Album: Sugar Mountain – Live at Canterbury House 1968
Released: December 2008
Recorded: November 1968
Released: December 2008
Songs / length: 23 / 70:15
Born in Toronto in 1945, Neil had French and American ancestry on his mother's side, and British links on his father's side. Like Joni Mitchell, he contracted polio in the early 1950s, aged 6. Pop music on the radio was his early love, especially blues and rock & roll, with Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc all early influences. His Dad, well-known sports writer Scott Young, left home when Neil was 12, which led him to move with his mother to a working-class suburb of Winnipeg.
Young dropped out of school to form his first band, The Squires, and had a local hit (The Sultan, released December 1963). He also met Stephen Stills at The Flamingo in Fort William while touring. He then left The Squires to tour Canada solo, first meeting Joni Mitchell in Winnipeg in mid-1965. According to Mitchell, Young was moving in a folk direction at this time, influenced by Dylan. Young and friend Bruce Palmer later bought a Pontiac and drove to LA, where they hooked up with Stills again to form Buffalo Springfield. They become the house band at the Whisky A Go Go and were signed to Atlantic Records, releasing three albums. Young later left the group to go solo again, recording his self-titled LP in 1968.
What's fascinating about this live album, recorded just before the release of Young's first solo record, is that it marks a transitional period in his early career, coming after his last show with Buffalo Springfield in May 1968 and just before he hooks up with Crazy Horse in early 1969. The 23 live cuts here are taken from two of his three performances at Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan in mid-November 1968, and reveal how his set was evolving at the time, with material from both his Buffalo Springfield days and his forthcoming self-titled solo album.
It's no surprise the album is titled Sugar Mountain, as the version here is arguably one of his best and most heartfelt renditions of this iconic song, first released around the same time as this performance (November 1968) as a B-side to The Loner. Other curios here are Birds, which Young would wait until 1970 to release on his After The Gold Rush LP, and the various "raps", which are in fact just snippets of dialogues between songs in his live set.
Bookstore Rap is genuinely funny, as Young tells an anecdote of his time working at a bookshop, and the time he took a "weight loss" pill given to him by a friend. I won't spoil the ending. Songs Rap is also revealing, with Young describing his material up to that point as "all so down, man" and "low" – these comments perhaps explain his desire for a harder-rocking change of direction with Crazy Horse in 1969. The I Used To... Rap finds him reminiscing about playing lead guitar in a band and the Songwriting Rap finds him musing with wonder on God and the songwriting process.
The whole set is superb, but highlights for me – other than Sugar Mountain and Birds – are the performances of On The Way Home and Old Laughing Lady, the latter including an intro where Young talks about how D-modal tuning (tuning both E strings on the guitar to D) was so "hip" when he composed the song. You can't find this album on Spotify, or any other streaming services that I'm aware of, so I really enjoyed digging into this and other early releases on the Neil Young Archives. I've put together an Early Years playlist below based on Archive Vol.1 discs 0-3 and his first solo LP, which is reviewed separately on this blog.
Highlights: On The Way Home, Birds, Sugar Mountain, The Old Laughing Lady
Album rating: B+
Young dropped out of school to form his first band, The Squires, and had a local hit (The Sultan, released December 1963). He also met Stephen Stills at The Flamingo in Fort William while touring. He then left The Squires to tour Canada solo, first meeting Joni Mitchell in Winnipeg in mid-1965. According to Mitchell, Young was moving in a folk direction at this time, influenced by Dylan. Young and friend Bruce Palmer later bought a Pontiac and drove to LA, where they hooked up with Stills again to form Buffalo Springfield. They become the house band at the Whisky A Go Go and were signed to Atlantic Records, releasing three albums. Young later left the group to go solo again, recording his self-titled LP in 1968.
What's fascinating about this live album, recorded just before the release of Young's first solo record, is that it marks a transitional period in his early career, coming after his last show with Buffalo Springfield in May 1968 and just before he hooks up with Crazy Horse in early 1969. The 23 live cuts here are taken from two of his three performances at Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan in mid-November 1968, and reveal how his set was evolving at the time, with material from both his Buffalo Springfield days and his forthcoming self-titled solo album.
It's no surprise the album is titled Sugar Mountain, as the version here is arguably one of his best and most heartfelt renditions of this iconic song, first released around the same time as this performance (November 1968) as a B-side to The Loner. Other curios here are Birds, which Young would wait until 1970 to release on his After The Gold Rush LP, and the various "raps", which are in fact just snippets of dialogues between songs in his live set.
Bookstore Rap is genuinely funny, as Young tells an anecdote of his time working at a bookshop, and the time he took a "weight loss" pill given to him by a friend. I won't spoil the ending. Songs Rap is also revealing, with Young describing his material up to that point as "all so down, man" and "low" – these comments perhaps explain his desire for a harder-rocking change of direction with Crazy Horse in 1969. The I Used To... Rap finds him reminiscing about playing lead guitar in a band and the Songwriting Rap finds him musing with wonder on God and the songwriting process.
The whole set is superb, but highlights for me – other than Sugar Mountain and Birds – are the performances of On The Way Home and Old Laughing Lady, the latter including an intro where Young talks about how D-modal tuning (tuning both E strings on the guitar to D) was so "hip" when he composed the song. You can't find this album on Spotify, or any other streaming services that I'm aware of, so I really enjoyed digging into this and other early releases on the Neil Young Archives. I've put together an Early Years playlist below based on Archive Vol.1 discs 0-3 and his first solo LP, which is reviewed separately on this blog.
Highlights: On The Way Home, Birds, Sugar Mountain, The Old Laughing Lady
Album rating: B+
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