neil young

this was already done.
Best of Neil Young studio records

This one has live albums.

Some of them, anyway. (Unplugged, Year of the Horse, Road Rock vol. 1)

Oh. The studio albums poll had the live albums too. Nevermind then.

I voted Ragged Glory because it needs more love and less rockism. That's a srsly good record, yo.

First person to vote "Old Ways" gets a dollar from me.

I voted for "Old Ways" just for the cash. You want my paypal address?

After The Gold Rush = the good songs are so good they make you forget about the bad ones

On The Beach = pretty much all good

I mean "When You Dance" is kind of endearing as a cornily sincere, b-level hippie artifact, but Cripple Creek Ferry is a real turd of a song, and Birds isn't great either.

I got to get away from this day to day running around

TRANS FTW!

Arc/Weld. The worst/best live albums ever.

Dead Man is actually really really good.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Tonight's The Night

closely followed by Goldrush and On The Beach

TTN is definitely my favourite - it's so fucked, so moving. Tender, ragged and rocking in equal measure.

Baby Mellow My Mind aches so hard - the swell of pedal steel, touch of lonesome barroom piano, and Neil's voice actually breaking up.

Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown rocks. It sounds so triumphant in its hedonism yet the undercurrent is utterly bleak.

Other favourites - Everybody Knows, Rust, Zuma, Time Fades Away, Sleeps With Angels, Live Rust. Hell, there hardly any poor ones. I've not heard the infamous Landing On Water, but Are You Passionate was bloody awful. Trans is ace though.

Ragged Glory is great fun, one of his most satisfying rock records, but I wouldn't quite put it in the top rung of Neil albums.

Harvest - handful of great songs and some dreary stuff too. Overall, it's too slick, too polite. I like Neil a little scuffed around the edges.

Rust Never Sleeps has Powderfinger, for the win.

Anyone else notice how Apatow kept dropping the cover of Landing On Water all over Knocked Up. What's the deal with that? Consensus aropund these parts on that album?

Rust Never Sleeps for "Powderfinger", but also because of the individually peculiar time and place in which I first loved this record. Also, it's an incredibly balanced album in so many ways I can't be bothered to expand on here.

Consensus aropund these parts on that album?

I noticed the curious product placement too, Tal. There's an interesting thread here devoted to Landing on Water.

no "none of the above"????

just snuck in a vote for tonight's the night. right in the nick of time.

emotion of the less contained and calculated variety

me for tonights the night, too. its so close though - there are better songs on zuma and everybody knows, and almost enough to give the nod to one of them, but TTN takes it

Yeah, Tonight's The Night would be my second or third and very close.

Rust Never Sleeps by a hair, for side one and Powderfinger alone (though nearly sunk by Welfare Mothers).

Oh c'mon, Welfare Mothers is great! My favorite Neil Young throwaway.

DIVORCEE

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

a 3-way tie this time then.

Fair result.

Wait. Zuma should've been much higher, though.

c'est vrai

Someone voted for Everybody's Rockin' again.

One vote for "Zuma"! No way!! This poll is corrupt!!!

"On the Beach" - there's an ILM album if ever there was one

Sleeps With Angels is way too high. And Freedom is way too low.

The fact that Zuma ranked below Trans completely invalidates this poll.

So, basically, I'm the only person who voted for "Zuma"? Don't believe it.

I wasn't around when CSN(and sometimes Y) were at their peak, so apologies for the following somewhat naive question:

How much of Neil Young's popularity in the 70s can be attributed to his association with CSN? The thought never really occurred to me until I was checking out CSN(Y)'s Allmusic entry today, which says "it was the only American-based band to approach the overall societal impact of the Beatles".

Personally, I like Neil Young exponentially more than CSN(Y), so my gut feeling is that the majority of Neil Young's fans were there on account of his own talent. But was there a certain contingency of fans who cheered loudest for "Ohio" and "Helpless", contemplating to themselves at the Live Rust concerts that it would be better if CSN were up on stage too? Or was it more like "Why the hell does Neil Young ever play with them? They butchered 'Helpless'..."? Just wondering what the prevalent view was back in the day.

When CSN and sometimes Y reunited for a predictably horrible album in 1988, Neil begged off the obligatory tour, saying, "I dunno man, those guys need some serious practice."

And that Allmusic statement strikes me as comically absurd.

Yeah, I admit it raised my eyebrow as well, but then I go the ILM search function, and the second thing I read on the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young C/D S/D thread is "i'm more interested in the fact that CSN(Y) (or whatever) were actually REALLY POPULAR and BIG -- as in springsteen in '85/outkast or britney spears BIG. that's such a radical sea-change in mass public musical taste that deserves some comment, no?"

On The Beach is very good, but would have voted Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, in fact i shall play it now

hi alex, how is the weather in denver? in frankfurt it has been raining most of the day. i would have voted <i>after the goldrush</i>, i think. but <i>on the beach</i> is a decent winner, too.

i will never learn the ilm html tags...

weird

it was the only American-based band to approach the overall societal impact of the Beatles

In their time their American album sales were HUGE. Their cultural cachet was such that their public greeted "Ohio" as a major statement. I'm wary of statements like AllMusic's, but the Shakey bio also makes the same suggestion.

CSNY were huge because the Byrds, the Hollies, and the Buffalo Springfield had all been huge before.

Dead Man = Neil's best electric work?

look at the bill for this thing
http://www.vancouver2010.com/more-2010-information/cultural-festivals-and-events/event-listings/hal-willner's-neil-young-project-_70660zv.html

I'm assuming thats a different Chris Brown, otherwise o_O

yeah, probably?
a mix of eh, cool! and whaaaa?
Sam Beam of Iron & Wine
Chris Brown
Vashti Bunyan
Robert Burger
Brendan Canning
Fred Cash
Jason Collett
Julie Doiron
Kevin Drew
Sam Goldberg
Shahzad Ismaily
Eric Mingus
Sun Kil Moon
Jenni Muldaur
Ambrosia Parsley
Justin Peroff
Ben Perowsky
Joan as Policewoman
Elizabeth Powell
Bill Priddle
Lou Reed
Alasdair Roberts
Ron Sexsmith
Teddy Thompson
James Blood Ulmer
Andrew Whiteman
Doug Wieselman

hoping for a mingus/blood ulmer/reed jam on down by the river

"razor love" and the other synth tracks alongside it on archives iii are lovely, it's a shame he never did this particular sound for an album - trans and landing on water both gesture in that direction but these tracks are better than most of those albums

the other real missed opportunity from that period is the story about how he wanted to make an album with r.e.m. as his backing band and geffen wouldn't let him? i hope geffen enjoyed getting landing on water instead

?!?

the other real missed opportunity from that period is the story about how he wanted to make an album with r.e.m. as his backing band and geffen wouldn't let him? i hope geffen enjoyed getting landing on water instead

if that would have prevented warren zevon from making an album with rem as his backing band, then i'm glad the neil thing never happened. but if we could have had both, i wouldn't mind hearing that. it's the end of the world as we know it (and i'm rockin' in the free world).

this is supposed to have been earlier than that, i think roughly it'd have to be in the 83-85 range?

didn't even get in the studio together because geffen threatened to sue if that happened, sadly

at least there's the bridge school benefit show where together they did "ambulance blues" and the very best version of "country feedback" with neil soloing all over it

Imagine Neil and Stipe chillin, shooting the shit.

i may be the biggest Trans fan on this thread

*cough*

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 3, 2026 7:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

very tempted to post a picture showing the number of vinyl copies i personally own

xp it probably happened!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47es-RsJKw

Speaking of Unplugged, theirs seemed good too, when I saw it (haven't heard the CD). They picked the right songs for that context, incl. one they said was by Bill Berry, and sent it out to him.

It was very good. I had a bootleg CD of it with additional acoustic cuts tacked onto the end. That might be where I heard a goofy fun version of Leaving On A Jet Plane.

With Natalie Merchant maybe?

I'm really enjoying how ratty "As Time Explodes" is. Would any other artist put this out as a live album?

yeah it's cool! also such a weird tracklist I'm finding it the most charming thing he's done in a while

Sounds like Neil's been fondly going through his latter-day CSNY albums! Ever the iconoclast.

also, it's cool he does the "lost verse" of Cortez

It was very good. I had a bootleg CD of it with additional acoustic cuts tacked onto the end. That might be where I heard a goofy fun version of Leaving On A Jet Plane.

With Natalie Merchant maybe?

― Cow_Art, Thursday, June 4, 2026 4:20 PM

This is likely from a live at McCabe's (Los Angeles, 1994) bootleg that I have. Also with Steve Wynn.

The show was May 1987, the CD is dated '94, btw.

a treasure is decent but i don't hear it as being this huge step above old ways, it's just more live performances from that era and they're all solid

dude

Agree about Rustbucket though: it's great.

xpost no way dogg

i'm notoriously out of the loop, but surely someone else on here besides me had no idea this happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykMzS6ugnPI

(spoiler alert: it's not the "Da da da" band)

If only! In box set notes (box was apparently complete works),they said they called up Neil and asked him what teh lyrics meant, said that he said he didn't know either (which was wise; if you have to ask...)

Also of course, like several other cover artists, they left out, "felt like getting (high)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGb2Jpy_lvs

Are you feelin' alright?/Not feelin' too bad myself ...

I wish he had more albums as haunted and adventurous, even jazzy, as Sleeps With Angels, but I also like its lightning-strikes quality.

yeah sleeps with angels was 'wow, where did this come from?', it's got such a great atmosphere to it

Enjoying the new live album. As someone who has played the classic albums to death at this point, I think I need to take a deeper dive into Neil's live catalogue: on this one, I like the contrast of classic ("Harvest Moon," "Ohio," "After the Gold Rush," "Like a Hurricane," and "Cortez" with the aforementioned extra verse) with more recent stuff, including a few ("Daddy Went Walkin," "Long Walk Home," "Silver Eagle") that I either didn't know or had forgotten. The bullhorn on "Be the Rain" did kinda shock my eardrums, though; I'll likely skip that one when I'm listening on headphones going forward.

is there an official live album from the Psychedelic Pill tour?

he's previously announced plans to release a live album called alchemy from that tour but it hasn't happened yet

it's on the list of planned archives albums

thx UFO - it was a great tour

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:fe6vczeiicg5m7pbtjccysut/bafkreibqthiuxfubsgr46sx3s66x327pb7ypjh3rwbb6p5idhkat47r6gu

is there an official live album from the Psychedelic Pill tour?

― Cod:Shellfish (emsworth), Tuesday, June 9, 2026 4:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

back when i subscribed to archives there were sets on the timeline you could listen to from that tour that sounded amazing

yeah, there's a timeline show from melbourne that is off the chain, 22-minute "Like A Hurricane" at the end
https://sugarmtn.org/sm_show.php?show=201303130

that show spends 30 minutes just on "cortez" & "danger bird" back to back and both are utterly incredible versions

ha yeah wow imagine getting cortez and danger bird back to back

i saw the sydney show of that tour, the drones supported and totally ruled - i enjoyed the back catalogue stuff but it was the current lp tunes that made it special

the drones and then neil would be an insane show

something about the drones' orchestra of noise circa wait long by the river really reminded me of neil and the horse back in the day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibiomFJDNdw

not to mention the longer, discursive jams, which felt like on the beach played on blowtorch

the story i heard was that some milksop record company band was booked for the tour but the drones supported on an outdoor festival date and when he neil saw them he insisted they play the rest of the tour in the top support slot

might not be true but feels spiritually true

also the drones used to play Cortez occasionally in their album 1-2 era