I came across some exciting news about The Icon, The Man and The Inspiration of the Canadian Music Scene. Hot on the heels of last years big fuck you to US foreign policy, Living With War, The Fillmore East recordings from 1970 and the DVD release of Heart of Gold, probably the finest live music cinematic achievement I have seen since The Last Waltz, it seems fans once again are about to get a treat (or 2, or 3).
By BRAD WHEELER:A record of a homecoming is on the way home. Material culled from a pair of Neil Young solo concerts at Toronto's Massey Hall almost 36 years ago is set for a March release. Previously available in bootleg form as Going Back to Canada, the live album captures an enigmatic singer-songwriter at his career's early creative peak.Young was a star rising, not much more than 24, when he introduced Old Man at Massey Hall as "a new song." On Jan. 19, 1971, with friends and proud family in attendance, the youthful brooder played two sold-out concerts, part of the Journey Through the Past solo tour that began in Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theatre and ended, in late February, at London, England's Royal Festival Hall.The crowd-drawing event was documented by the press, including an account by The Globe and Mail's Jack Batten, who noted a young audience's devotion to an artist who presented himself as distinctly Canadian. Wrote Batten: "There's no mistaking his sly manner, his flat speaking voice and his rather dour facial expression (which not even long hair can disguise) for anyone but a northerner."Batten was not alone in his characterization of Young -- in his onstage persona, at least -- as a lamenter: "He comes on wearing his private rain cloud like a halo," was how another writer put it.As far as his career was concerned, Young had no need to be grim. The man in patched jeans, lumberjack shirt and work boots had sold more than one-million copies of his album After the Gold Rush (1970) at that point, and his quarter share of the success of America's biggest band at the time -- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- would have been substantial.The songs performed on the Shuter Street stage represented a memorable surge of songwriting, with some of material already released (Helpless, Cowgirl in the Sand, Ohio, Down By the River, I Am a Child) and some issued later (Old Man, The Needle and the Damage Done, A Man Needs a Maid).The concerts were recorded by producer David Briggs, yet Young himself never heard the tapes until 1996 -- a quarter-century later. At the turn of the seventies, Young was a driven artist, on the move creatively and otherwise. Once the material that ended up on 1973's Harvest was recorded (during and after the tour), the Massey tapes were shelved.Those shelves and others are now being cleared. Fresh rumours have Young's long-imminent archival box set (possibly 32 CDs in all) coming out later this year. In the meantime, the first CD of the Archives: Performance Series -- the stellar, if truncated (at 43 minutes) Live at the Fillmore East: March 6 & 7, 1970 -- was released late last year on Reprise Records, long the label home of Young. The second CD of the series (the forthcoming Massey release) is rumoured to include a DVD component, with film footage or a photo montage from the Toronto shows. No further CDs in the series are planned.Available now on iTunes is The Bridge School Collection, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, a massive compilation of recordings from Young's star-studded annual benefit concerts. The artists involved include Radiohead's Thom Yorke (who covers After the Gold Rush on the first volume), Willie Nelson and Pearl Jam, and Canadian acts Sarah McLachlan, the Cowboy Junkies, the Barenaked Ladies and Tegan and Sara.Young only performs on five tracks in the whole set, all in the second volume (including Helpless with Bruce Springsteen and Down By the River with Crazy Horse and Elvis Costello), as well as on a pair of bonus tracks on Vol. 1 (Cortez the Killer and a Comes a Time/Sugar Mountain medley by Young and Dave Matthews, available only if the entire 80-track set is purchased).Young, with cohorts David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, last performed in Canada this past summer in support of his anti-George W. Bush harangue, the Living With War album. Reportedly all of the tour's concerts were filmed, with a DVD scheduled to be released in 2008 (a U.S. election year). As well, a version of Living with War featuring stripped-down arrangements, a rawer guitar sound and a bonus DVD was released last month. A blast from Young's past comes in the form of a rare Motown single, from 1966 by the Mynah Birds -- a Toronto-based garage band that included Young (on 12-string acoustic), bassist Bruce Palmer and Rick (Superfreak) James. The record (It's My Time, with B-side Go On and Cry) was pulled the day of its release because of James's AWOL status with the U.S. Navy. It now sees the light of day as part of a five-CD set, The Complete Motown Singles: Vol. 6, 1966.The humble song may have been called It's My Time, but Young's era was actually to come a bit later -- and to continue long after. In the review of the 1971 Massey Hall show, Globe reviewer Batten praised Young's singing, yet reckoned the green tunesmith needed "more seasoning." But he added that Young had so much talent and so much "quiet charm" that the artist was "bound to stick around for a long time, maturing and writing and rewarding his audiences."And so it happened.Tonight was the nightOn Jan. 19, 1971, Neil Young played a pair of solo shows at Toronto's Massey Hall. The next day, a review by then pop-music writer Jack Batten, excerpted below, ran in The Globe and Mail."All of a sudden, without anyone (except a million kids) noticing, Neil Young of Winnipeg and Toronto has arrived as a major pop star, someone to reckon with on the rich, heady, crowd-drawing level of James Taylor. If you don't believe it, you should have been at Massey Hall last night where he played two concerts for sell-out houses of mostly young people who were there not merely to listen but to worship."From the opening ovation to the closing and standing ovations, the audience was positively adulatory, rewarding Young with constant bursts of clapping for every trivial move, from sipping water to announcing new songs, a fact I mention not merely because the handclapping was by itself a drag but also because it constantly intruded on any close relationship between Young and the best part of his audience. . . .""His songwriting isn't his strongest talent. (His lovely clean voice is.) He does have a knack for writing one- and two-liners that stick in the head, and occasionally, as in a new song he sang about a hired man on his ranch, he comes up with numbers that sustain a mood for their entire duration. .
