Neil Young - Bread and Roses Festival, Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 10-3-1980

In 1979, Neil Young's musical career was hitting new highs. He released an album of new material, "Rust Never Sleeps," and a live album, "Live Rust." Both sold well and were critically acclaimed. He even was named "Artist of the Year" in Rolling Stone magazine by both readers and critics. But in his personal life, things were not going well at all. His young son Ben had cerebral palsy, and for a few years he spent the vast majority of his waking hours every day just taking care of his son. As a result, he didn't play any concerts between the end of the "Rust Never Sleeps" tour in 1978 and a "Trans" tour in 1982.

But there's one exception right in the middle of that four year gap: he played a single, short concert in late 1980 for the annual Bread and Roses benefit festival. This concert is very interesting for those following Young's career. Not only was it his only concert during that stretch, but his set list is quite unusual for him. The concert took place a few weeks before the release of his 1980 album "Hawks and Doves." That album isn't well regarded in his catalog, and for good reason. It's less than half an hour long, and the first half consists of recordings made in the late 1970s that were rejected from other albums. It was a hastily done contractual obligation album, which made it a big step down from his classic "Rust Never Sleeps" album the year before.

That said, the album does have some good songs in it. It's just that there aren't many songs, period, and it has no flow as an album. Since it wasn't received well, Young quickly forgot all about it. Of the five new songs on it (all on Side B), the only one he's ever played in concert much is "Hawks and Doves." He's played that 39 times, all between 1980 and 1985. He's played "Coastline" four times, and the other three - "Stayin' Power," "Union Man," and "Comin' Apart at Every Nail" - just once each! But all five of those were played at this single 1980 concert. 

But that's not all. He also played a new song that remains officially unreleased. Some call it "Winter Winds" and some call it "Turbine." Hopefully it'll be released someday and we'll get to find out what its name is. It's a nice song, and really should have been included on "Hawks and Doves," since it fits in perfectly with the country style of the other new songs. Additionally, he did another new song for the first time, "Motor City." That one would appear on his 1981 album "RE*AC*TOR."

Young played 11 songs in this concert. Of those, seven were played for the very first time, and none of those had even appeared on record yet! The concert had a heavy country sound, and the remaining songs - "Are You Ready for the Country," "Homegrown," and "Four Strong Winds" - all fit in with that. (He played with the same small band that he'd just used to record the "Hawks and Doves" album, and since they didn't know many of his songs, they played "Are You Ready for the Country" twice.)

I'd long had an interest in this concert since it was so unique in his long career. The problem was, the bootleg I'd heard of it didn't sound very good. But a new version has recently come to light. It's still only an audience recording, like previous versions, but it sounds significantly better. The one flaw it had, in my opinion, was that Young's voice was too low in the mix on most of the songs. So I used the audio editing program X-Minus to boost his vocals. Now, his vocals sound great. Sometimes, the rest of the band is kind of muddy, but at least his vocals sound as good as a soundboard boot. While I was at it, I also cleaned up the recording as best I could, removing some of the "woo-hoos" and shouts during songs.

Admittedly, the concert still doesn't sound stellar. But it's certainly listenable now, if you're a Neil Young fan, and it sounds a lot better than it did before.

The concert is rather short, at only 35 minutes. That's the whole thing, since he was on a festival bill with a lot of other acts. 

Oh, and by the way, I just went through all the other Young albums I've posted and fixed the mp3 tags and the volume balance between songs. (Those are just the solo ones - I still need to tackle the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young ones.)

01 talk (Neil Young)
02 Are You Ready for the Country (Neil Young)
03 Coastline (Neil Young)
04 Stayin' Power (Neil Young)
05 Winter Winds [Turbine] (Neil Young)
06 Motor City (Neil Young)
07 talk (Neil Young)
08 Union Man (Neil Young)
09 Comin' Apart at Every Nail (Neil Young)
10 Hawks and Doves (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)
12 Homegrown (Neil Young)
13 talk (Neil Young)
14 Four Strong Winds (Neil Young)
15 talk (Neil Young)
16 Are You Ready for the Country (Neil Young)

https://www.imagenetz.de/bBnq9

I've only been able to find one photo of Young at this concert. (One can tell others used as bootleg covers and such aren't from the show because they don't have him with a beard, and he wore a beard at the time.) Unfortunately, I'd already used that single photo for the cover of my stray tracks album "Winter Winds." So I've used that photo again here. But the difference is I zoomed in on just his face for the "Winter Winds" cover, whereas this one shows all of his upper body. Furthermore, I added in some artwork taken from the actual festival at the bottom, though I changed some of the white text in it.