4 Way Street...
Anybody else play the shit out of this album? It was released ('71) when I was a soph in high school, and in many ways became the soundtrack of those high school years. Not only the songs, but the spoken transitions between songs as well. Neil introducing Stills with "We've had our ups and downs, but we're still playing together- Stephen Stills", prior to Stills' iconic performance of 49 Bye Byes/ America's Children (For What It's Worth), and then Graham bringing Neil on stage with "We'd Like to introduce our friend Neil Young", and a haunting performance of "On the Way Home"...
I've always loved that song, and had friends in a CSN like band who always sang it. But it was only after I did a deeper dive into Springfield (it's off of Last Time Around) that I discovered the backstory which led to some of Neil's resentment and hurt feelings and the tensions among various individual members which led to Springfield eventually self-imploding. Management (not sure exactly who) felt that while Neil's writing contributions were in many cases brilliant, that his voice wasn't radio friendly.
So on some of Neil's songs like Clancy, and On the Way Home, for example they insisted that Richie sing lead instead of Neil. They definitely missed the boat on OTWH (as this 4 Way Street performance illustrates), and I'm sure there's an element of catharsis for Neil in opening his portion of those shows with HIS performance of his song, with some tasty licks and backing from Stephen. I always like Richie's voice, but he's no Neil Young...
Similarly, I've always had a preference for this version of Cowgirl, which was my intro to the song, before I ever heard the original from Nowhere...A few years back a girl I went to high school with wrote something on my FB timeline about remembering the way I introduced her to Cowgirl, 40 or so years ago at that time...
And then there's the song that inspired this bit of nostalgic reflection in the first place. Pretty sure my first intro to See The Sky was off of a bootleg (maybe Boulder?) which I heard prior to the later officially released version. I remember I had a "class" in I believe my junior year of high school, which was called piano. It was basically a free period, with the 4 of us (and no teacher, for the most part) sitting around in one of the empty music dept offices and "playing" piano. There were 2 or 3 of us who were more into things like Neil, and then another guy who looked like and was into Floyd Kramer. I can't play piano for shit, but I specifically remember sitting at the keys and trying to play See The Sky or Love In Mind and pretend I was Neil...
So today I got a bunch of new archive releases from Neil via my you tube subscription page, including this 1971 performance of See The Sky at UCLA. Check out the thumbnail of the poster, where it talks about how only UCLA students with ID are allowed. And how about that $2.50 price tag? Simply amazing performance...
Anybody else play the shit out of this album? It was released ('71) when I was a soph in high school, and in many ways became the soundtrack of those high school years. Not only the songs, but the spoken transitions between songs as well. Neil introducing Stills with "We've had our ups and downs, but we're still playing together- Stephen Stills", prior to Stills' iconic performance of 49 Bye Byes/ America's Children (For What It's Worth), and then Graham bringing Neil on stage with "We'd Like to introduce our friend Neil Young", and a haunting performance of "On the Way Home"...
I've always loved that song, and had friends in a CSN like band who always sang it. But it was only after I did a deeper dive into Springfield (it's off of Last Time Around) that I discovered the backstory which led to some of Neil's resentment and hurt feelings and the tensions among various individual members which led to Springfield eventually self-imploding. Management (not sure exactly who) felt that while Neil's writing contributions were in many cases brilliant, that his voice wasn't radio friendly.
So on some of Neil's songs like Clancy, and On the Way Home, for example they insisted that Richie sing lead instead of Neil. They definitely missed the boat on OTWH (as this 4 Way Street performance illustrates), and I'm sure there's an element of catharsis for Neil in opening his portion of those shows with HIS performance of his song, with some tasty licks and backing from Stephen. I always like Richie's voice, but he's no Neil Young...
Similarly, I've always had a preference for this version of Cowgirl, which was my intro to the song, before I ever heard the original from Nowhere...A few years back a girl I went to high school with wrote something on my FB timeline about remembering the way I introduced her to Cowgirl, 40 or so years ago at that time...
And then there's the song that inspired this bit of nostalgic reflection in the first place. Pretty sure my first intro to See The Sky was off of a bootleg (maybe Boulder?) which I heard prior to the later officially released version. I remember I had a "class" in I believe my junior year of high school, which was called piano. It was basically a free period, with the 4 of us (and no teacher, for the most part) sitting around in one of the empty music dept offices and "playing" piano. There were 2 or 3 of us who were more into things like Neil, and then another guy who looked like and was into Floyd Kramer. I can't play piano for shit, but I specifically remember sitting at the keys and trying to play See The Sky or Love In Mind and pretend I was Neil...
So today I got a bunch of new archive releases from Neil via my you tube subscription page, including this 1971 performance of See The Sky at UCLA. Check out the thumbnail of the poster, where it talks about how only UCLA students with ID are allowed. And how about that $2.50 price tag? Simply amazing performance...
