https://youtu.be/JjIl2HBimV8
The first singles are available to stream in hi-res right here on NYA, and you can watch the official music videos for each tune on their respective infocards. (NYA)
Royce Hall and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion were recorded near the end of a successful solo acoustic tour Young played following the dissolution of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The two sets are largely identical and feature Buffalo Springfield tunes (“On The Way Home,” “I Am a Child”), After the Gold Rush songs (“Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” “Tell Me Why”) and new compositions that wouldn’t be released until Harvest over a year later (“Heart of Gold,” “Old Man,” and “A Man Needs a Maid.”) Both shows have circulated in bootleg circles for years, but the sound quality on these new releases will be much better than anything heard before.
The deeply oxidized rusties among you will have heard these shows before—they never sounded this sublime, so I hope you dig them all over again—but what excites me about this series is the opportunity people will have to sit down with these recordings for the first time. No need to dig around seedy corners of the internet or time travel to the kind of bygone record store that might keep this kind of thing under the counter with the other less-than-legal wares.
So, without further delay, I invite you to get into that under-the-counter mood: light one up (local ordinances permitting), head on over to the Official Bootleg Series playlist for a perfectly legal listening experience, and click yourself through.
As Neil rightly notes, bootlegs have been essential for understanding and contextualising a career as long and varied as his. He’s played with a host of different bands, he’s gone through countless phases and side trips, he’s left entire albums unreleased for decades. Any die-hard will tell you Young’s officially released records tell only a fraction of his story (case in point: “Dance Dance Dance”, the only song on all three of these new Official Bootlegs, didn’t show up on a Young release until 2007). (Uncut)
with the release of two more 1971 acoustic shows, Neil can probably close the book on his post-Déjà Vu/post-After The Gold Rush solo era. Royce Hall, 1971 and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 1971, recorded days apart, join the aforementioned Carnegie Hall 1970, Young
Shakespeare, Live At The Cellar Door, and Live At Massey Hall 1971, all of which feature similar setlists. Throw in two earlier sets, Sugar Mountain – Live At Canterbury House 1968 and Live At The Riverboat 1969, and we’ve got a more than full portrait of Neil as a young artist, alone onstage. Taken on their own merits, Royce Hall and Dorothy Chandler are prime examples of Young in early ’71 … but maybe we can move on to other territory now? Future Official Bootlegs announced but now pushed back include a Tonight’s The Night-era gig at London’s Rainbow Theatre and a 3LP collection of recordings made in 1977 with Young’s virtually undocumented band The Ducks, plus Archives III, due this year.
