I spent a lot of time and money getting this CD. Neil only put it out in Australasia and Japan because he wanted it to remain something of an obscurity in his discography, not a full-blown new statement. Which was fine for people like John Peel, but made it pretty hard for ordinary fans who didn't live near import shops to get hold of a copy.
At first I got a copy on tape from the bloke who was sat next to me at Neil's December 1989 Hammersmith Odeon gig. We struck up a conversation and he proposed a trade: a copy of Eldorado from him in return for a copy of one of the bootlegs I had. That was OK to satisfy basic curiosity, but I wanted the original artefact. I scoured the Y section of every record shop I passed. I had scouts going out to Japan, but they misunderstood my description and came back with this instead. Eventually I saw a copy advertised in the back of the NME by a here-today-gone-tomorrow mail order company. I sent off my cheque — I don't know what inflated price they were asking, but it wouldn't have been less than 20 quid for these 25 minutes — and hoped. My hopes were fulfilled.
Up to 1989 I'd never heard John Peel play a Neil Young record. I'd heard him talk about Neil Young, but mostly in the same breath as he might talk about Stackridge: something firmly in the past, never to be revisited in the quest for the new. Then that summer I heard that Peel was playing tracks from an extraordinary new Neil Young EP. (How did I hear? And where? No wonder kids today can't imagine life without the Net: I can't imagine how I lived without it, and I was, well, a grown-up then. Maybe it was in Broken Arrow.) I tuned in but only caught the title track, which is the least extreme of the five.
Neil had already hit his stride again with This Note's For You the previous year, but Eldorado was the sign that he was on fire now. Have you heard this? You may have heard the three tracks that Eldorado shares with Freedom, but they are leavened by other softer material and diluted on the latter. Literally so in the case of my favourite song, Don't Cry, out of which a minute and a half of guitar solo were cut for the Freedom version. I say "guitar solo" but it's a battering noise, for which the word "coruscating" would have to be invented if it didn't already exist.
Sadly I can't play this the way it was meant to be played. I value my relationship with my neighbours too highly.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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