Neil Young - Homefires - Non-Album Tracks (1974)

For a long time, we only had an incomplete picture of the rare and unreleased Neil Young songs from the early to mid-1970s. Now, thanks to the release of his "Archives, Volume II" box set, we have a much more complete picture. Apparently, the only song from that time period that he recorded and remains unreleased is called "Barefoot Floors." 

 I had posted a couple of albums gathering up the stray tracks from this era, as well as a rough version of "Homegrown." I'll be replacing them with better albums. Once I have those posted, I'll delete them as obsolete. (Also, I won't be replacing "Homegrown" with anything, since that's a rare case of an "album that should exist" that now officially has been released.)

It turns out that Young had one album in mind in 1974 to be called "Homefires" and another from around that same time to be called "Homegrown." Don't be confused by the very similar titles, because they were totally different albums (though some of the same songs might have been considered for both). "Homegrown" is now a closed book, since that has been officially released. But "Homefires" remains an open mystery. Young has talked about officially releasing that some time in the future, but so far he hasn't done that. Unlike another album of his I recently posted, "Last Dance," nobody outside his inner circle knows which songs were considered for this album.

So I'm going to use this as a gathering of all his stray tracks from a certain time period, and then I'll call it "Homefires." It's not what he intended, I'm sure, but it'll have to do for now. Certainly, many of these songs would have appeared on the version he intended, since these were the ones he didn't release at the time. Furthermore, they're all really good songs. In my opinion, this album would get a five star rating, along with most of his other early to mid-1970s albums.

This time period, roughly 1974, was a very emotionally troubled time for Young, because his first marriage, to Carrie Snodgrass, was falling apart. One way he coped was by writing more songs than he knew what to do with. At the same time, he was part of a massive Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tour that summer. A few of these songs ("Traces," "Long May You Run," "Pushed It Over the End" and "Hawaiian Sunrise") were attempted by CSNY, either live or in the studio. 

I've put those on my "alternate CSNY universe" albums, where CSNY actually put out some albums together in the mid-1970s. But that won't stop me from including them here too. Generally speaking, they're very different in these versions. That's especially the case with "Pushed It Over the End." CSNY did a rocking, full-band version of it. But here, Young did it just with solo acoustic guitar.

The vast majority of the songs here were officially released in these versions for the first time on "Archives, Volume II." The exceptions are "Winterlong," which came out on his "Decade" compilation in 1977, plus "Long May You Run" and "Pushed It Over the End." The latter two performances come from his great solo concert appearance at the Bottom Line in May 1974. I've posted the whole thing, which you can get here:

http://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/03/neil-young-citizen-kane-junior-blues.html

It's officially unreleased now, but apparently Young has plans to release it in 2021 (though we'll see if those come through on time). 

Anyway, the only version I have of those two songs comes from an excellent sounding audience bootleg, but an audience bootleg just the same. That means the audience could be heard from time to time. A particularly annoying aspect was that some people in the audience thought "Long May You Run" was a jokey song (since Young sings about his car), and they laughed from time to time through it. I carefully edited the recording to get rid of the laughing and other noise as much as possible. I made a lot of improvements, but I couldn't completely get rid of all of it. I did the same with "Pushed It Over the End," but I had a lot less trouble there.

"Sweet Joni" was also from a concert recording. But that was a pristine soundboard, and it got released as part of "Archives, Volume II." So all I really had to do there was remove some crowd noise right at the start and end of the song. With that removed, you'd think it was recorded in the studio.

In terms of the song order, because we don't have any proposed song list for this album, I didn't have anything to go on. With a few exceptions, I decided to go with the song order as presented on "Archives, Volume II." All the songs here from that came from the same album, and they flow together well. The main alteration I did was to put "Greensleeves" at the very end. That's a cover of the well-known traditional song, and it just felt right to me to put it last.

Note that although this isn't the exact "Homefires" that Young intended, it holds together very well as an album, in my opinion. In part, that's because the vast majority of it is acoustic, or at least semi-acoustic, so it has a consistent sound. There are no long Crazy Horse guitar jams here. But also, it's almost a concept album, with nearly all the songs relating to his crumbling marriage with his wife. In fact, they were so personal and painful that that's probably the main reason they remained unreleased for decades (and that was the same case with the "Homegrown" songs). 

Even some songs that may not seem thematically related to that, such as "Pushed It Over the End," probably are. (That song deals with political matters, especially the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and personal matters simultaneously.) "One More Sign" actually is a song he originally did in the 1960s with Buffalo Springfield, but it's drastically overhauled with a slow acoustic arrangement, and fits in to the divorce theme. Admittedly, a couple songs don't fit the theme, with "Sweet Joni" especially standing out. But I didn't have a better album to put it on, since it didn't really fit with the previous stray tracks album, "Last Dance."

UPDATE: On January 16, 2021, when I was getting ready to post the next stray tracks album in this series ("Dume"), I realized it made sense to move one song, "Love-Art Blues," to this album. So that's what I did. 

Then, on February 1, 2021, I added the song "Barefoot Floors." This is another excellent Young original. It was inexplicably left off the "Archives, Volume II" box set, but it was streamed on his website neilyoungarchives.com in January 2021.

01 Winterlong (Neil Young)
02 Sweet Joni (Neil Young)
03 Traces (Neil Young)
04 Long May You Run [Edit] (Neil Young)
05 Pushed It Over the End [Edit] (Neil Young)
06 Homefires (Neil Young)
07 Hawaiian Sunrise (Neil Young)
08 L.A. Girls and Ocean Boys (Neil Young)
09 One More Sign (Neil Young)
10 Frozen Man (Neil Young)
11 Give Me Strength (Neil Young)
12 Love-Art Blues (Neil Young)
13 Barefoot Floors (Neil Young)
14 Greensleeves (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696715/NELYNG1974c_Hmefies_atse.zip.html

Phew! I've mentioned that I had some computer troubles lately. Luckily, I made this album cover just before those troubles. I'm really happy at how it turned out. I searched the Internet for "Neil Young" and "fire," and found this photo of him in front of a fire. I don't know where or when it's from, but it looks like it's from the 1970s.