Neil Young's homegrown shuck 'n jive.

NEIL YOUNG                HOMEGROWN (1975) (released 2020)

In 1975 Neil Young ditched these recordings to release Tonight’s the Night instead and waited until 2020  before allowing them to see the light of day as part of his Archives series. Listening to Homegrown now, I can understand why Young banished these tracks to his vault. In their own right, and compared to Tonight’s the Night, these performances are pretty crappy and sound like demos rather than finished, release-ready works of art. They could be the product of stoned jam sessions, for all I know.

I’ve not listened to all the Archives releases  and if this set is any indication of the quality of  what’s been shelved in the vaults, I reckon I won’t seek out many more either. The live Crazy Horse  at the Fillmore set with the Danny Whitten era Crazy Horse is the best so far, and the acoustic concerts of Live at Massey Hall 1971  and Live at the Cellar Door (1970) are interesting as an insight into the young artist and the acoustic versions of songs that are better known as rock anthems, but the Homegrown tunes are a tad tedious, except for a few gems, like “Love is a Rose,” “Little Wing” and “Star of Bethlehem,” and in no way any kind of return to the brilliance of Harvest (1972) though there seems to be some echoes.  The closest parallel I can think of, amongst the Young albums I’ve heard, is Silver & Gold (2000), which is by far the worst and most disposable Neil Young album of all times.  Those recordings should’ve been shelved, if the stuff on Homegrown had been.

I’ve been a Neil Young fan for a long time. Following an artist over the  course of their career is not unreservedly rewarding because there are frequent lapses in quality and  whatever it was that attracted you to the music in the first place may get lost over time, given that you and the artist both grow up. Your tastes change and the artist wants to explore new ways of expressing themselves and often this leads to a divergence. You’ll never lose your love for the early records of the artist but may not want to follow on their artistic journey beyond those first, treasured albums.

This is how it’s for me with Neil Young and Bob Dylan, to name but two, and though I’ve continually invested in their contemporary releases (to this day), it’s hardly ever been an emotional investment and many’s the time when I was disappointed, whether it was an official release or an archival release.

I get that many fans want to hear just about everything an artist has ever recorded but I don’t, for example, get why Deadheads would endlessly want to revisit Grateful Dead shows of much the same material, and my belief is that, if the artist deemed something not worth releasing at the time it was recorded, it’s probably not worth shoving it into the spotlight 20, 30 or 40 years later.  The artistic judgement  must be trusted; let us have the canon of the best and greatest recordings and don’t sully the legacy with substandard outtakes and discards.

I can say I’ve taken the time to listen to Homegrown and I can also say I won’t be listening to it again.