If you’re about to shell out for Neil Young’s Archives, Vol. 1: 1963-1972, here are a few numbers that may give you pause. Based on the nine discs common to all three formats (CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray), 89 of 116 songs appear on either regular-issue albums, or on readily available compilations like Decade or the Buffalo Springfield box set. Many are technically new, it’s true — alternate takes, live versions, etc. — so this may be even more troubling: by my count, 33 of 116 appear exactly as they did on the original studio albums. A number of songs appear multiple times, and two of Archive’s three live discs (Live at the Fillmore East and Live at Massey Hall) have already been released commercially, though Warner always said they would be part of the box.
So superfluity is one problem; for anyone considering the DVD package, there’s also the small matter of the visuals. These are meant to be DVD audio discs, but I’m not sure that someone who has just handed over $250 for the experience will be quite so understanding about the screensaver-style images — record players spinning around, reel-to-reel machines. I really thought there’d be more in the way of archival footage.
No surprise, though, that there’s enough here to justify making the plunge anyway. First of all, about a third of Archives is drawn from the years 1969 and 1970; for me, Neil’s output during those 24 months (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, “Helpless,” “Country Girl,” and “Ohio”) is matched only by what The Beatles and Dylan put out in ’65-’66, and the Massey Hall and Fillmore discs take you to the very epicenter of that singular moment of genius and mystery and vision. The first two Early Years discs contain important work that has either only circulated on bootleg or has never appeared anywhere: Link Wray–ish instrumentals from ’63 with The Squires, a couple of great pre-Springfield folk duets with Connie Smith (“There Goes My Babe” and “Runaround Babe”), and a beautiful Springfield instrumental called “Slowly Burning.”
An impressive booklet is included, last year’s Canterbury House CD/DVD is thrown in, there’s a download card that will access mp3s of the entire box and hidden tracks abound throughout. Some are so well hidden I haven’t yet found them, but to make up for it, I’m stumbling over hidden hidden tracks that aren’t even listed: clips of CSNY doing “Down by the River” on a Shindig!–type show in 1969, Neil running through a “Loner”/“Cinnamon Girl” medley inside a small club in 1970 and Neil and Ben Keith in 1972 goofing through “The Gator Stomp.” Some amazing bridges across time are revealed: 1964’s “I Wonder” is clearly the blueprint for Zuma’s “Don’t Cry No Tears,” and I was surprised how much I liked 1971’s “War Song,” a collaboration with Graham Nash, until I realized it was basically “Ocean Girl” (my favourite little-known Neil song) with different words.
Best of all, you get the first DVD appearance of Neil’s directorial debut, Journey Through the Past, an infamous 1974 vanity project that precedes Dylan’s Renaldo & Clara by four years. I loved it. It’s a mix of awesome live footage, Carrie Snodgrass looking on lovingly while Neil rolls a joint the size of Manitoba, an absolutely impenetrable Last Movie/El Topo storyline in which a bearded guy…well…he walks around a lot, and, at last, the answer to why C, S & Y needed the chirpy Englishman around — without Nash, the other three’s heads would have exploded from having no one to listen to except each other.
I wish I had room enough to convey how meaningful Neil Young has been to my own life, an attachment that goes back to high school in the mid ’70s. Part of it, I think, is a shared obsession with the past — starting as early as “On the Way Home” and “Sugar Mountain,” Young has been looking over his shoulder since almost day one. Much as Decade was 30 years ago, Archives is the culmination of that side of him (the latest installment, anyway; more boxes are scheduled), and, faults and all, it chronicles an obsession well worth excavating.