Neil Young - Tonight'sthe Night

Thu 15th Jun, 2006 in Music Reviews

It takes a seriously open mind to absorb everything that an artist as diverse as Neil Young has released, an even more open (or possibly deluded) mind to say that everything he has released was actually worth releasing. For his rabid fans (of which I am one), discussions could reach boiling point when discussing his best work – some would say the stripped down, home-spun country albums such as Harvest are the only albums of his that are worth listening to – whilst there are those that vomit at the very thought, preferring to lend themselves to the garage crunch of Young and his regular backing band Crazy Horse.

But it’s not that simple. More often than not, Young has refused to stick to a specific ‘sound’ over the course of a whole album. His landmark 1969 album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is of course most famous for its trio of Young classics, ‘Cinnamon Girl’, and the two lengthy centrepieces ‘Down By the River’ and ‘Cowgirl in the Sand’, but also popping up on the album are the violin-driven, sad-sack laments of ‘Running Dry’ and ‘Round and Round’. 1975’s Zuma not only features bar anthems such as ‘Barstool Blues’ and ‘Drive Back’, but the intense and lengthy ‘Cortez the Killer’, only to finish off the album with ‘Through My Sails’ one of his semi-regular sojourns with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

In short, even though they appear at first glance to be genre exercises, a lot of Young’s classics also have buried within them songs for both sides of Neil Young fandom.

Tonight’s the Night is an exception to that rule. It is as bleak an album as Young has ever made; a drunken requiem for fallen friends – Danny Whitten (ex-Crazy Horse) and roadie Bruce Berry; an album which would bear the feelings of its author out so nakedly, it deserves to be thought of as a classic, right along with that other 1970s masterpiece Layla (And Other Assorted Love Songs) by Derek and the Dominos – an album famous for the anonymity-seeking Eric Clapton declaring his love for Patti Boyd, then-wife of his best friend, a fella named George Harrison (you may have heard of him, he was in a little band called The Beatles).

To ‘enjoy’ (and I use that term very lightly) Tonight’s the Night you must first understand the circumstances by which it was made. Flash back to 1972, Young is preparing a lengthy tour in support of the aforementioned Harvest and in an act of faith, offers a guitarist slot on the tour to Whitten – who at that stage was in the depths of a serious heroin addiction that he had been carrying since the turn of the decade. After showing up to rehearsals so wasted that he can’t play – Young fires him and gives him $50 out of his pocket so he can get himself home. Whitten uses the $50 to score and shoot up, dying from an overdose shortly thereafter with the junk that Young’s money bought. Another heroin-related death, that of Berry, sent Young into a funk.

Gathering up the remaining Crazy Horse members, drummer Ralph Molina and bassist Billy Talbot, Young retreated to a studio along with friends and fellow musicians Ben Keith and Nils Lofgren to record a new album in part about his fallen friends. The recording process is not a normal one – instead of recording all day and then retreating to get pissed and passed out, the men would spend the evening guzzling tequila, playing pool and generally reminiscing before retreating into the studio to record, all the while unfazed by out-of-tune vocals or instruments.

I would love to say the resulting album is a masterpiece, but I can’t because it has never been heard except by those who were present at its recording or those in Young’s inner circle. The original Tonight’s the Night that was recorded in 1973 remains locked away, hopefully to be released on the second instalment of Young’s Archives project (it’ll take a whole other column to explain that, so I won’t for now, except to say that it’s supposed to be a 32cd, four-volume overview of Young’s career, including unreleased songs and albums, plus full live shows).

What we do have, is a compromised version of Tonight’s the Night released in 1975, missing in-between song dialogues and some songs, but still an unbelievably potent album. From the title track (which opens and closes the album) to the masterpieces ‘Albuquerque’, ‘Mellow My Mind’ and ‘Borrowed Tune’ (with its memorable line “I’m singin’ this borrowed tune I took from the Rolling Stones, alone in this empty room too wasted to write my own”), it ranks with the very best of 1975’s albums, which says something considering it’s the year which gave us Blood on the Tracks, Physical Graffiti, Horses, Born to Run and Wish You Were Here.

Understand me though when I say that Tonight’s the Night is not a fun listen. It is the sound of a man doing only what he knows how to do, simply because it’s the only thing he’s able to do in order to stay sane. Tonight’s the Night is to be listened to and appreciated, not enjoyed. I’ve never really been able to fully indulge myself in this album, simply because I’ve never been so down that I’ve felt the need to wallow with this on the stereo. But I do know that if ever that day arrives, I’ve got this album to keep me company.