Neil Young - Acoustic Demos (1973-1974)

In November 2020, Neil Young released the excellent box set "Archives, Volume II." I've taken all the songs from that not on his previously existing studio albums and added them to various mid-1970s stray tracks albums I've made. There also are lots of alternate versions of songs from his studio albums that I don't plan on doing anything with. But today, a commenter suggested I should do something with all the acoustic demos he did from 1973 and 1974. I thought that was an excellent idea, so I quickly put this together.

A big reason I'm doing this is because in January 2021, Young posted three acoustic demos on his website, neilyoungarchives.com. They're not available in any form unless you can record them streaming there, which is what I did. I've added those to four more acoustic demos from "Archives, Volume II."

Unfortunately, that makes for a very short album. So I tried to think what else I could add that would fit the format, and that I have posted on another album. I came up with a nice version of "Star of Bethlehem" that Young performed on stage during the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tour in 1974. Luckily, this comes from a soundboard bootleg, and he played it solo acoustic. Once I edited out the crowd noise, it sounds just like the others.

I did the exact same thing to "Homefires." Unfortunately, the bootleg recording of that is good, but it isn't as good as the rest. So I've only included it here as a bonus track.

This album is only 29 minutes long, 32 if you include the bonus track. That's pretty short, but everything here is high quality. Hopefully in the future he'll release more acoustic demos through his website, and I'll be able to add some to this.

On a different note, the same time he posted the acoustic demos to his website, he also posted the song "Barefoot Floors." This is an original that was inexplicably left off the box set. I've added that to the "Homefires" album, since that collects songs from that time period not on any other studio albums. If you want that (and it's an excellent song), you can get it here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/12/neil-young-homefires-various-songs-1974.html

01 Come Along and Say You Will (Neil Young)
02 Mellow My Mind (Neil Young)
03 Ambulance Blues (Neil Young)
04 Human Highway (Neil Young)
05 Love-Art Blues (Neil Young)
06 Through My Sails (Neil Young)
07 Pardon My Heart (Neil Young)
08 Star of Bethlehem (Neil Young)
09 Vacancy (Neil Young)

Homefires (Neil Young)

https://www.imagenetz.de/b3P3a

For the album cover, I really wanted a photo of Neil Young playing acoustic guitar in the studio in 1974. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any such photo. So I decided to create one. I found a photo of him playing acoustic guitar on stage during the 1974 CSNY tour. I used Photoshop to strip out the background. Then I found a totally unreleased photo of a recording studio and put that in as the background. So this is kind of Frankenstein of a photo. I apologize if it doesn't work for you, but I like it.