Last year Neil Young made his complete recorded works available for free streaming on a new site he called the Neil Young Archives. Many of his staunchest fans claimed that little previously unheard material was available for listening, however, a situation Young will now rectify.
This spring Young will post to his archives Roxy—Tonight’s The Night Live, a 1973 concert with a group he called the Santa Monica Flyers. The show took place after Young had recorded his album Tonight’s the Night in the wake of the drug overdose deaths of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and Young’s friend and roadie Bruce Berry. (The album was not released until 1975.)
Related: When Neil Young found a Neil Young bootleg
Young relates the backstory of the album and September 1973 Roxy performance in a new section of the archives site, a faux newspaper called the Times-Contrarian. He writes, “We had finished recording and decided to celebrate with a gig at a new club opening on the Sunset Strip, Roxy. We went there and recorded for a few nights, opening Roxy. We really knew the Tonight’s the Night songs after playing them for a month, so we just played them again, the album, top to bottom, without the added songs, two sets a night for a few days. We had a great time.”
In the new “issue” of Times-Contrarian, Young also announces the release of a new album titled Alchemy, featuring recordings made with Crazy Horse on tour in Europe, Australia and Canada during 2012-13. Young calls Alchemy “the last album recorded with Crazy Horse” (he does not elaborate) and writes, “For me, Alchemy harkens back to the best of Live Rust and Weld, beginning to look like a circle….. but not totally joined.”
Young states that the album will include both familiar and “unreleased and rare songs” and claims the album “is a little like Spinal Tap as well.”
Watch Neil and Crazy Horse perform “Like a Hurricane” at Fam Aid in 2012
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Jump into a conversationSo are these being released as CDs too, or just something he’s posting online?
As far as we know, only online at this time. But with Neil, anything is possible.