Neil Young Archives Vol III

Better to Burn Out: Neil Young’s ‘Archives Vol. III (1976-1987)’

Neil Young’s Archives Vol. III (1976-1987) is the most substantial of his three archival releases, providing an ecstatic vision of what it means to “burn out”. 

Archives Vol. III (1976-1987)
Neil Young
Reprise
6 September 2024

When Kurt Cobain took his life 30 years ago this past April, one line revealed from his suicide note was the unattributed adage, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Neil Young’s name was not mentioned, but everyone knew the line’s source. As a tragic misinterpretation, it hit hard, especially Young himself. “When he died and left that note, it struck a deep chord inside of me,” Young writes in his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace (2012). He went on to record Sleeps with Angels (1994), released only a handful of months later, as a tribute to Cobain.

Neil Young was ordained the godfather of grunge during the early 1990s, though the origins of this reputation go back to the 1970s when he recorded Rust Never Sleeps (1979) with Crazy Horse. On that raucous and notoriously loud LP, Young asserted his alignment with the emergent punk rock scene through the anthem “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”, which name-checked Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) of the Sex Pistols. He also declared in passing how it’s better to burn out than to fade away. Interpreted at the time as a critique of his aging musical generation, it was also primarily directed at himself. Punk had provided an unlikely path out of his so-called “Ditch” era when he released the canonical Time Fades Away (1973), On the Beach (1974), and Tonight’s the Night (1975).

Archives Vol. III (1976-1987) documents this transitional period when Young faced a fateful fork in the road between repeating what he had done before and going in a new direction. Or, as he would have it, several directions at once. Though Young may have felt older and held a fear of becoming artistically obsolete, he was only 33 years old when Rust Never Sleeps appeared. In retrospect, he had plenty of time and energy, even if anxieties of irrelevance lurked in the background. Archives Vol. III consequently holds up a mirror to a distinct period in Neil Young’s career that was simultaneously an affirmation of the past, an engagement with the present, and a set of tentative experiments with the future.

Neil Young’s archival releases thus far have been erratically timed and shaped, if also consistently fascinating. Archives Vol. I (1963-1972) (2009) encompassed his early years with the Squires, Buffalo Springfield, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, along with material from his solo albums Neil Young (1968), After the Goldrush (1970), and Harvest (1972). Crazy Horse recordings circa Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969) also appear. Archives Vol. II (1972-1976) arrived over a decade later in 2020, covering the Ditch sequence and leftovers from the Crazy Horse outing Zuma (1975). Like its forebear, this second installment revealed an inexhaustible wellspring of ideas and an ethic of constant refinement. These preceding collections included 268 tracks, with approximately 110 being previously unreleased.

The numbers for Archives Vol. III similarly compare with 198 tracks, including 136 that are either previously unreleased or unreleased versions of songs. However, this box set is larger overall, reflecting how Young’s career had acquired not only volume but breadth. Archives Vol. III consists of lines, circles, and triangles. Though moving inexorably to the present, the linear progression of Young’s writing and recording is complemented by live material that circles back to his early albums. Depending on the backing band or the setlist, the tracks on Archives Vol. III also reveal the ways he triangulated between songs, albums, and periods of his career to come up with new ways of framing, revising, and redefining his already substantial oeuvre.

Against this backdrop, Archives Vol. III alternates between live and studio recordings across its 17 CDs. The first two consist of unreleased concert material from 1976’s Across the Water Tour in Japan and Britain with Crazy Horse. It sets a comfortable tone with all the classics at hand: “Heart of Gold”, “Cowgirl in the Sand”, “Human Highway”, two versions of “Cortez the Killer”, you name it. The third disc, Hitchhikin’ Judy, consists of studio recordings from the 1976 sessions for Hitchhiker (2017) as well as live tracks that ended up on Songs for Judy (2018). On the back end are two songs from Neil Young’s appearance with Joni Mitchell at The Last Waltz concert with the Band on Thanksgiving Day that year.

In short, Archives Vol. III puts together both known and unknown recordings in chronological order, resulting in a mosaic of events and collaborators. The man kept busy, and there are occasional whiplash moments. To assist with transitions, interspersed throughout are tracks listed as “raps”, with Young explaining what the listener is about to hear, the circumstances of the recording, and so forth. These raps are insightful though often pithy with basic information and tantalizingly short. When he introduces the informal session for Snapshot in Time from 1977, he briefly describes sitting around a table at Linda Ronstadt’s home in Malibu with Nicolette Larson, David Briggs, and Ronstadt, leaving you wanting more.

Other collaborators include the Ducks, a garage rock project from 1977 centered in Santa Cruz, California, and the International Harvesters, a country music ensemble that Neil Young toured with during the mid-1980s. These associations were short-lived, but nonetheless point to how Young constantly sought outlets and fellow musicians to express his ideas and take him in new directions. To the anticipated chagrin of some Young fans, Devo also appear on a live version of “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” that is faster than the original and almost ten minutes long. Not everything hits the mark, but that is the point with a collection of this kind. 

Did I mention the films included in Archives Vol. III? There are 11 total. Honestly, these films need their own separate review to do justice to them. Unsurprisingly, they range from classic to relatively awful. The former includes Rust Never Sleeps (1979), though there are odd moments like the initial scene that has hooded roadies looking like Jawas from Star Wars, setting up a giant microphone while “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles is playing in the background. Young, who directed the film, clearly reflects a late 1970s zeitgeist and plays a joke on his fans.  

Other films include Across the Water (2023), which consists of unreleased footage from his tour to Japan and Britain. This archival look is historically significant and fun to watch. There are hotel antics involving the lighting of a paper bouquet on fire and Young busking on the street with his banjo. It’s entertaining to see Young and Crazy Horse debate whether they should do an encore or not at a show in Glasgow (they do). A Treasure (2011) documents his time with the International Harvesters, while Solo Trans (1984), directed by Hal Ashby, captures the tour for his divisive LP Trans (1983) with Neil Young briefly in full 1980s glory.

A number of these films complement the audio tracks with the live recordings and archival footage drawn from the same concert. However, the most fascinating material may be the least popular. Human Highway (1982), directed by Young under his favored nom de plume, Bernard Shakey, is a B-movie involving a roadside diner and anxieties about nuclear war. It is full of stereotypes, and it stars Dean Stockwell (who co-directed), Dennis Hopper, members of Devo, and Young himself as a village idiot/hero. It is a musical and a comedy about the last day on Earth, with inspiration from The Wizard of Oz (1939). It is terrible yet also amazing for its terribleness. It deserves a cult revival.

Another worthy film is Trans (2023), directed by Micah Nelson, one of Willie Nelson’s sons. It is animated and essentially an extended video inspired by Young’s LP. It implicitly makes the intriguing suggestion that Neil Young is not only the godfather of grunge but perhaps the stepfather of Kid A (2000)? Though debate exists, Radiohead’s fourth LP has been interpreted as a concept album centering on a cloned child or robotic child who experiences alienation from the world. This approach is not far from Neil Young’s explanation that his use of a vocoder on Trans was inspired by his desire to communicate with his son, Ben, who was born with cerebral palsy.   

Taken together with an estimated 28 hours of material, Archives Vol. III is the most substantial of Neil Young’s three archival releases. It is staggering in scope. By virtue of its expansiveness and its off-kilter framing of 1976 to 1987, it also invites a re-examination of this historical period when politics and culture took a decisive turn away from the 1960s, which was the crucible for Young’s worldview and values like so many musicians of his generation. Even Young himself flirted with Reaganism. Presumably, the next installment in his archival series will address albums like Freedom (1989), Ragged Glory (1990), his tours with Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam, and the passing of Cobain.

For the time being, Archives Vol. III reflects an accumulation of craft, wisdom, experimentation, tradition, reinforcement, friendship, anxiety, anger, frustration, and also good times. This is the more expansive version and even ecstatic vision of what Young meant by burning out. There are dead ends for sure — material from his rockabilly album, Everybody’s Rockin‘ (1983), with the Shocking Pinks and his widely panned Landing on Water (1986) testify to this fact. Yet, even with these recording sessions, there are ideas waiting in the wings requiring only further gestation, such as an early version of “Razor Love”, which would become a sublime moment on Silver & Gold (2000).

Neil Young is a perfectionist and has the gift of patience. Furthermore, he has never shied away from epic topics, which require such qualities in an artist. Violence is a frequent theme in his most significant work, whether the shooting of unarmed, anti-Vietnam War student protestors in “Ohio” or the long history of racial conflict in the American South as depicted in “Southern Man”. Young has concerned himself with the original sins of settler colonialism and the genocide of Native peoples on songs like “Powderfinger” and “Cortez the Killer”.  

Yet, he has also written on a smaller scale about the sins we commit against ourselves. Cobain was not the first victim of addiction that Neil Young tasked himself to eulogize. Tonight’s the Night and “The Needle and the Damage Done” from Harvest, which is about Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, established an earlier precedent, confronting the betrayal of talent posed by addiction and the ways we betray ourselves generally. Whether optimism or stubbornness, Archives Vol. III is a testament to how Young has leaned into himself, those close to him, and his songs whenever uncertainty presented itself.  

“Hey, your new stuff is better than your old stuff,” an audience member shouts at the beginning of a live version of “The Ways of Love” recorded in 1978 at the Boarding House in San Francisco. The album version of the song would appear much later on Freedom. “Thank you,” Young replies before offering a new, tentative credo. “Today is better than yesterday.”

RATING 9 / 10
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