Neil Young issued an apology for the delay in releasing the 1975 album “Homegrown”, calling it “the one that got away.” He’s finally putting out the LP this year. Neil Young has updated the timeline at Neil Young Archives to include dates for five upcoming archive titles scheduled for release during 2020.
First on the slate is shelved 1975 acoustic album Homegrown, which was given a release date of April 18th the original date for Record Store Day – despite the album disappearing from the official RSD list over the weekend. Just before its original scheduled release date, he decided to issue Tonight’s the Night instead. He later described Homegrown as “a very down album” and “the unheard bridge between “Harvest” and “Comes a Time.” It was recorded during a period when he was having marital problems as well as personal issues with his Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young bandmates.
“I apologize,” Young wrote on his archives website. “This album Homegrown should have been there for you a couple of years after Harvest. It’s the sad side of a love affair. The damage done. The heartache. I just couldn’t listen to it. I wanted to move on. So I kept it to myself, hidden away in the vault, on the shelf, in the back of my mind … but I should have shared it. It’s actually beautiful. That’s why I made it in the first place. Sometimes life hurts. You know what I mean.” an unreleased acoustic album by Neil Young from 1974-1975. Young originally recorded Homegrown at a time his career when new songs were coming to him at an incredible pace, many of them inspired by his painful split with girlfriend Carrie Snodgress.
According to the timeline, it will be followed on June 19th by Return To Greendale the concert film of Young’s 2003/4 Greendale tour; and most excitingly on July 24th by Archives Volume 2, reportedly covering the years 1972-82. It’s thought that it may contain unreleased albums Chrome Dreams and Oceanside/Countryside. The other planned 2020 releases are Rust Bucket (October 16th), a live album and film of a mammoth November 1990 show that Young has called “one of my all-time favourite Crazy Horse performances!”; and Young Shakespeare (November 27th), another live release dating from January 1971, billed as the earliest known film of any Neil Young performance.
He noted that Levon Helm and Emmylou Harris were among the artists who recorded with him and that the album carries “a narration, several acoustic solo songs never even published or heard until this release, and some songs played with a great band of my friends.”
Young said Homegrown would be his first release of 2020, though he didn’t provide a date for its arrival. “This is the one that got away,” he added. “This album, in vinyl, displays the beauty, feeling and depth of music record in the analog domain, before digital. It’s the perfect example of why I can’t forget how good music used to sound.
Neil Young puts it best: “This album is the unheard bridge between Harvest and Comes a Time”.
Recorded between June 1974 and January 1975, Homegrown was intended to come out in 1975 before Neil cancelled the release. The album has remained unreleased until now, achieving a legendary status among Neil Young fans in the process.
The album is made up of twelve Neil Young songs, of which seven are previously unreleased – “Separate Ways,” “Try,” “Mexico,” “Kansas,” We Don’t Smoke It No More,” “Vacancy” and “Florida” (a spoken word narration). Also included are the first recordings of “Love Is A Rose,” “Homegrown,” “White Line.”
“Little Wing,” and “Star Of Bethlehem” – different versions of which would all later appear on other Neil Young albums.
Neil plays solo on some tracks (guitar, piano and harmonica), and is joined by a band of friends on other tracks, including Levon Helm, Ben Keith, Karl T Himmel, Tim Drummond, Emmylou Harris and Robbie Robertson. Recorded in analog, and mastered from the original master tapes, this long-lost album is a wonderful addition to Neil’s incomparable catalogue.
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