This album had a sister called Into the Black which was, yes, an electric tribute to the great man. I think I'm right in saying that all artists on both albums were/are Canadian. They were the brainchildren of a couple of producers, who commissioned and organised all the recordings.
I don't trust my memory, but I do have a definite recollection of holding this CD in my hand in the Virgin Records at the top of Pinstone Street in Sheffield, wondering whether to buy it or not. I went for it (obviously) and I think I almost instantly put it to one side as pretty pointless.
By comparison with The Bridge, there's little here in the way of significant re-workings of the originals. The changes are more subtle Amanda Marshall has a stab at injecting soul elements into Don't Let it Bring You Down, but it only half works. David Wilcox's version of Transformer Man is automatically different by being acoustic where the original had vocoders and such-like, and it sounds world-weary where the original was wide-eyed and innocent. Neil Young's Thrasher was a parable full of metaphor, while the version here, with a regular drum-beat behind it, is literal and faintly hokey. I've got a soft spot for the Cowboy Junkies, but their song, Tired Eyes, doesn't really stand out here.
As with The Bridge, part of the profits go to The Bridge School, which Neil Young and his wife co-founded.
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