The final music disc in Neil Young’s DVD Archive Box Set deals with the time surrounding the release of Harvest, his most successful album commercially. This is the record that inspired Young’s famous — or perhaps infamous — quote after the record’s success about him deciding to musically stay in the middle of the road or drive into a ditch.
By Young’s account he drove into the ditch and stayed away from the mainstream. That might be a little overstated. He’s had artistic and commercial successes since during his long and buoyant career and some were planted firmly in the mainstream.
But it is arguable if Harvest was really a mainstream record per se. It was if you’re only measure is commercial success. But in any era or in fact any time frame, Harvest is a perfect album at a perfect time, a synthesis of accessible songs combined with artistically uncompromising ones, ranging from acoustic and electric country-rock to hard rocking fare that struck at the right moment of the singer-songwriter era of the early 1970s.
The disc includes songs from Harvest, inexplicably not all of them, and a bit more musically. It also contains the most video content of the entire set — at least in my searching — either hidden on the Timeline or tucked neatly under the main menu of songs in the Video Log. And it’s all very interesting and fascinating.
Six of the 10 songs as recorded on Harvest are included. What’s missing? The opener Out On The Weekend; There’s A World with the London Symphony; the original version of A Man Needs A Maid, also with London Symphony; and the original version of Words (Between The Lines Of Age).
What’s new or relatively new? A live version of Heart Of Gold from the same concert at UCLA in January, 1971, that produced the album version of Needle And The Damage Done; a previously unreleased version of Bad Fog Of Loneliness with the Stary Gators, recorded during the February Harvest sessions with Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor; an unreleased Dance, Dance, Dance, recorded at Island in London with Graham Nash; a previously unreleased mix of Maid; an unreleased version of Journey Through The Past, a tune that seems to have limitless arrangements; the 15-minute version of Words from the Journey Through The Past soundtrack, Young’s mainly unreleased movie that is the final disc in this set; an unreleased mix of Soldier with Young solo on piano and vocal, listed as recorded by L.A. Johnson inside a sawdust burner in Kings Mountain, California; and the single War Song with Graham Nash.
That’s a lot of rare or unreleased material but does it completely make up for the missing tracks from Harvest? Well, I would like to have had at least Out On The Weekend without having to buy the remastered Harvest, which was released earlier in July.
The video included is truly a goldmine. On the timeline we get a little bit of a behind the scenes look with the London Symphony Orchestra at Barking Town Hall in the U.K. before viewing the full performance of There’s A World, recorded on February, 28, 1971, after the first Harvest sessions in Nashville. There’s one more recording of this track, March 1, listed in the leather-bound book that comes with the Archive. So that sort of takes care of that missing track from the album.
The second video on the timeline is a short version of Gator Stomp in Young’s barn at the Broken Arrow Ranch, which figures prominently in other videos, with Jack Nitzsche on lap steel guitar.
Five videos are included in the log as well as two raps, one on Needle from an LSO concert and one on the Johnny Cash show from a Cellar Door performance in Washington, D.C.
The third is an interview with Young on his ranch, sitting in the old convertible that graces the album cover for Disc 8. This was part of a Dutch TV special, the same that included the Old Man interview on a previous disc. Young talks about songwriting and how no matter how happy he is, his songs still come out with a feeling of loneliness and dark images like the burned out basement of After The Gold Rush.
Another video from Barking Hall is about 10 minutes and the more interesting of the two. This one spends a great deal of time before a recording of A Man Needs A Maid showing the problems Young was having playing with the orchestra. He complains about the LSO always being behind him rhythmically and Nitzsche explains it’s because they read the music note-for-note as it appears on the page.
Young does get a nice take however as conductor Thomas Meecham is shown glancing back and forth between Young at piano, singing live to tape, and the orchestra to get everything happening in sync. I’m a bit tired of the track Maid, but this gave me a renewed interest in it. Compelling video.
The next two are live recordings in Young’s barn at Broken Arrow on September, 21, 1971, the first Are You Ready For The Country? and then Alabama. Both masters were recorded five days later in the barn, which was rigged with a mobile recording unit, but they both offer insight into the development of the songs. Very interesting material. That’s followed by a 13-minute sequence, part interview, of Young lying down on a hill of straw with a Coors about 50 yards from the barn, first listening to a playback of Words and marveling at the natural echo of the hills and then talking about his good fortune at this happy time in his life while also pondering fame and money, two persistent themes in his career.
Still more. On the song selection menu, which is styled as a file cabinet, there’s a video listed under the Harvest album tab showing Young at the printing plant as slicks of the Harvest album cover are being produced. Then on the More Menu page we find Young in a small record shop, location not displayed, where he discovers CSN and CSNY bootleg albums, the latter of which he informs the clerk he is taking because it’s his. He eventually winds up on the phone with a manager of the store explaining why he’s taking it. This is a long piece but kind of fascinating, especially in his confrontation with the clerk who plays it unconvincingly dumb to the idea of bootlegs but winds up selling Young a candle.
There’s one last bit from ’97 with Joel Bernstein asking Young about when Needle was written. A bit exhausting tracking all this stuff down but fun and well worth it.
As to the music, getting Bad Fog is nice, a song that would have fit right in with the rest of the Harvest material. But one can see why it was left off, given the approximately 40-minute time limit of albums in the ’70s. Another treat is the arrangement of Journey with the Stray Gators, perhaps my favorite. I’ve heard it so many times solo or with limited instrumentation, but it makes a bigger impact with a band as a country tune, something that doesn’t come across completely in other versions.
The rest of the rarities are just as interesting: the haunting sound of the solo Soldier; Dance, Dance, Dance, a simple arrangement with just Nash and Young; and War Song, in the vein of Ohio though not as successful, with Nash and the Gators. The version of Words, of course, goes on forever but it is a mesmerizing tune with its alternate measures of 6/8 and 5/8 in the solos.
The three Topanga discs, particularly the last, are my favorites from this Archive, but you can’t fault North Country. It’s loaded with inspiring music and a wealth of video.
The book that accompanies the Archive is very useful when listening to and watching this disc. It makes you realize what an incredibly productive period 1971 was for Young and particularly January and February despite back problems that would force him to have surgery in August. January saw the Massey Hall gig (Disc 7) and UCLA show, while early February had Young playing with what would become the Gators for the first time in Nashville for the first Harvest sessions. Add to that a Johnny Cash show, the London sessions for the two orchestral pieces, a BBC concert, the London Nash sessions and it adds up to a pretty active six weeks.
A lot of it is right here on Disc 8, North Country.