Neil Young - Royal Festival Hall, London, Britain, 2-27-1971

Here's another early thing from Neil Young before I resume posting more of his 1980s stuff. I consider this another "must have" concert if you're a fan of his music.

Young has released a very nice solo acoustic concert, "Live at the Cellar Door." That was recorded over several days at the start of December 1970. This is a solo acoustic concert recorded just three months later. The sound quality of "Cellar Door" is fantastic. It sounds better than this, which is a mere audience bootleg. But this is one of the rare audience bootlegs that sound about as good as a soundboard.

But there are a couple of problems with "Cellar Door," in my opinion, that makes this a better listen overall. For one, "Cellar Door" is only 45 minutes long, whereas this is an hour and 15 minutes long. So this is nearly double the length. Plus, "Cellar Door" is taken from four different concerts. If it were a case of picking the best guitar solos and such, that would make sense. But these are simple solo acoustic renditions, so each performance of any given song is essentially the same. In such a case, I prefer hearing a full concert, warts and all, so you can better tell what attending one of his concerts back then was like.

One reason this is longer recording is because Young was quite chatty in concert back in those days, and he talked before nearly every song. But for "Cellar Door," nearly all the between-song banter was removed. In live recordings in general, hearing the talking often gets boring fast, but I like Young's banter a lot, and I think having it adds a lot of character to the overall performance.

The final reason I like recording this better than "Cellar Door" is the song selection. Even though this concert took place only three months later, in the time between he wrote most of the songs from his album "Harvest." Although that album didn't come out until early 1972, it actually could have come out in early 1971, since most of the songs were written and even recorded by then. He only played one "Harvest" song on "Cellar Door" ("Old Man"), whereas he played six in this concert. Plus, he played some other new songs only here, like "Journey through the Past," "The Bridge," and "Love in Mind."

I don't know why Young kept "Cellar Door" down to just 45 minutes. Since it comes from four different concerts, all with different set lists, he could have made it a definitive look at his solo acoustic concerts from that era. Instead, it's more like a small sampler.

Anyway, getting back to the sound quality issue, this one is very good, as I said, despite being an audience bootleg. The crowd is quiet and respectful, so there's virtually no talking or cheering during the songs. The main reason why I knew it was audience-sourced is that the clapping after each song was louder than the music, whereas with a good soundboard it usually is a lot quieter. I lowered the volume of the audience reaction to better match the volume of the songs.

There was only one major audio issue, and that's with the first song, "On the Way Home." Unfortunately, the recording started about 30 seconds into the song. So I took the start of the version of that song from "Cellar Door" and matched the speed and pitch to fill in that missing music. You'll probably notice the transition point. This recording sounds a bit more boomy. But you quickly get used to it.

One final point I want to make here is that the number of really excellent sounding Neil Young concerts from his early years is very small. Aside from the official releases, the only ones I really like are this one and the one I posted a few days ago, from the Music Hall in Cincinnati in 1970. He played for the BBC in early 1971, and the sound on that one is fantastic, but it's a very short recording, only 32 minutes long, and the songs are all the usual suspects that you can find in nearly identical versions on "Cellar Door" and elsewhere. Plus, every single song he played there he also played here. So that's why any serious Neil Young fan should have this concert and the Music Hall in Cincinnati one.

01 On the Way Home [Edit] (Neil Young)
02 Tell Me Why (Neil Young)
03 talk (Neil Young)
04 Old Man (Neil Young)
05 talk (Neil Young)
06 Journey through the Past (Neil Young)
07 talk (Neil Young)
08 Cowgirl in the Sand (Neil Young)
09 talk (Neil Young)
10 The Bridge (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)
12 The Loner (Neil Young)
13 talk (Neil Young)
14 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)
15 See the Sky about to Rain (Neil Young)
16 Out on the Weekend (Neil Young)
17 I Am a Child (Neil Young)
18 Ohio (Neil Young)
19 Love in Mind (Neil Young)
20 talk (Neil Young)
21 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Neil Young)
22 talk (Neil Young)
23 Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
24 talk (Neil Young)
25 A Man Needs a Maid (Neil Young)
26 talk (Neil Young)
27 Harvest (Neil Young)
28 The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)
29 talk (Neil Young)
30 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Neil Young)
31 talk (Neil Young)
32 Dance, Dance, Dance (Neil Young)
33 Expecting to Fly (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848454/NeilY_1971d_RoylFestivlHallLondnBrtain__2-27-1971_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used two sources. The top part is a photo of a concert ticket from the very concert documented here. I cropped out the bottom half that gave the exact seating for the ticket holder and other less important details, and I also squished it vertically somewhat, to make room for the picture below it. That picture comes from the BBC performance I mentioned above, which took place just four days earlier, also in London.