young [purportedly & unconfirmed] Riding Horses
More on Neil Young's Musical Influences.
www.thrashersblog.com/2006/11/50-reasons-why-neil-young-is-important.html 
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2022 17:08:10 GMT
www.neilyoungharvesttime.com/synopsis/
Neil Young: Harvest Time
In Cinemas Worldwide Thursday, December 1
www.NeilYoungHarvestTime.com
Created between January and September 1971, this docu-film takes us on an intimate journey to Young’s farm in Northern California for the ‘Harvest Barn’ sessions, to London for an iconic performance with the London Symphony Orchestra and to Nashville where the then 20 something Neil Young worked on various tracks of this signature album. The feature is a fan piece that has never been seen before. Performance and rehearsal content is intertwined into creative storytelling and includes most of the tracks from album Harvest (released in 1972) including “Heart of Gold”, “A Man Needs A Maid”, “Alabama” and “Old Man”.
In addition to the film, this screening event includes an introduction by Neil Young, recorded exclusively for movie theatre audiences. Hear Neil highlight the significance of Harvest, 50 years after its release, and how the recording of the album and the movie came together. |
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 12, 2022 6:27:05 GMT
  What Makes Neil Young’s Voice Irresistible
The key to the enduring popularity of his less-than-groundbreaking album Harvest
www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/12/neil-young-voice-harvest-album-legacy/672408/
By Kevin Dettmar
A young Neil Young lying sideways on a couch surrounded by guitars
Joel Bernstein
DECEMBER 9, 2022
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The cover of Neil Young’s fourth album, Harvest, is the color of unbleached muslin, lending a mellow vibe to a pleasant, if not groundbreaking, work. Yet as the author Sam Inglis puts it, “Harvest is the only Neil Young album that has found its way into the record collections of people who don’t have record collections.” It was the best-selling album of 1972—and of Young’s career—with four-time platinum sales in the U.S. Its first single, “Heart of Gold,” is his only bona fide hit and quickly became his signature song, a staple of rock and pop radio. Fifty years after Harvest’s arrival, Reprise has put out a deluxe reissue that includes previously unreleased documentary footage.
No one who knows Young’s catalog—40-plus studio albums, with his latest, World Record, released last month—would argue that Harvest is his best. It’s wildly uneven, containing at least one earnest but lousy song and a couple of embarrassing experiments in symphonic arrangement. Harvest isn’t a great record; it isn’t even a great Neil Young record. As “Heart of Gold” celebrates its golden anniversary, then, how are we to understand the album’s enduring popularity?
Harvest came together at a particularly tumultuous time for Young. His first marriage had just broken up, and he was enjoying the warm glow of a new relationship with the actor Carrie Snodgress (chronicled in “A Man Needs a Maid,” a delicate gem of a song smothered in the schmaltz of the London Symphony Orchestra). He’d also just lost Crazy Horse, the band with which he’d made his first great record, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. “I hit the city and I lost my band / I watched the needle take another man,” he sings on the Harvest track “The Needle and the Damage Done,” a reference to the Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, who had developed the heroin habit that would take his life less than a year after Harvest’s release.
Read: Neil Young’s boring, prophetic message to readers
www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/09/neil-young-feel-music-evolved-and-half-assed/599044/
Whitten’s addiction prompted Young to start working with new musicians, and he discovered his next collaborators almost accidentally. In February 1971, he had been invited, along with Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, to appear on Johnny Cash’s television show, which was produced in Nashville. While there he met the producer Elliot Mazer, who suggested that Young take advantage of the city’s legendary recording studios to lay down some new tracks. In addition to enlisting Ronstadt and Taylor for backing vocals and other tasks, Young met a team of crack Nashville studio musicians who became the album’s backing band, the Stray Gators.
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Harvest’s 10 tracks were recorded across four different spaces in four different cities, providing distinct listening experiences. The loud rockers, “Alabama” and “Words,” were recorded in a barn at Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch, in Northern California. About another of the album’s recording spaces—Barking Town Hall, where Young jammed with the LSO—the less said, the better. One track was brought over from a live performance: Young playing “The Needle and the Damage Done” solo at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
And then there’s the cushiony intimacy of Mazer’s Quadrafonic Sound Studios. As opposed to Young’s barn, “my studio’s good for kind of quiet things, pretty things,” Mazer says in the documentary, Harvest Time, that accompanies the reissued album. The Nashville tracks are perfect but spare. The Gators played with professional restraint, in contrast with Crazy Horse’s amateurish abandon—Young even instructed the drummer, Kenny Buttrey, to play the title track sitting on one hand. And the acoustics of Mazer’s studio were ideally suited to preserving a frail human voice. Young’s is one of the most distinctive instruments in pop music, unpolished in the way that Crazy Horse’s playing was; vulnerable in a way that’s captured in the singing of two younger fans, Cat Power and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.
Whether by choice or happy chance, those pretty things open Harvest and beckon us, from the opening minute of “Out on the Weekend.” Buttrey and the bass player, Tim Drummond, immediately—and seemingly instinctively—create a pocket for the listener to crawl into. Young’s acoustic strumming is easy, not fancy, and his harmonica, when it comes in, rides on top, the perfect instrumental twin of his famously rough-around-the-edges voice. Buttrey and Drummond seem right at home, but Ben Keith makes the most profound mark on the song—perhaps on the album. Keith broke into the business playing pedal steel on Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces”; on Harvest, he complements Young’s voice with yearning fills. This is the first Young album to feature pedal steel, but Keith’s playing became a signature sound on nearly every subsequent record until his death in 2010.
The opening harmonica lick of “Heart of Gold” may be the best-known harp riff in American popular music. I’d argue that Young is a better harmonica player than Dylan (no letters, please!), but he’s not technically adept: It’s an accessible rather than impressive performance, the two repeats between verses embroidering the basic pattern with grace notes and fills. I learned to play harmonica (badly) by imitating Neil Young records, and it’s the first lick that I learned. This is, in part, the importance of Young’s harmonica playing (like Dylan’s): He made many of us believe we could do it.
Read: Bob Dylan reveals himself through 66 songs
www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/10/bob-dylan-philosophy-of-modern-song-book-review/671905/
Likewise, that voice. It’s not phenomenal, but precisely for that reason, it encourages those of us who don’t sing especially well to join in. As he is for many people, Neil Young is an indelible part of my passage into adulthood. I began singing along as a preteen, when my voice was still capable of mirroring his; as a teenager, I permanently compromised my emerging bass-baritone by adopting a falsetto to approximate Neil’s reedy tenor.
In his scathing Rolling Stone review of Harvest, John Mendelsohn had only one nice thing to say—that Young “sings awful pretty.” If you hear that “awful” as an adjective rather than an adverb, it gets at something profound about Young’s voice: It’s (technically) awful but (delicately, vulnerably, humanly) pretty. Perhaps only an oxymoron can convey the appeal of such an unappealing voice. In an era of slick musicianship and studio refinement—whether that’s 1972 or 2022—Harvest represents an attainable ideal of perfection in its very imperfections. A couple of years before punk emerged on the opposite coast, Neil Young brought a DIY aesthetic to American pop, crossed it with backing tracks as smooth as glass, and took it straight to the top of the charts.
Kevin Dettmar is the W.M. Keck Professor of English at Pomona College.
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 27, 2022 2:21:29 GMT
Early Boost From Neil Young Came With Strings for Linda Ronstadt: ‘It Was Just Hell’
somethingelsereviews.com/2013/12/30/it-was-just-hell-early-boost-from-neil-young-came-with-strings-for-linda-ronstadt/
DECEMBER 30, 2013
BY SOMETHING ELSE!
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Linda Ronstadt gained some of her earliest national exposure working with Neil Young, singing backup on 1972’s “Heart of Gold” (his lone No. 1 single) after her own solo debut flopped, and serving as his warm-up act in 1974.
Not that it always went all that well.
“I love his music; I think he’s just brilliant,” the now-ailing Ronstadt tells the Hudson Union Society. “But I opened for him, and it was just hell. We were in these huge places, and they just wanted to hear Neil so badly.”
By ’74, Ronstadt was touring behind the well-received album Don’t Cry Now, which included the Top 20 country hit “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” Later that year, she released the first of a string of albums that would make her the 1970s’ biggest female star, Heart Like a Wheel — home to her No. 1 hit “You’re No Good.”
But Ronstadt remained in awe of Young: “I would stay every single night to hear his show,” she adds. “I learned so much from that, night after night after night.”
Over the years, Ronstadt memorably recorded Young’s “After the Gold Rush,” and collaborated with Young on his Harvest Moon project. Young also sat in on Ronstadt’s take on “Across the Border,” a Bruce Springsteen song.
She announced her retirement from performing earlier this year just before earning induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
Linda Ronstadt’s turns with Neil Young took up two spots on Nick DeRiso’s list of five most memorable collaborations featuring the newly named Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. Here’s a look …
“UNDER AFRICAN SKIES,” with PAUL SIMON (1986): As Simon explored “the roots of rhythm” on this widely celebrated international-flavored song, he invited Ronstadt to help out on one of Graceland’s most underrated moments. On the soaring “Under African Skies,” she doubles his vocals on the verses and then provides the jet fuel for a sun-flecked chant that would come to define this terrific album cut.
“EXCITABLE BOY,” with WARREN ZEVON (1978): Warren Zevon’s best album features a title-track guest performance by Ronstadt, who had long been a champion of his work. In fact, her gender-reversed take on Zevon’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” was rising into the Top 40 as Zevon’s hit album appeared.
“HEART OF GOLD,” with NEIL YOUNG (1972): Released just a month or so after Ronstadt’s initial eponymous album bombed, “Heart of Gold” nevertheless gave her an early taste of success: It became Neil Young’s first (and so far only) chart-topping single. As he nears the end of this meditation on restlessness, Ronstadt makes a typically dramatic entrance, arriving just in time for the song’s soaring conclusion.
“BARTENDER’S BLUES,” with JAMES TAYLOR (1977): Ronstadt and James Taylor had earlier contributed backing vocals to a pair of Neil Young tracks from 1972’s Harvest — including “Heart of Gold” — so it’s no surprise that their voices intertwine so naturally on this desperately sad country-blues song’s second chorus.
“ONE OF THESE DAYS, with NEIL YOUNG (1992): “I never tried to burn any bridges,” Young sings. Proof of that: Ronstadt (and Taylor) returned two decades after his signature country-rock triumph Harvest for the underrated sequel Harvest Moon — a visit highlighted by the gorgeous “One of These Days.”
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The Something Else! webzine, an accredited Google News affiliate, has been featured in The New York Times and NPR.com's A Blog Supreme, while our writers have also been published by USA Today, Jazz.com and UltimateClassicRock.com, among others. Contact Something Else! at reviewsbysomethingelse@gmail.com.
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 31, 2022 8:56:13 GMT
Neil Young’s Harvest turns 50
www.shindig-magazine.com/?p=5807
NEIL YOUNG’s fourth solo album remains one of the most beloved in his catalogue and is dense with songs that have long-permeated radio waves. The 50th Anniversary Edition Harvest Box Sets will be released on the 2nd December on vinyl, CD and to stream, boasting the original album, three studio outtakes on CD/7” vinyl, an unreleased live 1971 BBC solo performance on CD, LP and DVD. The film Harvest Time is a previously unseen two-hour documentary filmed in 1971, documenting the Harvest sessions. Also included in the package is a hardbound book and fold-out poster. The vinyl box sets include a lithograph print. HARVEY KUBERNIK spills the beans with the help of some major-league key-players
According to the press release announcement, “fans of the record will receive a new glimpse into I through the two DVDs included in the box set. The first is Harvest Time, an unreleased two-hour film shot during the making of Harvest, with footage from Young’s Harvest Barn sessions in Northern California, recording sessions in Nashville and London. The second is a film of the unreleased solo BBC Concert recorded on 23rd February, ’71. Also included are three unreleased tracks from the original Harvest sessions: ‘Bad Fog Of Loneliness’, ‘Journey Through The Past’, and ‘Dance Dance Dance’. Additionally, the hardbound book will include never-before-seen photos along with extensive liner notes by photographer Joel Bernstein.”
On 23rd February, ’71 at the BBC Television Centre in London, producer/director Stanley Dorfman filmed Neil Young for BBC’s In Concert. It was a pivotal UK small screen exposure for Young, who previewed some un-recorded material that would later surface on his epic ’72 album, Harvest.
Stanley Dorfman: “At the time I was co-producing/directing Top Of The Pops with a guy called Johnnie Stewart. We started it in ’64. Around ’68, I had the thought of having a show of singer-songwriters. And the first was with Leonard Cohen and Julie Felix. We then called them BBC In Concerts and the first one was with Randy Newman.
“When we started this thing, BBC2 had just gone colour. And the head of BBC2 was David Attenborough. And he liked folk music a lot. So I said, ‘Let’s do singer songwriters. Great.’
So, he sent me to California to find acts. And I met [David] Geffen and [Elliot] Roberts. It wasn’t a hard sell at all. The artists couldn’t get on television in England unless they had hit records. The reason Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and the others connected very strongly with the English audience was because they were folk music oriented. British love folk music. The Scottish, the Welsh, the Irish. Plus, Neil Young citing Bert Jansch and The Shadows in his interviews didn’t hurt.
“I loved the singer-songwriters of the time. To me they were the poets. Laura Nyro. Brilliant songs last forever. With all these acts, I never dictated what they should do anyway. They’d come over and we’d have a lunch and a chat. We had marvellous lighting and they lit these things like portraits.
“The other thing that I said to them before doing the program was that the editing would be very minimal. We had four cameras, five if you were lucky, no hand-held, so the only editing you would do was cut tunes out. Or put them in. So I told Neil and all the others, if they wanted to they could come to the editing room the next day and kind of decide how to structure the show. And they all liked doing that. Neil came. He was charming, lovely and delightful. Neil was not elusive in any of my dealings.”
Henry Diltz Courtesy of Gary Strobl
In February ’71, Neil Young travelled to Nashville to tape The Johnny Cash Show. An ABC-TV national broadcast. Neil Young had a star turn on the Campus episode, performing ‘The Needle And The Damage Done’ and ‘Journey Through The Past’.
“One reason country music has expanded the way it has is that we haven’t let ourselves become locked into any category,” Johnny Cash assured me during a ’75 interview I conducted with him in Anaheim California for the now defunct Melody Maker. When I asked Johnny about his bold policy of booking established country artists and mixing relative new comers to his TV program artist lineup, he replied, “We do what we want.” Guesting around Young’s screen stint Cash spot were James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. Huddled around a microphone, these three blossoming talents gave a taste of the burgeoning singer-songwriter movement in rock.
While in Nashville Young took time to record some new material. Serendipity played its designated role as always; a chance encounter with an acquaintance of Elliot Roberts, veteran producer/engineer Elliot Mazer, introduced Neil to a new set of musicians who would influence his sound from this point on. With Mazer handling the console at Quadraphonic Studios, Young laid down the tracks for what would become Harvest, his biggest seller and, for many, his most enduring work.
Elliot Mazer engineered and co-produced the Area Code 615 band. An album of highly respected Nashville session musicians, including Wayne Moss, David Briggs, Mac Gayden, Charlie McCoy, and Kenny Buttrey. (The BBC music program The Old Grey Whistle Test used their ‘Stone Fox Chase’ as the theme.)
Elliot Mazer: “I had a friend who smoked a lot of weed, which I wasn’t then, who played nothing but After The Gold Rush a lot. That was the first time I heard of Neil Young. I was interested in the voice. All of a sudden we read about Neil coming to Nashville to tape The Johnny Cash Show. I said, ‘We need to host a dinner.’ Neil, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Tony Joe White attend, have dinner, and I get introduced to Neil. ‘You work with these Nashville guys. Can I get the studio tomorrow to mess around?’ ‘Sure.’ I moved a session to accommodate him. And called some musicians.'”
The future Stray Gators, a bunch of good ol’ boys covered all the musical bases: rascally Tim Drummond on bass, the timekeeper from Dylan’s immortal Blonde on Blonde, Kenny Buttrey, on silky smooth drums, pianist John Harris, guitar player Teddy Irwin and Ben Keith, Neil’s future right-hand-man on yowling steel guitar. They would set the table for their irascible leader on countless gigs and studio sessions. For now, it was time to bring in their first harvest, and they all knew it was something special.
Elliot Mazer: “I knew ‘Heart Of Gold’ was a hit when Neil played it. His songs are generally an overpowering feeling. Kenny, Drummond, Ben, Teddy and I are in the control room. Small space. Twelve feet by 20 feet. And Neil plays ‘Heart Of Gold’ and I look up and Kenny and I both at the same time put our fingers up as #1. We knew it. From then it was only a matter of time to get the thing done properly and out. Neil’s singing and playing on it was magnificent. His tempo was perfect. It was great. All we had to do was make sure we didn’t mess him up. I used a Neumann U67 or 87 microphone on his voice and rode his sound levels.
“Neil played ‘Old Man’ and sang it beautifully. I knew that was the take. I would know very early with Neil if it would be a take or not. I remember after that take, Neil came into the control room and saw Linda and James there and said, ‘Let’s record the backing vocals.’ And we did the backing vocals right in the control room. James played six-string banjo on it.”
Linda Ronstadt: “I sang in Nashville with Neil [at Quadraphonic]. We were doing The Johnny Cash Show and Neil was there. James Taylor was there. After we got finished with the TV show, Neil said, ‘I’m going to go record. Will you guys come along?’ So we recorded ‘Old Man’ and ‘Heart Of Gold’. It took all night long. We didn’t get there until midnight. It was just before dawn, we came out of there and it had begun to snow.
Henry Diltz Courtesy of Gary Strobl
“I remember I had to be on my knees for most of the session because James and I were singing together. But James was so tall, he had to sit in a chair, then I’d have to bend over to sing, so I knelt on my knees. I could just reach the microphone. (laughs) James was bent over and I was kneeling. So I was really tired by the time we finished. Because it took hours. But we loved the music. It was so good. James was playing a banjo. Actually, it was a guitar with a banjo head on it with six strings. That’s James playing banjo that you hear on ‘Heart Of Gold’. Two of the most beautiful, poignant songs. Neil is just the best. He’s my favourite writer from that time. I was a huge Neil Young fan. We didn’t think in those terms about those songs having an impact. I just went, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever heard. I wanna be on it.’ I was glad that I got to sing on it. I had sort of learned how to do or how Neil’s harmonies go by listening to them on the radio. (laughs). I was just glad to be part of it.”
Elliot Mazer: “Neil and Jack Nitzsche went to London and did ‘A Man Needs A Maid’ and ‘There’s A World’ live with The London Symphony. Neil recorded ‘The Needle And The Damage Done’ from a [30th January, ’71] concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall. We did other tracks that were taped with The Stray Gators in California inside a barn on Neil’s ranch. We used a mobile truck with a UREI tube mixer. ‘Words’, ‘Alabama’ and ‘Are You Ready For The Country’. Nitzsche was on these sessions.”
Finally released in March, ’72, Harvest raced to #1 on Billboard, a defining moment for Neil Young.
“More than anyone in rock ’n’ roll, Neil Young has the guts to be romantic… If ‘Heart Of Gold’ is an admission, ‘A Man Needs A Maid’ is an outcry… Harvest also sounds better than any other Neil Young album.” – Jimm Cushing, University Of California Santa Cruz, The City On A Hill Press, 13th April, ’72. |
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 12, 2023 6:41:06 GMT
Listen To Neil Young’s Isolated Vocals Of ‘Harvest Moon’
iloveclassicrock.com/listen-to-neil-youngs-isolated-vocals-of-harvest-moon/
Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young has been one of the most influential voices of the rock generation. The pleasant combination of folk, blues, and country-inspired music that Young created with Stephen Stills, David Crosby, and Graham Nash in the 1960s brought him notoriety. Then, after resuming his solo career in the 1970s, he experienced unparalleled levels of commercial and critical acclaim.
Young’’ wide-ranging musical vision has made him an influential figure in the careers of innumerable musicians past and present. Musically, Young explored many different styles, but his singing has always been a reliable thing worth nothing of him. This signature tone lends an instant recognition to all of Young’s work and never fails to raise eyebrows. Presented below is the isolated vocals to one of his well-recognized work, “Harvest Moon.”
The moon theme in the song has religious overtones, which Young has discussed. It’s a love song dedicated to his wife Pegi Young, and the music video finds the couple dancing in a dive. Additionally, Linda Ronstadt is singing backup in the song.
Lyrically and musically, the song is a magnificent ode to enduring love and commitment. The guitar and pedal steel guitar take center stage, but it’s the backing vocals that really make this song shine, as they perfectly capture the feeling of a lady who has found happiness with her lover. Taken as a whole, it encapsulates all that is lovely and romantic in the world.
Listen to the isolated vocals of Young below. |
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