Album: Tonight's The Night + Roxy
Recorded: August-September 1973
Released: June 1975 + April 2018
Recorded: August-September 1973
Released: June 1975 + April 2018
Songs / length: 12 / 44:52 + 18 / 53:15
In late September 1973, five months after the chaos of his Time Fades Away tour, and immediately following a more relaxed summer spent partly in Hawaii (working on an aborted project called Human Highway with CSNY), Neil Young found himself headlining the opening of a new venue on Hollywood's Sunset Strip called the Roxy Theatre (formerly a strip club). This 500-seater venue was a long way from the vast stadiums of his early 1973 tour and Young is noticeably in a more relaxed mood in his Roxy live set, playing an impromptu version of Roll Out The Barrel and joking about Perry Como. The songs are far from light-hearted though – it was in Hawaii that Young got news of the death of CSNY roadie Bruce Berry, and Berry and his Ford Econoline van were the inspiration for the two-part title song that bookends both the studio album and the live set.
Like Danny Whitten, Berry died of a drugs overdose, and Young dedicates Tonight's The Night to them both, saying they "lived and died for rock & roll". What also connects the album to Berry is that it was mainly recorded at Studio Instrument Rentals, the business premises of Berry's brother Ken, who agreed to let Young and producer Briggs smash through a wall to run cables to this new makeshift studio. Five of the album's songs were recorded on one day – 26th August 1973 – including the first part of the title track, Mellow My Mind, World On A String, Speakin' Out and Tired Eyes. Four more songs (Tonight's The Night Pt. II, Albuquerque, New Mama and Roll Another Number) were recorded at the same place a few weeks later, and the album's other three songs were taken from previous recordings at Broken Arrow Ranch and live at Fillmore East.
Though the performance of Young and his Santa Monica Flyers, who recorded live without rehearsals or overdubs, can only fairly be described as ramshackle, what's so enduring about the music is its stripped down and soulful nature. Young is at the bottom of the ditch, strung out on tequila and weed, yet still committed to memorialising his friends through rock & roll. In his autobiography, Young calls the album a “wake of sorts”, and responses to its emotional and musical rawness from both the label (too “rough”) and peers like The Eagles’ Glenn Frey (“why are you doing this to yourself?”) were factors in Tonight's The Night's release being delayed until mid-1975. Young also says he didn’t feel an immediate release was a good idea since he wanted “something else added to it for perspective”. In fact, it was The Band's Rick Danko who finally persuaded Young to release the album after hearing it at a party in Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont in 1975. After a bit of tinkering by Young, Tonight's The Night came into the world instead of his planned next release, Homegrown (which should finally see the light of day as part of Archives Vol. II).
Hearing the album performed live at the Roxy, and reading the strange liner notes to my vinyl copy, helps provide some added perspective on Young's delicate and deranged state of mind at the time. In the Roxy live set, recorded across three consecutive nights, Young opens by saying "welcome to Miami beach", introduces himself as "Glenn Miller" – in fact, his persona is more like a sleazy nightclub owner – and talks about the stripper "Candy Bar" who used to perform on the Roxy stage. Wearing his dark shades, and surrounded by plastic palm trees, women's knee high boots and hubcaps, Young seems to be distancing himself from his hippie (After The Gold Rush) and country (Harvest) days, and he must have been quite a sight for the Roxy crowd. On the opening night, Cheech & Chong (and their famous skit of druggies driving a car) were one of the warm-up acts, along with Graham Nash, who played 5 songs as a last-minute replacement for Nils Lofgren.
The lyrics to Roll Another Number (For The Road), which Young dedicates tongue-in-cheek to all the policemen in the Roxy audience, has a verse saying he feels a "million miles away" from the Woodstock scene. In fact, the whole album, with its themes of drug addiction, murder, political vampires (Nixon, Spiro Agnew) and dazed Vietnam vets, is a million miles away from Harvest. Tonight's The Night is the dark underbelly of the early 70s in musical form. Even the lyrics to New Mama, about the parental joy of a new child, are delivered without conviction. There's something fragile about the musicianship too, with Speakin' Out and World On A String sounding like demos that might break down at anytime, while the stretched harmonies of Albuquerque almost ruin one of Young's best performances on the album, a song exploring classic Young territory – the desire for escape from the city and fame, in search of simpler pleasures ("country ham").
Young's vocal chords on Mellow My Mind also sound on the verge of disintegration, while the recording of Tonight's The Night Pt. II gets very patchy at times. This ragged, ramshackle production makes the moments of tender beauty all the more striking, with the clarity of Borrowed Tune like sunlight breaking through dark clouds. Musically, it's a slowed down version of Lady Jane by The Rolling Stones, but lyrically Young makes Borrowed Tune his own, as he reflects on his career ("climbing this ladder") and doubts about its value, especially in the wake of Whitten's death. I love the song's honesty – when he recorded it on his ranch, he was literally "alone in this empty room, too wasted to write my own" – and how it oscillates between hope and despair.
Some may argue it's musically out of place, but for me it's a stroke of genius how Young chose to follow Borrowed Tune on the LP with Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown, as though he were suddenly summoning forth Whitten and Crazy Horse like ghosts. It's spooky to hear Whitten singing about going out to score the sort of drugs that would eventually lead to his demise. Another highlight on the album is Tired Eyes – not least for Young's vocal delivery and harmonica playing, plus Ben Keith's plaintive steel guitar – and it's another song about the dangers of drugs, this time a man mixed up in a cocaine deal who ends up with "bullet holes in his mirrors". Young implores his audience to take his advice and open up their tired eyes.
Despite the record's undoubted flaws, both the studio album and live set are fascinating insights into Young's state of mind in late 1973 and you have to admire his tenacity and willingness to face up to this dark time in life and process it through his music. Hopefully, more material from this era will appear in the upcoming Archives Vol. II release – according to his autobiography, "One night Joni Mitchell came in and did Raised on Robbery in the most sexy and revealing version that song ever had ... She still refuses to let me release it. I don't know what she was thinking when she joined us and sang the song. It kicks ass. What the fuck was that about? It was funkier than anything she has ever cut. A total gem!"
Highlights: Tonight's The Night Pt. I, Borrowed Tune, Albuquerque, Tired Eyes
Album rating: A
In late September 1973, five months after the chaos of his Time Fades Away tour, and immediately following a more relaxed summer spent partly in Hawaii (working on an aborted project called Human Highway with CSNY), Neil Young found himself headlining the opening of a new venue on Hollywood's Sunset Strip called the Roxy Theatre (formerly a strip club). This 500-seater venue was a long way from the vast stadiums of his early 1973 tour and Young is noticeably in a more relaxed mood in his Roxy live set, playing an impromptu version of Roll Out The Barrel and joking about Perry Como. The songs are far from light-hearted though – it was in Hawaii that Young got news of the death of CSNY roadie Bruce Berry, and Berry and his Ford Econoline van were the inspiration for the two-part title song that bookends both the studio album and the live set.
Like Danny Whitten, Berry died of a drugs overdose, and Young dedicates Tonight's The Night to them both, saying they "lived and died for rock & roll". What also connects the album to Berry is that it was mainly recorded at Studio Instrument Rentals, the business premises of Berry's brother Ken, who agreed to let Young and producer Briggs smash through a wall to run cables to this new makeshift studio. Five of the album's songs were recorded on one day – 26th August 1973 – including the first part of the title track, Mellow My Mind, World On A String, Speakin' Out and Tired Eyes. Four more songs (Tonight's The Night Pt. II, Albuquerque, New Mama and Roll Another Number) were recorded at the same place a few weeks later, and the album's other three songs were taken from previous recordings at Broken Arrow Ranch and live at Fillmore East.
Though the performance of Young and his Santa Monica Flyers, who recorded live without rehearsals or overdubs, can only fairly be described as ramshackle, what's so enduring about the music is its stripped down and soulful nature. Young is at the bottom of the ditch, strung out on tequila and weed, yet still committed to memorialising his friends through rock & roll. In his autobiography, Young calls the album a “wake of sorts”, and responses to its emotional and musical rawness from both the label (too “rough”) and peers like The Eagles’ Glenn Frey (“why are you doing this to yourself?”) were factors in Tonight's The Night's release being delayed until mid-1975. Young also says he didn’t feel an immediate release was a good idea since he wanted “something else added to it for perspective”. In fact, it was The Band's Rick Danko who finally persuaded Young to release the album after hearing it at a party in Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont in 1975. After a bit of tinkering by Young, Tonight's The Night came into the world instead of his planned next release, Homegrown (which should finally see the light of day as part of Archives Vol. II).
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| Fold-out liner notes from my Tonight's The Night vinyl copy |
The lyrics to Roll Another Number (For The Road), which Young dedicates tongue-in-cheek to all the policemen in the Roxy audience, has a verse saying he feels a "million miles away" from the Woodstock scene. In fact, the whole album, with its themes of drug addiction, murder, political vampires (Nixon, Spiro Agnew) and dazed Vietnam vets, is a million miles away from Harvest. Tonight's The Night is the dark underbelly of the early 70s in musical form. Even the lyrics to New Mama, about the parental joy of a new child, are delivered without conviction. There's something fragile about the musicianship too, with Speakin' Out and World On A String sounding like demos that might break down at anytime, while the stretched harmonies of Albuquerque almost ruin one of Young's best performances on the album, a song exploring classic Young territory – the desire for escape from the city and fame, in search of simpler pleasures ("country ham").
Young's vocal chords on Mellow My Mind also sound on the verge of disintegration, while the recording of Tonight's The Night Pt. II gets very patchy at times. This ragged, ramshackle production makes the moments of tender beauty all the more striking, with the clarity of Borrowed Tune like sunlight breaking through dark clouds. Musically, it's a slowed down version of Lady Jane by The Rolling Stones, but lyrically Young makes Borrowed Tune his own, as he reflects on his career ("climbing this ladder") and doubts about its value, especially in the wake of Whitten's death. I love the song's honesty – when he recorded it on his ranch, he was literally "alone in this empty room, too wasted to write my own" – and how it oscillates between hope and despair.
Some may argue it's musically out of place, but for me it's a stroke of genius how Young chose to follow Borrowed Tune on the LP with Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown, as though he were suddenly summoning forth Whitten and Crazy Horse like ghosts. It's spooky to hear Whitten singing about going out to score the sort of drugs that would eventually lead to his demise. Another highlight on the album is Tired Eyes – not least for Young's vocal delivery and harmonica playing, plus Ben Keith's plaintive steel guitar – and it's another song about the dangers of drugs, this time a man mixed up in a cocaine deal who ends up with "bullet holes in his mirrors". Young implores his audience to take his advice and open up their tired eyes.
Despite the record's undoubted flaws, both the studio album and live set are fascinating insights into Young's state of mind in late 1973 and you have to admire his tenacity and willingness to face up to this dark time in life and process it through his music. Hopefully, more material from this era will appear in the upcoming Archives Vol. II release – according to his autobiography, "One night Joni Mitchell came in and did Raised on Robbery in the most sexy and revealing version that song ever had ... She still refuses to let me release it. I don't know what she was thinking when she joined us and sang the song. It kicks ass. What the fuck was that about? It was funkier than anything she has ever cut. A total gem!"
Highlights: Tonight's The Night Pt. I, Borrowed Tune, Albuquerque, Tired Eyes
Album rating: A
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