Neil Young: Official Release Series Discs 5-8 (180g) Vinyl 4LP Neil Young

Limited edition four album boxset for Black Friday Record Store Day 2014! Neil Young’s Time Fades Away was an unprecedented album when it was first released. Never before had a rock musician released a live album of all original material. It was recorded with The Stray Gators on the tour following 1972’s highly successful Harvest. Young has said: “My least favorite record is Time Fades Away. I think it’s the worst record I ever made—but as a documentary of what was happening to me, it was a great record. I was onstage and I was playing all these songs that nobody had heard before, recording them, and I didn’t have the right band. It was just an uncomfortable tour. It was supposed to be this big deal—I just had Harvest out, and they booked me into ninety cities. I felt like a product, and I had this band of all-star musicians that couldn’t even look at each other. It was a total joke.” However, many fans seem to disagree. The album is seen as the missing link of the “Ditch Trilogy,” Young’s three consecutive early 1970s albums. It was followed by Tonight’s The Night, arguably the darkest album of Young’s career. Young used the album to explore the depth of his pain over the heroin overdose deaths of Crazy Horse’s Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry. The trilogy closes with the absolutely essential On The Beach. Some of Young’s richest and most metaphorical work is contained within the “blues trilogy” that is at the heart of the album. Official Release Series Discs 5-8 closes with Zuma, the album that came out after the “Ditch Trilogy.”

• 4LP vinyl boxset
• includes On The Beach, Time Fades Away, Tonight’s The Night and Zuma
• remastered from the original analog studio recordings at Bernie Grundman Mastering
• historically accurate artwork reproduced by Neil Young’s long time art director Gary Brden
• reissued on 180g audiophile vinyl for the first time in over 40 years
• pressed at Pallas Mfg Germany
• limited to 3500 copies worldwide
• music label: Reprise Records 2014

reviewed by Hank Ohs 01/2015