Neil Young Preps to Release “Homegrown” Acoustic Set Recorded in 1974
Homegrown is an unreleased acoustic album by Neil Young from 1974-1975. 2020 appears to be the year that the ever-prolific Young will let them see the light of day. Some historical perspective:
1974 would prove both a turbulent and productive year for Neil Young. With the unreleased 1973 album Tonight’s the Night in the can, Young would record On the Beach in the Spring for a July 1974 release. He would convene Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at his ranch for abortive album sessions before launching an extensive summer stadium tour with the group. At Broken Arrow Ranch on June 17th, Young recorded “Through My Sails” with the quartet. “Love is a Rose,” a reworking of his earlier “Dance, Dance, Dance” was recorded with bassist Tim Drummond on June 16th, as well as “Pardon My Heart.” “Pardon My Heart” would receive backing vocal overdubs from Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot in August 1975 and see release along with “Through My Sails” on that year’s Zuma album with Crazy Horse. On tour, Neil would pause to record another new song, “White Line,” as a duet with The Band‘s Robbie Robertson[2] That year, Young would debut seventeen new songs in concert.
After the tour, Young held recording sessions in Nashville, Los Angeles and at Broken Arrow for a new album. A December 11 session at Quadraphonic Sound Studios in Nashville with Levon Helm yielded “The Old Homestead.” “Star of Bethlehem” and “Deep Forbidden Lake” were recorded two days later at the same studio. “Little Wing” was recorded January 21st at the Village Studios in Los Angeles.
The songs from these sessions are largely acoustic, with many of the songs being solo performances of Young on guitar and harmonica. Young has said that “Homegrown is the missing link between Harvest, Comes a Time, Old Ways and Harvest Moon.” The songs are quite personal, and revealed much of Young’s feelings on his failing relationship at the time with actress Carrie Snodgress. “It was a little too personal…it scared me” Young would later explain to Cameron Crowe in interview.
It was so near to being released that a cover had been created. At the last moment however, Neil Young chose to drop Homegrown and release Tonight’s the Night, an unreleased album recorded in 1973 instead. Young stated that he had a playback party for Homegrown and Tonight’s the Night happened to be on the same reel. He decided to release Tonight’s the Night after that listening because of “its overall strength in performance and feeling” and because Homegrown “was just a very down album.”
Unreleased songs
In his authorized biography of Neil Young, Shakey, author Jimmy McDonough offers descriptions of several of the performances captured during the sessions:
- “Homegrown” – “a goofy tribute to hemp recorded in a much higher version by the Horse.”
- “Vacancy” – “a killer “Vacancy” features Young mangling guitar and harmonica simultaneously.”
- “Homefires” – a “stark acoustic performance.”
- “Try” – “in “Try”, a faint ray of optimism that followed ‘Separate Ways’ in one running order for the album, Young paid tribute to Carrie Snodgress by adapting bits of her language into verse: ‘I’d like to take a chance,’ yelps Young over a rollicking piano, ‘but shit, Mary, I can’t dance.'” Emmylou Harris also contributed background vocals.
- “Love-Art Blues” – a “stark acoustic performance.”
- “Frozen Man”
- “Separate Ways” – “the song begins in the middle of a doomy chord; Tim Mulligan lunged for the record button just as Young and the band dove into the song. Levon Helm rattles out a slow counterpoint as Ben Keith spins up a stark, bird-on-the-wire steel solo that has to be one of the lonesomest sounds ever recorded. “I won’t apologize/The light shone in from your eyes/It isn’t gone/And it will soon come back again,” sings Young, sounding dead.”[2]
- “Daughters”
- “We Don’t Smoke It” – “an inebriated blues vamp that would’ve sounded right at home on Tonight’s the Night.”
- “White Line” – “a bittersweet song that Young had recorded as an acoustic duet with The Band‘s Robbie Robertson in England a few days before CSNY‘s Wembley show.
- “Give Me Strength” – “on December 16, Young recorded “Give Me Strength. The lyrics catch him struggling to make the final break from Snodgress. It features a bittersweet chorus: ‘The happier you fly, the sadder you fall/The laughter in your eye is never all.’ Untrained singer Ellen Talbot sang along on harmony, providing a crazy edge more than suitable for one of the last Snodgress songs. The sound is almost mystical. Guitar and harmonica, plus luminous overdubs of a tinkling piano and a finger tapping a paper cup, add glimmers of color that come and go. An impressionistic sound, precisely constructed without losing any of its spontaneous feel.”
Other songs from these sessions include “Barefoot Floors”, “Bad News has Come to Town”, “Tie Plate Yodel #3”, “Kansas”, “Mexico” (the latter two “solo Young performances—short, fragmentary and hallucinogenic”) and “Florida” (“some cockamamie spoken-word dream [printed out, for reasons no one can remember, in the booklet for ‘Tonight’s the Night’], set to the shrieking accompaniment of either Young or Keith drawing a wet finger around the rim of a glass”).
There has been much confusion and speculation as to which of these 10 songs were slated for the album’s final track selection. Additionally, Young also had other songs like “Mediterranean,” “Through My Sails,” and “Hawaiian Sunrise” (aka “Maui Mama”), scheduled for a water-themed album; other songs, including “Human Highway,” “Pushed it Over the End” and “Traces” were saved for the planned CSNY reunion album that would not materialize for another 14 years. Contrary to speculation, these songs were never considered for the Homegrown project.
