With all the hoopla concerning Neil Young's new Chrome Dreams 2 album, it's probably a good time to look at just what Chrome Dreams 1 was/is.
Noted writer/historian Clinton Heylin once referred to Neil Young as the "king of lost albums." And he wasn't exaggerating. Throughout the years, Young as shelved one proposed album after another for a variety of reasons, usually related to his own restless creative spirit and spontaneous work habits.
A list of known Young "lost" albums includes a series of non-releases dating back almost 40 years:
- a 1970 double live album featuring solo and Crazy Horse recordings from the Cellar Door in DC and Carnegie Hall and the Fillmore East in NYC
- several early versions of Tonight's the Night
- Times Square -- a late 80s project that eventually morphed into Freedom and the Eldorado EP
- Odeon Budokan, a 1976 live Crazy Horse Album culled from shows in Japan and the UK, documenting the band at what many consider to be their peak
- Islands in the Sun and alternate versions of Trans, both from the early 80s
- various versions of Old Ways
- This Note's For You Too -- a double live album featuring the Bluenotes - the follow-up to the This Note's For You studio album. This would've been especially interesting for a couple of reasons. First, The Bluenotes were a smokin' live band that were woefully misunderstood by many fans and critics. Second, the Bluenotes studio album gives only a scant picture of this interesting chapter in Neil's career. Finally, the Bluenotes period (87-88) proved to be an exceptionally prolific times for Neil. By the time it ended, Neil and the Bluenotes had performed almost 20 new songs, including several that never were released on any studio album (a few of these were R&B-ish numbers that Neil had written back in the early 60s in Winnipeg when he was playing in local bands like The Squires). TNFY2 was going to feature many of these as well as other key performances from the period. The non-release of TNFY2 left a gaping hole in Neil's creative lineage, one that hopefully will be rectified if and when his long-delayed archival compilations are released.
- and perhaps the most famous example of them all, the legendary Homegrown album.
And then there's Chrome Dreams...version #1...the "original" version. First mentioned in a late 1976 Rolling Stone article, CD1 was slated to be the first album of original material following Zuma. A career retrospective, Decades, was also scheduled for release around the same time. As it turned out, the next Neil release was a collection of new studio material, but it was called American Stars 'n' Bars, not Chrome Dreams. Interestingly, a good chunk of Chrome Dreams did in fact show up on ASB, but it also featured songs that were eventually released on other albums: Comes a Time, Rust Never Sleeps, Hawks and Doves and even Freedom (well over a decade later!).
Here's the proposed lineup for Chrome Dreams 1, and the eventual disposition of the various tracks:
Side One
"Pocahontas" – 3:24 (solo acoustic version -- this track + overdubs released on Rust Never Sleeps)
"Will to Love" – 7:11 (same as American Stars 'n' Bars version)
"Star of Bethlehem" – 2:42 (same as Decades version)
"Like a Hurricane" – 8:14 (same as American Stars 'n' Bars version)
"Too Far Gone" – 2:41 (alternate version recorded 75 or 76 - still unreleased; different than version on Freedom)
Side Two
"Hold Back the Tears" – 5:16 (alternate version - still unreleased)
"Homegrown" – 2:20 (alternate mix of American Stars 'n' Bars version)
"Captain Kennedy" – 2:55 (same as Hawks and Doves version)
"Stringman" – 3:32 (basic track from 3-31-76 Hammersmith Odeon + later studio overdubs - still unreleased although a live version was released on Unplugged)
"Sedan Delivery" – 5:22 (alternate version - still unreleased)
"Powderfinger" – 3:23 (alternate version - still unreleased)
"Look Out for My Love" – 4:06 (same as Comes a Time version)
After years of rumors, reports of the elusive Chrome Dreams acetate surfacing were finally confirmed in the early 90s. Not surprisingly, two bootleg CDs soon followed, one sporting the complete acetate (plus, oddly enough, some uncredited, unrelated live 1977 tracks) and another featuring the unreleased CD tracks intermingled with live versions of the songs that were the same as the released versions (the big news with this second boot was the inclusion of a previously uncirculated studio outtake from the same era: "River of Pride," an early version of "White Line," a song that showed up in a few 75/76 setlists and was eventually released on Freedom 12 years later).
Needless to say, this was a shocking event in the Neil Young fan world, especially since unreleased Neil studio tracks, let alone entire albums, are as rare as hens teeth. Of the unreleased versions on CD, there were three fairly huge shockers:
- the jazzed-up "Stringman," a rarely performed song of considerable power and beauty that always held a special place amongst the faithful
- the beautiful acoustic version of "Powderfinger," almost demo-like in its sonic simplicity but still able to evoke an almost unbelievable degree of weariness and metaphysical dread. Positively devastating. Rumors persist that this is also the version that Neil sent to Lynyrd Skynyrd as a possible cover choice, belying the supposed "feud" between the parties that dated back to "Sweet Home Alabama" (FWIW, in late 77, after the terrible Skynyrd plane crash, Neil performed a fragment of "Sweet Home Alabama" at a Miami concert)
- an amazing slow version of "Sedan Delivery" that is night-and-day different from the almost punk-like RNS version released at the height of the late 70s Punk revolution. This "power swing" version is almost grunge-like in its deliberate intensity -- if you're looking for the roots of Neil's reputation as the "godfather of grunge," look no further than this mindblowing track
Judging from the tracklisting alone, it's easy to say -- especially in retrospect -- that Chrome Dreams would've been one hell of an album had it been released in its intended form, likely even a "classic." Thanks to some resourceful collectors and bootleggers, this is one "lost" album that managed to see the light of day.
Now what else does Neil have lying around in his "reject pile"?
Chrome Dreams 1 article
bogus track info sheet included with a bootleg of Chrome Dreams
acetate label
No comments:
Post a Comment