Neil Young Tonight’s the Night finally released

Tonight’s the Night Neil Young

Recorded: 3/7/70 to 12/5/73 Released: June 20, 1975 Peak: 25 US, 48 UK, 12 CN, 42 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.06 UK, 1.0 world (includes US + UK) Genre: rock

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Tonight’s the Night [4:39] (33 CL, 9 DF) Speakin’ Out [4:56] World on a String [2:27] Borrowed Tune [3:26] Come on Baby, Let’s Go Downtown [3:35] (Danny Whitten) Mellow My Mind [3:07] Roll Another Number (For the Road) [3:02] Albuquerque [4:02] New Mama [2:11] Lookout Joe [3:57] Tired Eyes [4:38] (49 CL) Tonight’s the Night, Pt. 2 [4:52] All tracks written by Neil Young unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 44:52 The Players: Neil Young )vocals, guitar) Ben Keith (guitar, vocals) Nils Lofgren (piano, vocals) Danny Whitten (vocals, guitar on “Come on Baby, Let’s Go Downtown”) Jack Nitzsche (piano) Billy Talbot, Tim Drummond (bass) Ralph Molina, Kenny Buttrey (drums) George Whitsell (vocal on “New Mama”)

Rating: 4.142 out of 5.00 (average of 24 ratings) Quotable: “The work of a man trying to turn his torment into art and doing so unflinchingly.” – William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Veering Away from Folk Rock With 1972’s Harvest and its #1 single “Heart of Gold,” Neil Young had hit the big time. He was at the forefront of the folk-rock-oriented singer/songwriter movement that dominated the 1970s. However, he was bored and unimpressed with success. “Bravely, he threw away a certain career as a folk-rock/country-rock heartthrob for a more treacherous mixture of hard rock and hard turns.” JG “All Young had to do was plug in his electric guitar play his modal, minor-key solos, and watch ‘em scatter.” JG The “harsh, off-kilter” JG Tonight’s the Night, the next album recorded after Harvest, was Young’s “most radical” JG transition. A Tribute to Fallen Friends In less than a year’s time, Young lost two close friends, Crazy Horse bandmate Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, to heroin overdoses. Young responded with Tonight’s the Night, his “musical expression of grief” AM as well as his reaction to the “commercial success [that] had left him feeling trapped and isolated.” RD The Recording Most of the album was recorded in “a series of late-night, tequila-fueled sessions” RD in SIR studio in Los Angeles. He worked with the remains of Crazy Horse. Bassist Billy Talbot said it was like “a drunken Irish wake.” 500 David Briggs, the producer, “kept the tape rolling and recorded everything.” AD He actually “wanted a far looser version of the album to be released, the original version. That version included drunken raps, spoken parts, linking the songs.” AD Young “performed in the ragged manner familiar from Time Fades Away – his voice was often hoarse and he strained to reach high notes, while the playing was loose, with mistakes and shifting tempos.” AM “The style worked perfectly for the material, emphasizing the emotional tone of Young’s mourning and contrasting with the polished sound of CSNY and Harvest that Young also disparaged.” AM Late Release Reprise Record rejected Tonight’s the Night “in the vain hope that Young would record a more commercial album.” RD There is, however, also a suggestion that Young withdrew it himself “at the start of 1974 after touring with the material in the U.S. and Europe.” AM The album was finally released in 1975 after Young had participated in a massive CSNY tour and dumped a newly recorded album at the last minute in favor of releasing Tonight’s the Night. AM The Album’s Impact Either way, when the album finally saw release, it “failed to match the sales of previous releases” RD but “immediately was recognized as a unique masterpiece by critics.” AM “Its true influence would not become apparent until more than a decade later, when grunge and alt-country acts alike would mimic its raw and emotionally apocalyptic sound.” RD “It has continued to be ranked as one of the greatest rock & roll albums ever made.” AM Internet music critic Adrian Denning called it “the single most powerful and real album statement Neil ever put out.” AD The Songs The “ominous” AD title track, “littered with guitar-sweeping guitar from Nils Lofgren,” RD alongside “croaked and off-key vocals,” AD “tackles Bruce Berry’s sad and wasted life.” RD Danny Whitten actually sings on Come on Baby, Let’s Go Downtown, a song he wrote and performed live with Crazy Horse at the Fillmore East in New York City on March 7, 1970. It is both “spooky and great.” AD On the album’s “best song,” AD Tired Eyes, Neil “invokes Whitten’s drug struggles with the world-weary chorus, ‘He tried to do his best, but he could not.’” RD He sings in “weary harmony…sounding as tired as the eyes the lyrics mention.” AD These were “serious lyrics, drunkenly sung…Everybody is tired, it’s late…you only started recording at midnight…a bunch of drunken guys singing together, but singing with beautiful pedal steel, lovely piano and harmonies that get straight to your heart.” AD On “mournful ballads” AM like that one and Speakin’ Out, “Young sounds like he’s on the edge of a breakdown.” 500 The song “seems initially unremarkable, until repeated listens get the vocals into your brain.” AD The song is “a blues based on Dylan’s ‘Pledging My Time.’” JG “Songs like ‘Speakin’ Out’ and New Mama seemed to find some hope in family life, but Tonight’s the Night did not offer solutions to the personal and professional problems it posed. It was the work of a man trying to turn his torment into art and doing so unflinchingly.” AM “World on a String, featuring ethereal pedal steel from Ben Keith, is a beautifully cynical rejection of Young’s celebrity status.” RD noting, “The world on a string / Doesn’t mean anything.” “In Roll Another Number, he said he was ‘a million miles away / From that helicopter day’ when he and CSN had played Woodstock. And in Albuquerque, he said he had been ‘starvin’ to be alone/Independent from the scene that I've known’ and spoke of his desire to ‘find somewhere where they don’t care who I am.’” AM The latter is “heartfelt and real” AD and features “beautiful steel guitar and piano and vocals.” AD “Mellow My Mind is beautiful, more so than the entire Harvest album.” AD Borrowed Tune is “a moment of genius” AD in which Neil, in his “cracked vocal” AD amidst “the lovely piano and harmonica,” AD flat out confesses to stealing the lyrics of the song: “I’m singing this borrowed tune / I took from the Rolling Stones. / Alone in this empty room/ Too wasted to write my own.”

Resources/References: AM AllMusic.com review by William Ruhlmann AD Adrian Denning (3/30/2007). “Adrian’s Top 100 Albums, So Far” RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 346. JG Jimmy Guterman (1992). The Best Rock ‘n’ Roll Records of All Time. Citadel Press Book: New York, NY. Pages 54-5. 500 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” Related DMDB Pages: First posted 11/16/2010; last updated 9/9/2026.

Neil Young On the Beach released

On the Beach Neil Young

Released: July 16, 1974 Peak: 16 US, 42 UK, 13 CN, 34 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.50 US, 0.06 UK, 2.0 world (includes US + UK), 2.31 EAS Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Walk On (7/13/74, 69 BB, 54 CB, 66 HR, 15 CL) See the Sky about to Rain Revolution Blues For the Turnstiles (49 CL) Vampire Blues On the Beach Motion Pictures Ambulance Blues Total Running Time: 39:40 The Players: Neil Young (vocals, guitar, etc.) Ben Keith (guitar, organ, vocals, etc.) Rusty Kershaw, David Crosby, George Whitsell (guitars) Tim Drummond, Billy Talbot, Rick Danko (bass) Ralph Molina, Levon Helm (drums) Graham Nash (electric piano on “On the Beach”)

Rating: 4.127 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album “Following the 1973 Time Fades Away tour, Neil Young wrote and recorded an Irish wake of a record called Tonight's the Night and went on the road drunkenly playing its songs to uncomprehending listeners and hostile reviewers. Reprise rejected the record.” AM Young responded with “On the Beach, which shares some of the ragged style of its two predecessors. But where Time was embattled and Tonight mournful, On the Beach was savage and, ultimately, triumphant.” AM It was “not quite as sparse or raw as Tonight’s the Night but as deeply melancholic (maybe even more so).” On the Beach is “Neil Young’s opus, the object of his lifelong griefs and affections.” PM On the Beach takes its title from “a Gregory Peck film about the few people left alive in Melbourne, Australia after nuclear war has destroyed the northern hemisphere. In the film they get a signal from San Diego suggesting that someone in California survived Armageddon. On the cover of the album On the Beach, Neil Young stands beside his boots in front of a Cadillac buried in the sand. He is staring out at the Pacific. He could just be that survivor.” CM “Even by Neil Young’s melancholic standards, On the Beach is one bleak trip. An odyssey of regret, disgust, and disappointment, the album marked the end of a love-in.” RD “It’s not a happy album (as if any album named after a movie about nuclear war would be?)” PK It “was not enthusiastically received on its release in 1974. The drugs then circulating in Young’s world – heroin and cocaine – were taking their toll. The Watergate scandal was ripping apart the American dream. The fans wanted escape or consolation, not a downer.” CM “But the dreary, moody feel which pervades the album makes it stand out as one of the more cohesive, consistent works from an artist who is best known for his obsessive eclecticism.” PK Young’s “barbs were mixed with humor and even affection, as Young seemed to be emerging from the grief and self-abuse that had plagued him for two years. But the album was so spare and under-produced, its lyrics so harrowing, that it was easy to miss Young’s conclusion: he was saying goodbye to despair, not being overwhelmed by it.” AM The Songs “The album kicks off sturdily enough, with the straightforward rocker Walk On.” PK Despite its “sad boogie” PM the song puts forth a “tentative optimism” 500 that finds Young “answering back to Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ had taken him to task for his criticisms of the South in ‘Southern Man’ and ‘Alabama.’” AM The song is “a statement of Young’s credo – to keep moving.” CM “Revolution Blues is a song about the Sharon Tate killings sung from Charles Manson’s point of view.” CM Young actually met Manson and said, “he was not a happy guy.” CM “Over ragged minor chords, Young plays a longhaired avenger, gunning down the wealthy hippy residents of L.A.’s Laurel Canyon.” RD The “allusions shocked his 1974 touring partners Crosby, Stills & Nash, who pleaded with Young to drop the song.” RD It is a “wild fireball of anger” 500 and one of Young’s “sharpest, most jarring tracks.” PK “The epic Ambulance Blues conjures up the meandering, folky lyricism he’d intermittently delve into over the years.” PK It is “a startling admonishment of critics, Nixon and Young’s former band Crosby, Stills and Nash (‘It’s easy to get buried in the past when you try to make a good thing last’).” AM The melody of “Ambulance Blues” comes from Bert Jansch’s “Do You Hear Me Now?” “The story begins in the Riverboat folk club, where Young started out. From there he meanders past the hippies burned out on their dreams, superstars going through the motions in arenas, John Paul Getty Jr.’s kidnapping by Italian revolutionaries cutting of his ear is covered in ‘the entertainment section’ – a remarkably prescient observation considering the way that news has now converged with pop culture.” CM Young “criticizes the sycophantic nature of the oil business” PM and “takes a bite out of hangers-on” RD in Vampire Blues,” PM “an inspired exercise in John Lee Hooker minimalism.” RD “His troubled marriage to actress Carrie Snodgress is dissected in the mournful Motion Pictures.” RD “The beautiful See the Sky About to Rain” PK “is a country lament that predates Harvest, but its mood of impending doom fits better here.” CM It is a “gorgeous ballad capturing a similar feel as his Buffalo Springfield-era ‘Expecting to Fly.’” PK The title cut “is the record’s emotional core. A grievous portrayal of loneliness and media scrutiny after tumbling into celebrity, Young pulls no punches and sets the record straight: ‘He is mad at, unsatisfied with and alienated by his place in the world. ‘I went to the radio interview, but I ended up alone at the microphone,’ he sings. ‘Now I’m livin’ out here on the beach, but those seagulls are still out of reach.’” PM

Resources/References: AM AllMusic.com review by William Ruhlmann CM Toby Creswell & Craig Mathieson (2012). 100 Best Albums of All Time. Hardie Grant Books. Page 94. RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 331. PM PasteMagazine.com (6/3/2024). “The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time” PK Pop Kulcher/Marc Fagel Greatest Rock & Roll Albums of All Time 500 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” Related DMDB Pages: First posted 11/16/2010; last updated 9/9/2026.