One of many greatest challenges for any artist is realizing when a creation — a music, a narrative, a portray — is completed and able to be shared with the world. Greater than many, Neil Younger has proven a willingness to attend, recording songs and full albums — and even performing them in live performance — after which sitting on them for years… or a long time.
In simply certainly one of many examples, “Winterlong,” certainly one of his biggest songs, was previewed in live performance as a piece in progress in 1968, recorded and carried out stay with Loopy Horse over the subsequent two years, then re-recorded and slotted for inclusion on no less than two totally different albums earlier than lastly being launched on his “Decade” compilation in 1977. Likewise, his legendary 1970 Fillmore East live performance with Loopy Horse was nearly launched a number of instances earlier than he lastly issued it thirty-six years after it was recorded; his “Chrome Dreams” studio album was thought of for launch in 1977 however didn’t come out till final 12 months. And in 2020, upon the belated launch of his glorious 1975 studio album “Homegrown,” he truly apologized to his followers for holding it again for thus lengthy.
So almost all of Younger’s albums have parallel histories — alternate variations together with contemporaneous songs that wouldn’t be launched till lengthy after. His mercurial nature and sudden modifications of coronary heart are a part of his legend and what retains followers fascinated, greater than 60 years after his recording profession started.
Whereas “Early Daze” wasn’t meant to be an album, it consists of many songs recorded in 1969, within the months after the discharge of Younger’s iconic “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” breakthrough. Practically all of those songs would flip up in numerous variations in many alternative locations: There are early variations of “Winterlong”; “Dance Dance Dance” and “Downtown” (each of which turned up on Loopy Horse’s 1971 debut album); the traditional “Helpless,” which might be one of many timeless tracks on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Younger’s “Déjà Vu”; the countryesque “Wonderin’,” which Younger wouldn’t launch till 1983’s rockabilly-flavored “Everybody’s Rockin’.” There are additionally totally different mixes or variations of the “Nowhere” tracks “Cinnamon Girl” and “Down by the River,” together with early variations of “Birds” (an alternate recording would seem a 12 months afterward “After the Gold Rush”) and, lastly, a model of “Look at All the Things,” written and sung by Loopy Horse’s enormously proficient guitarist-singer Danny Whitten, who would die of a drug overdose in 1972 and sadly encourage Younger’s darkish “Tonight’s the Night” album.
Whereas all of those songs are full and the taking part in is on level, there’s additionally a free high quality to them that feels such as you’re sitting in on a rehearsal — Younger famously liked Loopy Horse’s ramshackle groove, which may go off the rails at any second and sometimes did in live performance (and nonetheless does, because the band’s present summer time tour reveals), but additionally could make for completely electrifying rock and roll.
Younger, simply 23 when most of those songs have been recorded, had solely been taking part in with this group for a couple of months: Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina had been appropriated from a band referred to as the Rockets, and have been joined by Younger’s longtime collaborator Jack Nitzsche, a keyboardist/ arranger who’d labored extensively with Phil Spector and the Rolling Stones (and likewise Buffalo Springfield).
That newness contributes enormously to the freshness of those variations, which even have that surreal sense that always accompanies early variations of now-iconic songs: At one level, we hear producer David Briggs say, “Okay we’re rolling, what’s the name of this one Neil? ‘Down by the River’? Okay, ‘Down by the River,’ take one…”
Greater than a half century later, you’re there with them at Wally Heider Studio in Hollywood, listening to Younger and Loopy Horse spend 9 minutes breaking in certainly one of rock’s most traditional songs, and plenty extra apart from …
