I'm guessing I bought this bootleg of the 1970 Fillmore East shows in the late 1980s. "Lowest price £15=" says the label. Let's say I played it three times in the next two decades, before it was superseded by the official release of those shows. So you could say I paid £5 per listen — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say £1 per listen and £12 for bragging rights. But bragging to whom? Of all the people I know who would be remotely interested in my Neil Young bootleg collection, all but one have way more bootlegs than me.
But hold up a minute. Seductive as this opportunity for self-flagellation is, the bean counting trainspotter in me wants to take a closer look. Not even I can go as far as listening to every track side by side, but I did compare the official and bootleg versions of Down by the River. As you'd expect, since it's had the attention of some of the finest post-production that money, or love, can buy, the official one sounds fuller and richer. But the bootleg has its own appeal, too. It's hard to tell for sure whether they're recordings of exactly the same performance. The bootleg claims to be sourced from the 6th March 1970 (early or late show is not specified), though Pete Long's scholarship in Ghosts on the Road suggests it actually came from a compilation of the four shows over two nights. So did the official release, but maybe not the same versions in each case? What I like about the bootleg Down by the River is that Billy Talbot's bass and Jack Nitzsche's organ are more clearly separated in the mix; you can hear them wandering off and doing their own thing — within limits, of course, set by the chief wanderer. Overall the performance feels looser, freer, more funky. Money not wasted, then.
Even more so than with another bootleg from the 1970 tour, the cover picture is way, way off target. Instead of showing Neil and Crazy Horse in 1970, the photo is of Neil playing solo in 1985 at Live Aid.
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