Neil Young: Journey Through the Past

I wonder if this is the most despised album Neil Young has put out? More vilified even than Everybody's Rockin'? I haven't seen the film of which this album is a soundtrack, and I don't know anyone who has.

Neil's biographers treat it like an odd curio. Jimmy McDonough (in Shakey: Neil Young's Biography) interviews Neil about it, and even he seems to say that it was a distraction, possibly a necessary one, from making music. The great Johnny Rogan (Neil Young: Zero to Sixty) says it succeeds as a piece of cosmic humour, and compares it to the 'demythologising' effects of Dylan's Self Portrait and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. He goes on, "For an album I once described as 'a serious contender for the title of "worst ever album in the history of rock music",' it has retained a squeamish attraction."

Sounds good? Too bad, because it's hard to find. I'm surprised to see it was ever released on CD, but that's not available any more. My copy has a Record Collector price label (£6.99), which means I must have bought it in 1987 or 1988, but it's made out of really heavy vinyl, which makes me wonder if it might have been sitting in a rack unsold for a decade or so until I came along.

I always thought that in Alabama and Words — where the record switches back and forth between the finished version and an audio recording of the studio recording process itself — must have been inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's film One Plus One, where he does a similar thing with the Rolling Stones recording Sympathy for the Devil. So I was glad to have this as-good-as-confirmation of that speculation.

The recording of Ohio on this album is the best I've ever heard.

MusicBrainz entry for this album