Neil Young Reissues Four of the "Missing Six"
Release Date: August 19, 2003
To Neil Young aficionados, this past summer was one big celebration of the aging rocker’s music new and old. First, he toured with Crazy Horse for the first time in many years promoting their new concept album Greendale. The bigger news though was that the Canadian icon allowed a few of his rare recordings to finally be released on CD.
Due to Young’s insistence, six of his records had never previously made it from LP to CD because he felt that the original analog recordings sounded better. Finally, this summer, he opened the vaults, and allowed his label, Reprise Records, to release four of what his fans have always collectively referred to as “The Missing Six.” The recordings (On the Beach, American Stars N’ Bars, Reactor and Hawks and Doves) were released as High Definition Compatible Digital® (HDCD®) discs. Two of the discs were released in the seventies and two in the early eighties, and each represents a particular period of Young’s ornery musical journey.
Here follows snapshot reviews of each of these reissues.
On the Beach (First released in 1974)
Released almost 30 years ago, before compact discs were invented, On the Beach has fetched exorbitant prices on vinyl for decades for it was a rare find. Many Young fans agree that it’s one of his best albums.
This introspective journey shows the tortured artist at his best dealing with the turmoil and tragedy that surrounded him.
A stark, dark and pensive album, On the Beach features eight songs that represent Young’s state of mind at the time, epitomized by the haunting, morose “See the Sky About to Rain.”
“Walk On” and “For the Turnstiles” made it onto Decade, the quasi-greatest hits album from the late seventies, but the other six tracks had never been released on CD until now. The title track is one of Neil’s best portraits of his struggle of dealing with the media and stardom from his early years illustrated by the line, “ I went to the radio interview/ felt myself alone at the microphone.”
Guests include Rick Danko and Levon Helm of the Band.
The best track is the pensive “Ambulance Blues” that features this great verse, “I guess I’ll call it sickness gone / It's hard to say the meaning of this song. / An ambulance can only go so fast/ It’s easy to get buried in the past/When you try to make a good thing last.”
American Stars ’N Bars (First released in 1977)
This album is another of Young’s ventures towards country with a few rockers thrown in for good measure. Guests include longtime Young session player Ben Keith, who contributes steel guitar and dobro; Nicolette Larson and Linda Ronstadt add their vocals to five tracks. The ethereal Emmylou Harris duets with Young on the touching ballad “Star of Bethlehem.”
He ends the album with two of his best tracks - rocking out with Crazy Horse on the classic “Like a Hurricane” and the environmentally conscience song “Homegrown.”
Hawks & Doves (First released in 1980)
Hawks & Doves is one of Neil’s long-lost gems, and one of his best recordings from the eighties – a decade that saw him be sued from his then record label Geffen for purposely making records that weren’t commercial.
Before recording a rockabilly album, a synthesizer-sounding album, and a blues album, Neil released the diverse Hawks & Doves. The album made more sense on LP when the two-side format was available since the nine songs can be grouped into two distinct genres. The first four songs that comprised Side A on the original recording are folksy spacey numbers, while the flip side features five country-swing rockers.
Bizarre tales featuring characters from another planet marks the opening set of songs like “Lost in Space” and “Captain Kennedy.” The second set mixes the political (“Union Man,” and “Comin’ Apart At Every Nail” – the latter featuring backing vocals by Hillary O’Brien – with country love songs (“Coastline” and “Stayin’ Power.)
Reactor (First released in 1981)
Recorded with longtime musical mates Crazy Horse, this is the worst of the four reissues – a sloppy collection of garage-rock songs. Songs have little meat to their lyrics; the epitome of this, no pun intended, is “t-bone” with its ridiculous refrain repeated forever over the course of nine minutes, “Got mashed potatoes/ Got mashed potatoes / Got mashed potatoes / Ain’t got no T-bone/ Ain’t got no T-bone.”
Neil critiques the decline of American made automobiles in the early eighties with “Motor City,” lamenting “My old car keeps breaking down. / My new car ain’t from Japan. / There’s already too many Datsuns / In this town.”
While Reactor is typical of Neil Young in many ways – the loner doing whatever he wants and experimenting with sounds, in retrospect, it’s no wonder that this album constituted one of the records that David Geffen took offense to as non-commercial and sued Young over.
All these CDs are now available on Reprise Records
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