Time Fades Away

by

Neil Young

Edit

Neil Young has offered a mountain of reasons why the completely live 'Time Fades Away', released on vinyl on 10-15-73, remains his only official work not available on CD. These reasons vary from not being particularly impressed by the work, to not wanting to be reminded of the tensions among the Stray Gators during the tour, to technical problems with reassembling the recordings, which were fed into a computer along with overdubs to press the original vinyl version. Yet 'Time Fades Away' may well be Neil's most affecting collection of songs, and is widely regarded by many die-hard fans as his finest production. Personally, I don't think Neil has offered all the reasons why TFA remains unreleased on CD. Over the years I've come to appreciate Neil as an astoundingly astute businessman (check out how he's marketing the 2006 CSNY summer tour through his web site to avoid the surcharge of ticket vendors), and I have a sneaking suspicion that he enjoys the mystique of keeping this masterpiece in short supply. After all, the Mona Lisa wouldn't have near its current value or prestige had da Vinci printed 200,000 copies and destroyed the original.

As for the music on the disc... well, what does it say when so many regard it as Neil's best? Most of those people wouldn't be from the part of Neil's fan base that proclaims 'Harvest' or 'Comes a Time' as other favorites from the Young catalog, however. This disc heralds instead from Neil's 'dark period', dealing with the death of Crazy Horse member Danny Whitten, his divorce from Carrie Snodgress, and the culmination of the hippie era which had spawned Neil's career. The depressing nature of the disc as a whole is loudly pronounced in songs such as the loping blues-rock closer, 'Last Dance' (which at nearly nine minutes stands as the longest track in the set). What's more depressing to your average Joe than the first lyric, "Wake up, it's a Monday morning...", and "It's time to go, time to go to work..."? Neil doesn't abandon the listener helpless, however, proclaiming "You can live your own life... laid back and laughin" in the chorus. Similar nuggets of light can be found in tracks such as 'The Bridge', a solo piano number focused on romantic gratitude, and 'Don't Be Denied', easily one of Neil's finest compositions, proclaiming an undeniable drive to secure whatever one needs from life, despite life's hard, and sometimes uncompromising blows. Some of the tunes, such as 'Yonder Stands the Sinner', sound especially raw and ragged due to Neil's voice being strained by the rigors of this 90 city tour, and the discontent within the band (prompting Neil to replace drummer Kenny Buttrey with Johnny Barbata, and adding David Crosby and Graham Nash on vocals and guitar). Another track of note is 'L.A.', whose verses are couched in a melody reminicent of Gordon Lightfoot's 'Edmund Fitzgerald', and the beautiful chorus culminating in "...don't you wish that you could be here, too...". 'Love In Mind' (actually recorded in 1971 on the same tour that Neil selected the live version of 'Needle and the Damage Done' from for 'Harvest') is the shortest track at 1:57, another solo piano performance, with notes that rain like tear drops, while 'Journey Through the Past' is a nostalgic piano ballad. The title track opens the disc, an upbeat country-rocker with 'World On a String' overtones.

I'd like to thank Mark Lomas (see his 3-15-06 review below) for advertising the availability of this disc for download on buddyhead.com. I owned 'Time Fades Away' on vinyl in the early 1970's, and it was one of my favorite listens while attending college at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. The recording is crisp and clean, and for a live disc from 1973, the original master tapes were exceptionally well done. The audience noice is very distant, even on the solo piano cuts. 'Time Fades Away' stands as a milestone on the road of rock and roll history (especially since all of the tracks are unavailable in studio versions), and is essential for even casual fans of Neil Young's music. Download it while you can, and hope Neil decides someday to give the people every little thing they want!

So, is this thing out on CD yet or do I still have to listen to my uncle's 8-track to hear it? I guess we can thank whoever had the bright idea of mastering this album "straight to a computer" (gee, I didn't even know they had those in 1973!) for there being no original master tapes for this album. No master tapes to work with. Hmm. What if the Beatles had decided to master the White Album straight to a computer? Well, I guess we'd have no CD of that today either! Anyway, if there had to be one album that Neil Young mastered straight to a computer with no chance of it ever being preseved on "master tape" I guess we should all be thankful it wasn't Harvest or Everybody Knows this is Nowhere! But still, wouldn't we all love to have Time Fades Away on a digitally remastered CD with that great punchy full sound? I mean, why did it have to be Time Fades Away? Couldn't he have waited until Landing on Water to master an album straight to computer without ever taking the time to make a master tape? I still think they could push the newest A&R flunkie at Reprise down the stairs of the dark vault library and go through all those dozens of Neil Young tape boxes that say "recorded live in 1973" and figure out just where the recordings are once and for all and get mixing this sucker! I don't care if he has to go through 1,689 hours of tape just to find the 37 minutes of music that ended up on Time Fades Away. Aren't we the fans worth it? The completists that have to have every NOTE ever released even if it is the artist's worse work ever? And who says this is Neil's worst? Who has the right? Uh, well, umm, I guess Neil did kind of mention that this kind of is like his, well, um, least favorite album he ever made. But, still, we want it on CD anyway, just because it's the missing link, right? Right! I want to hear "Journey Through the Past," "Love in Mind" and "The Bridge" at least once in my lifetime on some other format than my uncle's "straight to computer", scratched-up, water damaged, snap, crackled and popped plastic waffle!