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Neil Young polishes “Chrome Dreams” for October
Jonathan Cohen
Reuters, 8/21/2007Neil Young is borrowing the intended title for a 30-year-old shelved album for his next release. “Chrome Dreams II” is due October 16 via Reprise. The 10-song set includes three previously penned tunes and seven new cuts. Two unnamed songs run well past the double-digit mark, at 13:00 and 18:30, respectively.
Young recorded the album quickly with assistance from Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith, and played it for executives at the Warner Music-owned label last week. The project is the follow-up to 2006’s “Living With War” and will be supported by a North American tour set to begin around October 13, according to Young’s publicist.
The original “Chrome Dreams” was scrapped in 1977 for unknown reasons, but a number of the songs pegged to appear on it become Young classics after being released on later albums, including “Pocahontas,” “Sedan Delivery,” “Powderfinger,” “Look Out for My Love” and “Like a Hurricane.”
According to Young’s Web site (http://www.neilyoung.com), “all original documentation and art for this album was lost in a fire that destroyed Neil’s Malibu home in early 1978.”
Meanwhile, the first volume in Young’s “Archives” boxed set series is holding steady with a February 18 release date, however, the project’s arrival has shifted countless times in recent years.
8) KEEP ON ROCKIN’ IN THE FREE WORLD! 8)
8/20/07, 11:25 am EST
Neil Young To Release Sequel To Unreleased 1977 Album
Thirty years after shelving Chrome Dreams, Neil Young has taken to his official Web site to announce plans to release a new album entitled Chrome Dreams II. The forthcoming album — which was previewed for Reprise Records last week and is due October 16th — contains ten songs, three of which were previously written. Two of the tracks are epics, clocking in at 18:30 and 13:00. Young’s current backing band on the record includes Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, bassist Rick Rosas and pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith. The Blue Note Horns are on one track and a children’s choir is on another. Young will launch a North American tour to support the album that kicks off around October 13th. After the original Chrome Dreams was put aside, many of the songs appeared on subsequent Young albums, such as “Like a Hurricane,” “Powderfinger,” “Sedan Delivery” and “Pocahontas.” What does this mean for the twenty-years-in-the-making Archives: Volume 1 box set, due out February 14th, 2008? “This doesn’t push the box set back, according to [Neil Young’s manager] Elliott Roberts,” a spokesperson for Young says. “But don’t make me sign a blood oath on that one.”
— Andy Greene
Source: Rolling Stone
YOUNG PLAYS NEW RECORD FOR REPRISE
NY Times, August 16, 2007
Continuing a tradition that goes back to 1969, Neil Young played his latest recording for Reprise yesterday. The recording was played for about 100 people in Burbank. Produced by “The Volume Dealers,” NY and Niko Bolas, the recording runs 60+ minutes and includes two giant songs that time in at 18:30 and 13:00, respectively.
Drawing from three songs written previously, and 7 new songs, the latest Neil Young is a very diverse recording. A release date is unknown at this time. The title is Chrome Dreams II.
Chrome Dreams is a legendary NY album from 1977 that had originally been scheduled for release but was shelved. The original cover for Chrome Dreams was created by Neil’s long-time producer and friend, the late David Briggs. Unfortunately, all original documentation and art for this album was lost in a fire that destroyed Neil’s Malibu home in early 1978.
Source: neilyoung.com
New Neil Young Chrome Dreams II Album + Tour for October?
Fred Mills
August 19, 2007With Neil Young having delayed the delivery of his multi-disc Archives box once again—yes indeed, the apocryphal “July” of Neil lore has come and gone again—fans are left pondering the eventual fate of the reported 8 CDs, 3 DVDs and 160 page book that was to be part of the archival box. That Young’s already issued a handful of live recordings in his Archives series, however, is reason to cheer; the man just operates on his own schedule, not that of a record company, and if anyone has earned that right as an artist, it’s Young. Now, however, tantalizing rumors, put forth by Young himself, are swirling about a part-new, part-old album due from him in the near future.
Young recently posted some interesting “news” to his NeilYoung.com website, which currently features, for the home page, a mocked-up “newspaper” page called, appropriately enough the NY Times. An article whose headline reads “Young Plays New Record For Reprise” and dated August 16 was posted, and it outlines, in typically cryptic Young fashion (not to mention a suitably Youngian deadpan style), the pending release of a new Young album entitled Chrome Dreams II:
Continuing a tradition that goes back to 1969, Neil Young played his latest recording for Reprise yesterday. The recording was played for about 100 people in Burbank. Produced by “The Volume Dealers,” NY and Niko Bolas, the recording runs 60+ minutes and includes two giant songs that time in at 18:30 and 13:00, respectively.
Drawing from three songs written previously, and 7 new songs, the latest Neil Young is a very diverse recording. A release date is unknown at this time. The title is Chrome Dreams II
Chrome Dreams is a legendary NY album from 1977 that had originally been scheduled for release but was shelved. The original cover for Chrome Dreams was created by Neil’s long-time producer and friend, the late David Briggs. Unfortunately, all original documentation and art for this album was lost in a fire that destroyed Neil’s Malibu home in early 1978.
While the news item fails to specify an exact release date, some Young insiders, citing an official WEA schedule release sheet in circulation, are predicting it will be issued on October 16—and that Young will additionally embark upon a 7-week tour starting October 13, preceded by a Sept. 9 appearance at Farm Aid. The mainstream media doesn’t appear to have picked up on the story yet, at least not as of this writing, possibly owing to the fact than no official press release has been issued from the Young camp or from Reprise yet. (This isn’t all that surprising, given the way we media outlets are more or less spoonfed our information by the labels and their p.r. reps; see HARP’s story, “Meta-Fogerty: Evolution of a Press Release,” that ran August 6, for more on how the dissemination of entertainment news works.) Pitchfork ran a short item on it that cannibalized the key info-bytes, while Stereoboard reprinted the Pitchfork item (without, we should note, any attribution); Glide Magazine simply copied verbatim bits of the Young site news item.
Yet to longtime Young watchers, even the mention of the words Chrome Dreams, with or without the “II,” is hugely significant. Way back in the fall of 1976, word emerged that Young was planning to release a new studio album bearing that title. Around that same time word was also that Young had been readying a triple-LP archival set to be called Decade. Neither materialized, however. Instead, in June of ’77 Young issued American Stars ‘N Bars, followed in November by the Decade collection, but Chrome Dreams was never heard from again.
Well, not officially at least. But in the early ‘90s news arrived that an acetate pressing of Chrome Dreams had surfaced, the info bolstered by specific tracklistings and photos of the acetate’s record labels. The record featured 12 songs cut at sessions in November 1974, September 1975, November 1975, May 1976, September 1976 and November 1976 and included Young performing solo and with Crazy Horse and, on one track (“Star of Bethlehem”), Emmylou Harris, Ben Keith and Tim Drummond. Listed as producers were Young, David Briggs and Tim Mulligan. A number of the tunes had been recycled or re-recorded for the American Stars ‘N Bars project, while others, some in alternate form, wound up on Decade, Hawks & Doves, Comes A Time and Rust Never Sleeps. And within that context one can draw the conclusion that while Young was apparently dissatisfied with Chrome Dreams as originally conceived, he intuitively realized that the songs themselves were artistically significant and, indeed, injected with staying power.
That tracklisting: Pocohontas, Will to Love, Star of Bethlehem, Like a Hurricane, Too Far Gone, Hold Back the Tears, Homegrown, Captain Kennedy, Stringman, Sedan Delivery, Powderfinger, Look Out for My Love.
Within a few years an actual CD bootleg of the album was in circulation, and with that dam finally burst, subsequent bootlegs of the bootleg, with all the attendant artwork variations and bonus tracks that are typical of bootlegs, would appear over the ensuing years. Yours truly has purchased three different versions of Chrome Dreams, one which contains a reproduction of the original Reprise label copy listing the songs and recording information (oddly, the front sleeve is a takeoff on Comes A Time), and the other bearing the infamous original sleeve art as mentioned above—in silver, grey and black tones, it depicts a grinning Young standing next to a 25-cents-per-use vending (or pinball?) machine called “Blow Job.” Chrome dreams, indeed.
The NY Times “newspaper” on the Young website, in addition to the news about the upcoming CDII release, also posted a story about the tangled history of the original CD; it was originally written by archivist Jef Michael Piehler for the February 1993 issue of the now-defunct British Neil Young fanzine Broken Arrow. You can also view the Piehler article, along with reproductions of the CD bootleg sleeves, the acetate labels and the original label copy sheet, at Sidestreet Records, a Neil Young collectors/rarities site; included are some additional footnotes penned by Young biographer Johnny Rogan that help flesh out the tale a bit more. It’s all a fascinating read, and an invaluable behind-the-scenes glimpse of Young’s oftentimes inscrutable work methodology as an artist.
“Had it been released,” wrote Piehler of the album, “it might have stood today as one of Neil Young’s best records ever. The bar-room characters amidst historical references and passionate love songs creates a magical atmosphere. But like most first drafts, the perception of what’s important and what isn’t must be left to the artist, and not to the record company bean counters or the whims of fans.”
Meanwhile, back in the present, we’re left with the ultimate question of, what is this “new” Chrome Dreams II going to look/sound like—in particular, what are those three previously penned tunes, and will it have any thematic connections to or correlation with its ‘70s predecessor?
Maybe we’ll find out on October 16. If not… drumroll please… there’s always next July.
Source: harpmagazine.com
CHROME DREAMS II IN LONDON AND PARIS
NY Times, August 21, 2007
Elliot Roberts, Neil’s Manager for the past 38 years will return to Los Angeles tomorrow after playing Chrome Dreams II to an enthusiastic reception at Warner Bros’ England and France headquarters.
At all three playbacks the record was played in its entirety for the executives and staff. It is not known at this time if Neil will be visiting these countries on a press tour to support Chrome dreams II, but it is expected.
Also innaresting… Ticketmaster announcement:
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Keller Auditorium, Portland, OR
Mon, Oct 22, 2007 08:00 PMhttp://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0F003F16AFB0BB01?artistid=736511&majorcatid=10001&minorcatid=1
New Neil Young Album: “Chrome Dreams II” Set for Release October 16th
BURBANK, CA — 08/23/07 — The new album by Neil Young, “Chrome Dreams II,” will be released by Reprise Records on October 16th. Speaking from a vacation retreat with his family, Young says it’s “an album with a form based on some of my original recordings, with a large variety of songs, rather than one specific type of song.” It comes at a creative peak for the artist, following the “Greendale,” “Prairie Wind,” and “Living With War” albums, and a summer 2006 tour by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young that concert audiences are still talking about. In many ways, “Chrome Dreams II” is the ultimate example of what Young does best: most of the songs were written recently and came quickly, and the “live” recording sessions in northern California were over before they were announced. The album includes all kinds of music, and taken together, offers a complete picture of where Neil Young is today.
“Where ‘Living With War’ and ‘Everybody’s Rockin” were albums focused on one subject or style,” Young says, “‘Chrome Dreams II’ is more like ‘After The Goldrush’ or ‘Freedom,’ with different types of songs working together to form a feeling. Now that radio formats are not as influential as they once were, it’s easier to release an album that crosses all formats with a message that runs through the whole thing, regardless of the type of song or sound.”On the sessions for the album, Neil Young was joined by Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, pedal steel guitarist and dobro player Ben Keith (“Harvest,” “Comes A Time,” “Harvest Moon”) and bassist Rick Rosas (“Freedom,” “Living With War,” “This Note’s For You”). Most of the recording was done at Feelgood’s Garage studio near Redwood City, California, with two vintage gas pumps out front and vintage studio gear inside.
On the music itself, Young says, “Some early listeners have said that this album is positive and spiritual. I like to think it focuses on the human condition. Like many of my recordings, this one draws on earlier material here and there. I used to do that a lot back in the day. Some songs, like ‘Ordinary People,’ need to wait for the right time. I think now is the right time for that song and it lives well with the new songs I have written in the past few months. I had a blast making this music.”
The new album’s title refers to an earlier planned release that never came out. In fall of 1976, the album “Chrome Dreams” was announced for a November release. However, that date came and went and no album ever appeared.
For more information, contact:
Bill Bentley
Lookout Management
310-319-1331
bill.bentley@yahoo.comRick Gershon
Warner Bros. Records
818-953-3473
rick.gershon@wbr.comSource: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,164690.shtml
1. Beautiful Bluebird 3:30
2. Boxcar 3:15
3. Ordinary People 18:13
4. Shining Light 4:33
5. The Believer 2:38
6. Spirit Road 5:01
7. Dirty Old Man 2:52
8. Ever After 3:32
9. No Hidden Path 11:31
10. The Way 5:15And the tour dates…
October 18 Boise, ID Morrison Center
October 20 Spokane, WA Opera House
October 22 Portland, OR Keller Theater
October 23 Seattle, WA WaMu Center
October 30 Los Angeles, CA Nokia Live
November 5 Denver, CO Wells Fargo Theatre
November 8 Minneapolis, MO Northrop Auditorium
November 10 Detroit, MI Fox Theater
November 12 Chicago, IL Chicago Theater
November 13 Chicago, IL Chicago Theater
November 15 Washington, DC Constitution Hall
November 18 St. Louis, MO Fox Theater
November 26 Toronto, ON Massey Hall
November 27 Toronto, ON Massey Hall
December 2 Boston, MA Orpheum Theatre
December 3 Boston, MA Orpheum Theatre
December 5 Wallingford, CT Oakdale Theater
December 9 Philadelphia, PA Tower Theater
December 12 New York, NY United Palace
December 13 New York, NY United PalaceWhy are Neil and Lucinda’s tours de-tour-ing around the NE Ohio area? Haven’t Cleveland and Pittsburgh been long-time supportive fans all along? It is dissappointing to me and, I’ll bet, many, many others who wish we could be included. I for one cannot pull and overnighter at the drop of a hat, but would not hesistate to see either of these two ( possibly the greatest living songwriters of our time) if only they would make a stop just a little closer to our neck of the woods….. Peace.
Now here’s some hope for us left-behinds in ol’ Europe:
http://www.soldouteventtickets.com/listings/240/240/10544/Concerts/neil-youngNeil Young Tickets – Chrome Dreams Continental Tour
US Concert Schedule 2007
Neil Young Tickets – Idaho Morrison Center Oct 18
Neil Young Tickets – Washington INB Performing Arts Center Oct 20
Neil Young Tickets – Oregon Keller Auditorium Oct 22
Neil Young Tickets – Seattle, Washington WaMu Theater Oct 23
Neil Young Tickets – Los Angeles, California Nokia Theatre Oct 30
Neil Young Tickets – Denver, Colorado Wells Fargo Theatre Nov 05
Neil Young Tickets – Minneapolis, Minnesota Northrop Auditorium Nov 8
Neil Young Tickets – Detroit, Michigan Fox Theatre Nov 10
Neil Young Tickets – Chicago, Illinois The Chicago Theatre 12/13 Nov
Neil Young Tickets – Washington, D.C. Constitution Hall November 15
Neil Young Tickets – St. Louis, Missouri Fox Theatre November 18
Neil Young Tickets – Toronto, Ontario Massey Hall 26/27 Nov
Neil Young Tickets – Boston, Massachusetts Orpheum Theatre 2/3 Dec
Neil Young Tickets – Wallingford, Connecticut Chevrolet Theatre Dec 5
Neil Young Tickets – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tower Theatre Dec 9
Neil Young Tickets – New York, New York United Palace 12/13 DecNeil Young Tickets – UK & Europe Concert Tour 2007/2008
Neil Young Tickets – London United Kingdom date tba
Neil Young Tickets – Manchester United Kingdom date tba
Neil Young Tickets – Amsterdam Netherlands date tba
Neil Young Tickets – Paris France date tba
Neil Young Tickets – Berlin Germany date tbaLondon, Manchester, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin? Shouldn’t be the worst…
So now I feel a little better, having decided to cancel my plans for the NYC shows.
Confirmation of the Euro tour would be appreciated. Also the addition of more dates and venues.Neil Young Is Full of Shit
But at least his new album is a gem
By Brian J Barr, SeattleWeekly.com
October 17, 2007Fact: Aside from Bob Dylan, there has never been a performer more full of shit than Neil Young. Take that to heart when contemplating why his new record is called Chrome Dreams II. Where was the first Chrome Dreams? It actually exists. But unless you’re a psycho-nerd-completist, like me, you didn’t travel three hours from Clarion, Pa., to Lima, Ohio, as a 16-year-old just because a friend told you he saw a copy in the bootleg bin of Purple Frog Records, a store staffed by gray-haired dudes in Rush T-shirts who you walk away from saying, “Man, am I gonna end up like that someday?”
I paid $80 for Chrome Dreams, a CD with 15 songs on it. But these songs were classics like “Powderfinger,” “Like a Hurricane,” and “Too Far Gone.” What I got for my $80 were alternate versions of songs I already had in a different sequential order.
But it wasn’t all for naught: The cover art features a photo of a grinning Young circa 1978 putting a quarter in a “Blow Job” machine. As I told my parents when they questioned why I’d “waste” such money, that photo alone is worth at least $60.
The real Chrome Dreams is a legend in Neil Young mythology. He’d intended it as an album of original works, but scrapped the project in the late ’70s, choosing instead to sprinkle those songs onto sometimes lesser records over the course of more than a decade. And now that each of the songs from the aborted Chrome Dreams has found its way onto albums like Hawks & Doves, American Stars & Bars, Unplugged, Comes a Time, Freedom, and Rust Never Sleeps, Neil Young is delivering Chrome Dreams II.
If anything, Chrome Dreams II should be called Freedom II, the natural extension of Young’s 1989 “comeback” album. Why Freedom? In the late ’80s, Young began digging through his archives for a 10-disc project to be called Archives. But something happened when he listened to his old stuff. After genre-hopping through the ’80s, releasing albums comprised of synth-pop, conservative country, rockabilly, and big-band blues, he felt a spark again. Young scrapped the Archives project and made Freedom. It contained, among other tracks, “Rockin’ in the Free World,” his first classic since 1978’s “Hey Hey, My My.” Freedom was a fantastic album, and marked the beginning of Young’s most fertile period since the mid-’70s.
In 1995, Young’s longtime producer, David Briggs, died, so Young called in Crazy Horse to make a semi–tribute album, Broken Arrow. Since then, Young has spent the past 10 years putting out some really strange shit. There was Silver & Gold, an overrated album that some brownnosed critics inexplicably ranked among Harvest and Harvest Moon. After Silver & Gold came his post-9/11 blues-pop effort, Are You Passionate, and his rock ‘n’ roll musical, Greendale. (Personally, I loved both, but the records were pretty inaccessible for all but the most die-hard Young fanatics.) And then there was Prairie Wind, which turned out to be Silver & Gold Lite; it received press raves mostly because of its backstory: Young suffered a brain aneurysm and made the album as part of his recovery process.
But then, last year, trickles of the long-awaited Archives project began to resurface. First, Young released the mind-blowing 1970 Crazy Horse show from the Fillmore East in New York, followed by his sublime 1971 solo gig from Massey Hall in Toronto. And now, Young offers his 33rd album of new material, Chrome Dreams II. Much like on Freedom, he is backed by one member from each of his important backing bands: Crazy Horse (drummer Ralph Molina), the Bluenotes (bassist Rick Rosas), and the Stray Gators (steel guitarist Ben Keith).
Chrome Dreams II is easily the best record Young has released in more than a decade. It kicks off with studio versions of a trio of songs that date back 20-some years. “Bluebird” is a country-folk number about how the blue in his wife’s eyes is as lovely as a bird he saw while driving around his ranch, while “Boxcar” is a banjo-and-electric-guitar song akin to “Southern Pacific” from Young’s 1980s album Re-ac-tor. “Ordinary People” is stretched out to 18 minutes here, verse piled upon verse. It’s one of Young’s wordiest songs, with loopy visions of drug lords, hot rods, prizefighters, aged fashion models, and homeless factory workers.
Prairie Wind suggested Neil had come close to God in his post–brain surgery years, and the seven new tracks on Chrome Dreams II do nothing to refute that. On “Shining Light” and “Ever After,” he manages to let his electric strumming walk through a song that crosses into country waltz, ’50s pop, and gospel territory. But there are no less than three more epic rockers on the record, “Spirit Road,” a boot-stomping hurricane of electric fury, the finest among them. Next comes “Dirty Old Man,” an awesomely crappy romp that shares a special place in Young’s catalog with “Farmer John,” “T-Bone,” and “Piece of Crap” as beloved throwaway tracks. And just when you’d think old Neil is all rocked out, he rips into “No Hidden Path,” a two-note riff-fest that finds Young twisting, mangling, caressing, and strangling his guitar for 13 minutes with few lyrics.
In the past, Young has said he has to keep moving forward with his music, and can’t be caught up in his own history. This logic has kept him from becoming a nostalgia act. Yet it seems that dipping into his archives has proved to be a creative windfall for Young. Given this track record, Chrome Dreams II might just mark the beginning of another peak period for one of the industry’s great bullshit artists. If so, we should once again give up hope of seeing the Archives box set anytime soon.
Chrome Never Sleeps
by Ben Greenman (The New Yorker)
October 22, 2007Neil Young’s umpteenth studio album, “Chrome Dreams II” (Reprise), is a puzzle, from its title on down. The original “Chrome Dreams,” as Young diehards know, is an unreleased album from 1977 whose songs included “Pocahontas,” “Will to Love,” “Like a Hurricane,” and “Homegrown.” This record, ostensibly a sequel—though who releases a sequel to something that was never released in the first place?—is, more accurately, an inverted image. While the songs from the first “Chrome Dreams” were scattered over a series of successive albums, this album includes songs written during disparate time periods, stitched together and brought to life: Young’s Frankenstein, you could say.
Young works in many modes—pastoral country, moody folk, lumbering rock—and all of them are represented here. The album opener, “Beautiful Bluebird,” is a pretty, mellow ballad with airy harmonies; “Boxcar,” the second song, is a darker and riskier meditation on identity. Then comes the record’s centerpiece, “Ordinary People.” The song is a leftover from the late eighties, when Young was playing with a full horn section and calling his band the Bluenotes. A massive ode to our collective humanity, it runs for nine long verses and more than eighteen minutes: that’s three times as long as “Like a Rolling Stone” and longer even than “Sister Ray.” It’s also a major composition, passing through scenes of hope, justice, ambition, and disappointment as the guitar stings and the horns surge. “Some are saints and some are jerks,” Young sings, cataloguing his subjects more specifically as he goes—“alcoholic people,” “patch-of-ground people,” and even, in a wonderfully perverse refusal to update lyrics, “Lee Iacocca people.”
A song as monumental as “Ordinary People” presents a strategic challenge. Where should you put it so that it doesn’t swallow up the rest of the album? Not third, as it turns out. Placing it there is like filling out a lineup card where every power hitter on the team bats cleanup, all at once. The songs that follow, “Shining Light” and “The Believer,” are mid-tempo soul-flavored ballads that sound like echoes of, or outtakes from, Young’s 2002 album “Are You Passionate?” The album regains its footing somewhat with the driving “Spirit Road” and “Dirty Old Man,” a portrait of a gnarled curmudgeon who drinks, messes around with the boss’s wife, and puts “a bag of frozen peas” on his busted knees, but it can’t recover completely. The song that suffers most from the “Ordinary People” hangover is the knotty, compelling “No Hidden Path,” which is full of natural imagery and spiritual inquiry and clocks in at a brisk fourteen minutes. ♦
Boise 2007/10/18 Setlist
1st set
From Hank To Hendrix
Ambulance Blues
Sad Movies
A Man Needs A Maid
No One Seems To Know
Harvest
The Campaigner
Journey Through The Past
Mellow My Mind
Love Art Blues
Love Is A Rose
Heart Of Gold2nd set
The Loner
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Dirty Old Man
Spirit Road
Bad Fog Of Loneliness
Winterlong
Oh Lonesome Me
The Believer
No Hidden Pathencore
Cinnamon Girl
Tonight’s The Night
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