Neil Young, ‘Archives Volume III 1976-1987’ – A Box Set As Messy As The Era It Covers

I think I’ve mentioned already, these box sets are going to kill me. Pete Townshend released his 14 disc live box and one of my perennial favorites the Faces put out a box with all of their BBC live performances on it that stretched over 8 discs. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to these gargantuan sets over the last month or so… but I don’t mean to complain. Who else but your intrepid blogger would immerse himself in this music and report back to you?  Anyway, not to be outdone, Neil Young (also a big favorite down here at B&V) put out a 17 disc box (with 5 Blu-ray discs in it’s “Super-Deluxe” version). While I’ve gone a while between posts, it takes quite a bit of time to listen to 17 discs of Neil Young. It takes a long time to listen to 17 discs of anybody and again, I love Neil Young. Of course, a drinking excursion this weekend in Wichita, Kansas to see my old college roommate Drew didn’t help move things forward much… you haven’t lived until you’re drinking craft beer at a dive bar listening to blue grass in Wichita, Kansas.

I was really looking forward to Archives Vol 3 1976 to 1987 as I absolutely loved Archives Volume 2 (1972 to 1976). Archives 2 covered one of my favorite periods of Neil’s storied career, the vaunted “Ditch Trilogy.” Neil was distraught over the death of a couple of friends and used that despair to create some of his most compelling music. Archives 3 has a much more daunting task. It covers eleven years instead of just four, which explains why this box is 17 discs instead of the last box’s 10 discs. And arguably, the years 1976 to 1987 were tumultuous years for Young. The back end of the 70s saw the Stills-Young Band collaboration with his old buddy Stephen Stills. American Stars N’ Bars was pieced together with an entire side made up of leftover tracks he hadn’t released yet but had recorded years earlier but was still a solid album. There were triumphs like 1978’s Comes A Time, the momentous Rust Never Sleeps (and of course the companion piece, Live Rust) both from 1979, Hawks And Doves in 1980 was also partly pieced together with older, unreleased tracks but still fun and finally Re*Act*or with Crazy Horse in 1981 was uneven but still solid. But in 1982 Neil jumped to Geffen Records and things get, well, dicey.

The era of 1982 to 1987 is perhaps Neil’s roughest era. Trans (1982’s baffling robotic vocal experiment), Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983’s ill advised rockabilly genre exercise), Old Ways (1985’s confusing country album which saw Geffen sue Neil for recording “unrepresentative” albums), and finally 1986’s Landing On Water which landed on my “Most Disappointing Albums” list saw an almost unprecedented commercial slide for Young. What none of us really understood at the time, Neil had a second song, Ben, with cerebral palsy. He was in intensive 15 hour therapy sessions learning how to communicate with his son which is why some of the songs on Re*Act*or had such repetitive lyrics. Rather than say to Geffen, “Hey, David, I need some family time off,” Neil just kept putting out albums every year or so and one has to think maybe his heart wasn’t in it.

However, I thought that tumultuous era with so many failed albums would make as compelling a box set as Archives 2 had been. Neil uses these box sets to retell and reshape his story. He combines released stuff with unreleased and live recordings to better explain what he was getting at. Or at least redeem periods of his career that his previously released albums/songs might not be able to do. Nobody’s gonna look back at Everybody’s Rockin’ and think, “Yeah, we shouldn’t have panned that album.” I was hoping for a ton of unreleased stuff, maybe if only demo’s or acoustic early versions of songs that sort of got away from Neil in the studio. There’s some of that – and some great live stuff – but not as much as I wanted. Of course, I’ve talked about the poisonous effect of “expectations” before. There were also sequencing decisions that I found frustrating along with the usual, “Why was this included and that not included,” but I’ll expound on that later. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a great box set but man it’s a gutsy one.

Before I delve into the discs, I have to comment on the “Raps” Neil includes. Apparently Neil forgot there’s such a thing as liner notes, so he’s recorded brief segments spread out through this box – something he hadn’t done previously – where he explains some of the background, who he was recording with etc. I found these “Raps” to be utterly unnecessary and frankly annoying. Sigh. Also, in the interest of transparency, I bought the 17-disc edition, and didn’t buy the “Super Deluxe” with the 5 Blu-ray discs. I think that was a tactical error on my part. I think the live stuff on some of those blu-rays would have improved the experience exponentially but hey, even I have a budget and couldn’t stretch for the “Super Deluxe” in this case.

Disc 1 and 2, “Across The Water” re-mines the same shows as the last disc of Archives 2, “Odeon Budokan” which was a shelved live album from 1976. In this case we get a whole disc from London’s Hammersmtih Oden and a whole disc from Budokan. This is great live Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and I can see myself coming back to this, but at the same time I was thinking, why not some live Stills-Young Band? Maybe nobody hit “record” on that short tour… which is a nit in terms of complaining, I know. The first disc opens with the saddest version of “Let It Shine” you’ll ever hear. There are two versions of “Cortez The Killer” that I will never get tired of hearing. The solo’ing here, being Frank Sampedro’s first tour with Crazy Horse is killer. And beyond that first track, Neil sounds like he’s having fun.

Disc 3, “Hitchhiking Judy” was a bit confounding. I bought Hitchhiker years ago, knowing I’d probably be buying it again in a future box. I didn’t buy the live/acoustic Songs For Judy as again, I figured it’ll be in Archives 3. Instead of including both in their entirety, Neil provides a few tracks from each. And there is no Chrome Dreams here which I also expected (although those tracks were recorded earlier). He also included the tracks he recorded with the Band on their Last Waltz live album and again, why?

Disc 4, “Snapshot In Time” features Neil working through new material in a demo/rehearsal setting with Linda Ronstadt and his then girlfriend Nicolette Larson inventing harmony vocals on the spot. Cool, but will I ever return to this? Disc 5, “Windward Passage” revisits his period with the Ducks, which was also previously released. The Ducks were a pickup band from Santa Cruz and they played great country-rock. I do like the version of “Sail Away” here, but found most of it “meh.”

Disc 6 “Oceanside Countryside” is chock full of unreleased versions of mostly acoustic, some country-rock songs. Nicolette is back to provide harmony vocals on three tracks. This disc is one of the gems of the box for me. We’ve all heard these songs before, but not these versions. Neil plays tunes until he finds the right version. Disc 7, “Union Hall” is a live performance featuring some songs from Comes A Time. it’s a pretty raw/bootleg quality recording. Neil’s voice is way in the back, hard to hear. It’s loose and interesting but not essential either.

Disc 8 & 9, “Boarding House Part 1 & 2,” is another gem. It’s a live acoustic performance from 1978 in San Francisco. I wish I had the blu-ray for this one. The only problem, as disc 2 of the riveting performance begins he drops a studio version of him and Devo playing “Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)” that totally throws off the listening experience. It’s jarring. Put it at the end of the performance not smack in the middle. Beside that complaint this set is worth the price of admission in this box.

Disc 10, “Sedan Delivery” is all previously released stuff from Rust Never Sleeps and LIve Rust save for a great little tune, “Bright Sunny Day.” It’s great and covers one of Neil’s best albums, if you don’t already own it all. Disc 11, “Coastline” covers the country stuff recorded for Hawks & Doves, so its previously released as well, but if you don’t have that album, nice to have. We also get a lot of tracks from Re*Act*or and I have to say, those tracks are better than I remembered them to be but who doesn’t love “Surfer Joe and Moe The Sleaze”? I also especially liked hearing “Opera Star” again.

Disc 12 “Trans/Johnny’s Island” highlights the sequencing issues I spoke of earlier. The first half is 6 tracks from Trans. Nobody needs that many songs from Trans. Then, after an infuriating “Rap,” Neil takes us to the unreleased album Johnny’s Island which was a highlight for me. I don’t have much bootleg Neil and I know the album was bootlegged, so it was new to me. The tracks on Johnny’s are acoustic based, with touches of synth that remind me of, yes, that Jimmy Buffett vibe.

Disc 13, “Evolution” is a bit of a mess. It starts with some alt versions of tracks from Old Ways, shifts into Everybody’s Rockin’ for a confounding SIX tracks of rockabilly, and then goes to four tracks that are all synth and drum machines. This disc can give you whiplash but stay until the end for the definitive version of “Razor Love,” a song not released for a number of years in a completely different version.

Disc 14, “Touch The Night” is largely live stuff and includes tracks that would appear on Landing On Water amongst others. They turn “Touch The Night” into a “Cortez The Killer” style jam and it’s awesome. Disc 15, Grey Riders” is a country thing that I actually really enjoyed. I will probably come back to this disc as much as some of the other live stuff like “Boarding House 1 & 2.” It’s Neil with the International Harvesters and I have sadly ignored this part of his career. Disc 16 “Road Of Plenty” is full of Landing On Water tracks and I have to admit, I kind of liked those songs all these years later. It ends with a few songs that would end up in some form on Life with Crazy Horse. I’m a little bummed there wasn’t more from Life on this box.

Finally, Disc 17 “Summer Songs” is another one of the gems of this set. It’s a bunch of acoustic demos – albeit highly produced demos – that Neil describes as sketches. There’s a few songs he’d put on the CSNY album American Dream, including an acoustic version of the title track, and a few that wouldn’t see life for another couple of years on Freedom. It was a great way to end this enormous amount of music.

Yes, there are things missing here. I’d have liked to hear more Life, or better yet I wish he’d included audio of the 1986 tour with Crazy Horse (documented on one of the blu-ray discs), or maybe all of Songs For Judy but with a box this big, what do you leave in, what do you leave out? He didn’t make the decisions I would have, but they are his decisions to make. I really like this box, despite my harsh criticisms, but you really have to pick and choose the material. Every disc has something to like and equally, something you might skip.

This is the kind of box set you really need to stream and perhaps build your own sequence/playlist out of the highlights. It’s too much for one sitting, hell, it’s too much for 8 sittings, but it was worth wading through. This is an unflinching look at a period that saw some of Neil Young’s best and yes, some of his worst. Put in context it makes me like a lot of it better (Re*Act*or, Landing On Water) but some I just can’t get into (Trans, Everybody’s Rockin’) but it makes for a fascinating listen.

As they say at any large buffet, sample what you like, skip the jello. Enjoy this one, it takes a while.

Cheers!