Neil Young
A Treasure
Reprise
A few explanations are in order to understand what’s going on
with this new live album. It contains material from Young’s ’84-
’85 tour with the International Harvesters—an all-star crew of
country musicians who backed him on his
Old Ways album and
made notable appearances with him at Live Aid, Farm Aid, and
Austin City Limits.
Old Ways, released by Geffen, was Young’s
most solid country effort to date and revealed his sympathy for
the plight of the American farmer. Geffen and Young famously
sued each other shortly thereafter, with Geffen challenging
Young’s foray into country as a commercially damaging act.
Meanwhile, recordings of that celebrated tour, which included
unreleased songs like “Nothing is Perfect” and “Grey Riders,”
have remained in limbo until now.
A Treasure is a 12-song time capsule of that tour and includes
five unreleased tracks that Young fans have been wondering
about for 25 years. It’s being offered in the standard mp3 and
CD formats, as well as a CD/Blu-ray package that aims to give
fans an offering in the audio connoisseur-preferred Blu-ray format,
even though no known video exists to give viewers moving
visuals of some of the performances. Blu-ray viewers see the
album cover on the screen during much of the album. Since
something is better than nothing, existing video of Neil performing
some of the songs is synced up with the audio on the
Blu-ray, even though a few different musicians rotated in and
out of the International Harvesters and this video may not accurately
show who can be heard playing, if that makes sense. This
is a welcome concession for Young fans that relish a Blu-ray listening
experience. But it’s a bit ironic since the mix, which isn’t
bad at all, is still limited by the quality of the source recordings.
In a video on his website, Young admits, “we didn’t use good
sound in the first place,” while emphasizing that the recordings
are “… the best versions of these songs.”
With that in mind, listeners can approach the album with
a new-old-stock kind of expectation, which is appropriate
considering the contents. Standout Ben Keith, the late steel
player who can be heard on Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces,”
as well as Young’s original version of “Old Man,” adds rich
textures of lap and pedal steel throughout the album. His
country-western (as they used to call it) authenticity is matched
by Rufus Thibodeaux’s fiddle. Right out of the gate, the two
set the mood for the album on the opening track, “Amber
Jean”— a Texas two-step number recorded when Young and
the band appeared on the
Nashville Now TV show with Ralph
Emery. Other standouts include the honky tonk-infused “Let
Your Fingers Do the Walking,” a bluegrass-meets-rock version
of “Get Back to the Country,” and a locomotive-strong performance
of “Southern Pacific.”
The band’s ability to seamlessly fuse a wide range of country—
from barroom stomp to Texas swing—with Young’s characteristic
strained crooning and a bit of his trademark gritty guitar
comping, shows why Young’s instincts were dead-on as usual.
Young had been a fine collaborator many times in his career up
to that point and had drawn profusely from country music, so
it’s no surprise that he and the International Harvesters were
such a good fit. This material is as strong as Young fans will
remember it being on those iconic television performances.
The ’80s will forever be identified with Flock of Seagulls
haircuts, DX7 keyboard sounds, and spandex rock, but there
was also Neil Young, as usual, being his erratic self—collaborating
and creating music that is indeed a treasure to revisit after a
few decades.