Music Arcades: Neil Young: Decade

My first Neil Young album, bought in Guildford in January 1982, a couple of months after the episode in the mini with After the Goldrush. A triple album was a big undertaking for a sixteen-year-old then, but it felt like 35 songs might be necessary to get an overview of Neil's already-long career. All I can say is Thank God I started when I did. Today's teenager who hears something in a Neil song that suggests his work might be worth exploring has 45 years' material to choose from, and today's equivalent of Decade has 125 songs that cover just the first six of those years.

Listening to Decade now, I realise how long it is since I heard these songs in this order, in this context (buying that backup CD copy was evidently a folly, since I never play it). It takes me back to the first time I got to know these songs, poring over Neil's handwritten sleeve notes (when I first got the album, some of the complex inner sleeve inserts appeared to be missing, so I sent my mum on an errand back to Guildford to ask the shop for the full set — which must have been profoundly annoying for her, but I've been grateful ever since). The margins of my Maths A Level notes had lines like "This much madness is too much sorrow" and "Hate was just a legend / War was never known" (see also).

I had favourite sides, of course. Side 4 was one because, yes, it was the Harvest songs that connected first. Side 5 is mainly draw from the ditch trilogy and those songs don't work so well outside the context of the original albums (though Tired Eyes was always kind of eerie). Side 1 was, and remains, another favourite, perhaps surprisingly because it's the sound of Neil still finding his feet. But the arrangements, production and the unusual scope of songs like Broken Arrow… well, I just like them.

It seems the world, or at least North America, is full of Neil Young tributes at the moment. At the end of January there was one in LA. Word has it that Wilco stole the show with their meticulous rendering of Broken Arrow — sans autocue — and you can see for yourself via the Thrasher's Wheat account. Then, yesterday and today, there's another star-studded tribute in Vancouver tied into the Winter Olympics. As you can imagine, I'd love to hear what Alasdair Roberts is going to do as part of that, and will be asking my 'contacts' to keep an ear out on the darknets for illicit recordings.