Neil Young - Last Dance - Non-Album Tracks (1973)

A few days ago as I write this, the Neil Young box set "Archives, Volume II" was released. Man oh man! I've been waiting to hear the songs on that for decades. It sounds just as good as I'd hoped. If you're a Neil Young fan at all, I highly recommend that you get it.

I've already posted a couple of stray tracks albums in the time period covered by the box set, 1972 to 1976. I plan on redoing and expanding that effort, starting here. This one is a bit different than the others I plan on doing though, because Young came very close to releasing an album called "Last Dance" in 1973, and the exact song list is known for it. So this is closely based on that.

Here's a short article from "Uncut" magazine about this lost album:

Neil Young was still laid up at his Broken Arrow ranch, just south of San Francisco, recovering from spinal surgery, when “Harvest” made him the biggest-selling solo artist in the world. During the long months of his recuperation, there had been a growing clamour for him to tour that had gone unanswered, although he knew there were big bucks to be made by everyone after the album’s phenomenal success. His record company had simultaneously been so hungry for a follow-up that in November 1972, they’d released the soundtrack from his unseen film, “Journey Through The Past”. It was a rag-bag of old tracks, studio outtakes, a couple of live cuts, bits of Handel’s “Messiah”, a cover of The Beach Boys’ “Let’s Go Away For Awhile” and only one new song, “Soldier”. Young hadn’t wanted it released at all, but Warners had told him they’d distribute the film if he gave them the soundtrack. They then tried to dress it up as his ‘new’ album, and promptly dumped the film.

The same month, fuming at the label’s duplicity, he anyway started to assemble a large crew of technicians at his ranch to prepare for a three-month, 65-date tour, the largest and longest of its kind to date, which would find him playing nightly to audiences of up to 20,000 people in sports stadiums, basketball arenas, and ice hockey rinks. Also at Broken Arrow were the Stray Gators, the band who’d played on “Harvest”, including veteran Nashville session drummer Kenny Buttrey, bassist Tim Drummond, pedal-steel player Ben Keith and on keyboards Jack Nitzsche, the producer and arranger who’d first worked with Young on his Buffalo Springfield epic, “Expecting To Fly”. They would be his backing band on the forthcoming tour, rehearsals for which were interspersed with recording sessions for the official follow-up to “Harvest”.

Young had already recorded four solo acoustic demos at A&M Studios in LA – “Letter From Nam”, “Last Dance”, “Come Along And Say You Will” and “The Bridge” – and worked up more new songs at Broken Arrow. The new record’s working title was “Last Dance”. 

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Now, for the first time, the public has all the songs that makes up this album. Instead of releasing "Last Dance," Young decided to release the live album "Time Fades Away" that largely contained the same bunch of songs. However, the tour for that album had lots of problems, and the album itself was problematic. Young was dissatisfied with it and kept it out of print for decades. So it's especially interesting to hear the alternate album for most of those songs, "Last Dance."

In putting this together, I could just make an album that's exactly the songs on the known song list for this album. But I didn't want to do that for my own listening purposes, because two of the songs ("New Mama" and "Lookout Joe") would later go on his acclaimed album "Tonight's the Night," and I don't like having those on both albums. So what I've done is create two versions of this album. One follows the exact song list that Young intended. The other removes the "Tonight's the Night" songs and replaces them with other songs from the time period that fit.

One song I've added is "Letter from 'Nam." This one had been unreleased and even unbootlegged until "Archives, Volume II." However, it turns out to basically be the exact same song as "Long Walk Home" from his 1987 album "Life," so I've added that as the subtitle. I've also added a great acoustic version of "L.A." from the box set, and removed the audience noise as best I could. Furthermore, I've added the exact same version of "Yonder Stands the Sinner" as on the "Time Fades Away" album. I want to include all the "Time Fades Away" songs, but there are no publicly available studio versions of those two songs. Plus, "Yonder Stands the Sinner" was only played a few times in 1973, so the "Time Fades Away" version is the only version with excellent sound quality.

Note that the version of the song "Last Dance" I've included is called "Monday Morning" on the box set. It's drastically different than the live version on "Time Fades Away." It's an acoustic demo, whereas the live version is a rocking version with a band, and is considerably longer. But the words and melody are exactly the same, so I've put "Last Dance" in as the song's subtitle.

When all is said and done, all but two of the songs here are studio versions.  The album is 37 minutes long, which is right in line with the lengths of his albums in that era. I didn't include one new and previously unreleased song played on his 1973 tour, "Sweet Joni." But I plan to do something with it for my next revised 1970s stray tracks album.

Here's the song list for my preferred version of this album. Note that I've added the two "Tonight's the Night" songs on the intended song list as bonus tracks. Both of those come from the live "Tuscaloosa" album, with the audience noise removed.

01 Time Fades Away (Neil Young)
02 Yonder Stands the Sinner (Neil Young)
03 Come Along and Say You Will (Neil Young)
04 The Bridge (Neil Young)
05 Don't Be Denied (Neil Young)
06 L.A. (Neil Young)
07 Letter from 'Nam [Long Walk Home] (Neil Young)
08 Journey through the Past (Neil Young)
09 Monday Morning [Last Dance] (Neil Young)
10 Goodbye Christians on the Shore (Neil Young)

Lookout Joe (Neil Young)
New Mama (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848399/NeilY_1973_LastDnce_atse.zip.html

Here also is what I call the "exact version" of the album, which follows Young's intended song list exactly. Note though that he almost certainly would have used a full band version of "Last Dance" similar to the live version on "Time Fades Away" instead of the "Monday Morning" demo I used here.

01 Time Fades Away (Neil Young)
02 New Mama (Neil Young)
03 Come Along and Say You Will (Neil Young)
04 The Bridge (Neil Young)
05 Don't Be Denied (Neil Young)
06 Lookout Joe (Neil Young)
07 Journey through the Past (Neil Young)
08 Monday Morning [Last Dance] (Neil Young)
09 Goodbye Christians on the Shore (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15191362/NeilY_1973_LstDnceExactVrsion.zip.html

Although the title and song list for the "Last Dance" is known, I don't know if a cover was ever made for it. So we just have to guess. I've used the cover Young selected for the CD in the box set that largely deals with this time period. But that CD is called "Everybody's Alone." I took some of his writing from the "Time Fades Away" album and replaced the words "Everybody's Alone" with "Last Dance." The cover is otherwise unchanged.