Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night – Inner sleeves
Introduction
After the success of Harvest Neil Young lost two important persons in his immediate surroundings to heroin overdoses. He gathered musicians to say goodbye and address his guilt. The story of one of the darkest albums of all time.
Neil Young
After Neil Young had released his debut album (Neil Young) late 1968, he founded a backing band called Crazy Horse. Next to bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina, the band also housed guitarist, composer and singer Danny Whitten. The Neil Young With Crazy Horse album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere appeared in May 1969. Soon after Young was asked to join the trio Crosby, Stills & Nash. He accepted the offer, which led to the worldwide success of Déjà Vu, the first album by super group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Starting in May 1970, Young once again focused on his solo career and released his first masterpiece on September 19, 1970, titled After The Gold Rush, which also featured all Crazy Horse members. Following a tour, Crazy Horse went into the studio to record their debut album and Young started work on a new solo album. Harvest was released on February 1, 1972, and it would turn Neil Young into a global star. Late 1972 Young released the double album Journey Through The Past, basically a compilation representing the different eras in Young’s career, including his stints in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills, Nash & Young. Early 1973 Young went out on tour for Harvest, a tour Young has no fond memories of at all. New songs that were played live on that tour found their way on the 1973 release of Time Fades Away, an album Young still can’t listen to. In 1987 Young even stated that it was “the worst record I ever made”. It took Young decades to approved the album’s cd release.
Neil Young – The goldrush is over
Time Fades Away was the first album in what sometime later was called the “Ditch Trilogy”. Young wasn’t prepared for the sudden huge success of Harvest, was convinced its tour was the ultimate failure, felt like a puppet to the audience and was fed-up. In the liner notes for the great compilation Decade (1977) Young wrote: “‘Heart of Gold’ put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch.”
The idea behind “Ditch Trilogy” is that Young willingly steered his career in another direction with releases that were clearly much harder to digest than the extremely successful and pleasant Harvest. The trilogy was made up of Time Fades Away, On The Beach and Tonight’s The Night. Those last two records in particular belong to the best music Young ever released.
Heroin
Danny Whitten was addicted to heroin, which Young witnessed with a heavy heart. The Harvest song The Needle And The Damage Done is inspired by a Whitten overdose (one he survived), but addresses other issues as well. When Young played the song on January 19, 1971 (immortalized on the stunning release Live At Massey Hall 1971), he introduced the song as follows.
I got to see to see a lot of great musicians before they happened. Before they became famous. When they were just gigging. Five and six sets a night. Things like that. I got to see a lot of great musicians who nobody got to see for one reason or another. But strangely enough the real good ones that you never got to see was because of heroin. And that started happening over and over. And then it happened to some that everybody knew about.
Neil Young, 01/19/1971
There were more people in Young’s immediate vicinity having trouble with heroin, like roadie Bruce Berry. In November 1972 Whitten died of an overdose and liquor, not long after Young had removed him from the live band for the Harvest tour, for being out of control. Seven months later Berry died of similar causes. Young was inconsolable and felt guilty. Hadn’t he factually financed the addictions? Shouldn’t he have done anything/more?
Neil Young in the studio
New music
Young was broken. He wasn’t feeling that great to begin with. The Time Fades Away tour had its impact on Young’s mental health, but he had physical trouble as well. His voice had hardly survived the tour. The 90 show tour, filled with copious amounts of booze and falsetto singing had left him with a severe case of laryngitis. And yet, he surrounded himself with musicians in order to write new songs, which resulted in a complete album, Tonight’s The Night. No less than 5 songs were recorded on August 26, 1973. The other 4 songs followed 2 weeks later. The songs were recorded live and were placed on the eventual album without any overdubbing. The initial configuration contained some studio chatter, which resulted in an almost claustrophobic experience. The hurt and the attempt to make sense of the useless death of these young people grabbed every listener by the throat.
However, the record company wasn’t pleased with it at all. Young decided to put the album on hold and started work on a new album, the superb On The Beach (the second installment in the “Ditch Trilogy”), which was released on July 19, 1974. After the release the next album was developed: Homegrown. One night, after that album was finished, Young listened to the album with The Band’s Rick Danko and were thrilled with the result. Young also played Tonight’s The Night. “What the hell is THAT? You ought to put THAT out!”, Danko said. And so it came to pass. Homegrown was pulled and, almost two years later, Tonight’s The Night finally saw the light of day.
N.B.:
Some 45 years later Homegrown would be released after all.
Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night
Tonight’s The Night
On June 20, 1975, Tonight’s The Night was released. The original 9 songs were complemented with 3 previously unreleased songs. Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown, a song written by Whitten on which he actually plays and sings himself, stemmed from March 1970. Lookout Joe was recorded in November 1972 and Borrowed Time in December 1973.
Even though Tonight’s The Night has a reputation as being an extremely depressive album, the joy in playing stands out. On closer inspection the bluesy music reveals its heaviness and the album’s overall themes shine through.
At first, the opening song Tonight’s The Night was living in Young’s as a mere bass motif. It directly addresses Berry and his death. Young’s voice sounds distorted and emotional, as does the band.
‘Cause, people, let me tell you
It sent a chill up and down my spine
When I picked up the telephone
And heard that he’d died out on the mainline
Speakin’ Out is about Young’s relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress, which had almost run its course around the time of the original recordings. World On A String musically is a typical Crazy Horse song, lyrically portraying the comings and goings of happiness and luck.
One of the (many) highlights is Borrowed Tune, an intimate and moving song that contains piano, harmonica and Young’s voice. Young in 1975: “I played ‘Lady Jane’ and forgot the chords. I started playing my own chords, it started sounding better to me, so I kept playing that. It just turned into another song.”. Young mentions it in his lyric as well.
I’m singing my borrowed tune
I took from the Rolling Stones
Alone in this empty room
Too wasted to write my own
Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown is written and sung by Whitten and is about scoring and buying drugs. The beautiful Mellow My Mind is about being on the road and not being able to relax anymore.
Nils Lofgren & Neil Young 1973
Roll Another Number (For The Road) summarizes the theme and reason behind the album in one song with Young addressing the end and collapse of the Woodstock era due to of drugs/drug abuse.
Think I’ll roll another number for the road
I feel able to get under any load
Though my feet aren’t on the ground
I been standing on this sound
Of some open hearted people goin’ down
Young is in search of obscurity in the moving and fantastic Albuquerque. The slide and harmonica pierce the soul.
So I’ll stop when I can
Find some fried eggs and country ham
I’ll find somewhere
Where they don’t care who I am
New Mama is written for Carrie Snodgress and the birth of her and Young’s son Zeke in September 1972. During a January 1973 Young introduced the song, which, at the time, was still unreleased: “This next tune is a tune I wrote a little while ago, just a while ago, about five months ago or something, when my old lady had a baby.”
New mama’s got a son in her eyes
No clouds are in my changing sky
Each morning when I wake up to rise
I’m living in a dreamland
Lookout Joe is about a soldier returning home from his deployment in Vietnam. Tired Eyes portrays a real-life incident that took place in Topanga Canyon in April 1972. A drug deal gone wrong that left 4 people dead: “That actually happened to a friend of mine. It was just one of those deals that turned bad, he didn’t have any choice really. The lyric is just a straight narrative account of what happened.” Incidentally: the friend was the culprit. The song is spoken/sung, and the chorus is particularly moving.
Please take my advice
Please take my
Please take my advice
Open up the tired eyes
Open up the tired eyes
The album is closed with a reprise: Tonight’s The Night – Part II.
Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night – Welcome on Miami Beach, Ladies and Gentlemen!
Lay-out, inlays, liner notes
The Tonight’s The Night cover says much, if not all, about the content. A dark, slightly out of focus black and white photo, where Young’s face is largely obscured by large sunglasses and microphone.
The vinyl itself contained messages in the run-out grooves, “Hello Waterface” on side A and “Goodbye Waterface” on side B. The term “Waterface” likely refers to Danny Whitten or Bruce Berry, maybe both.
The album came with a lot of extras: inlays, pictured inner sleeves, cards, posters and liner notes. This all can be read (and seen) in the sub article Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night – Extras.
The first pressings of the album contained a small appendix with the words “I’m sorry. You don’t know these people. This means nothing to you.”
Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night – Initial cover suggestion
Young on Tonight’s The Night
Neil Young looked back at Tonight’s The Night in several stages of his career. In an interview with Cameron Crowe for Rolling Stone magazine in August 1975 Young says:
Tonight’s The Night is like an OD letter. The whole thing is about life, dope and death. When we played that music we were all thinking of Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, two close members of our unit lost to junk overdoses. The Tonight’s The Night sessions were the first time what was left of Crazy Horse had gotten together since Danny died. It was up to us to get the strength together among us to fill the hole he left. The other OD, Bruce Berry, was CSNY’s roadie for a long time. His brother Ken runs Studio Instrument Rentals, where we recorded the album.
So we had a lot of vibes going for us. There was a lot of spirit in the music we made. It’s funny, I remember the whole experience in black and white. We’d go down to S.I.R. about 5:00 in the afternoon and start getting high, drinking tequila and playing pool. About midnight, we’d start playing. And we played Bruce and Danny on their way all through the night. I’m not a junkie and I won’t even try it out to check out what it’s like. But we all got high enough, right out there on the edge where we felt wide open to the whole mood. It was spooky. I probably feel this album more than anything else I’ve ever done.
Cameron Crowe, So Hard To Make Arrangements For Yourself, Rolling Stone interview with Neil Young, 08/04/1975
In 2019 Young stated in the column “Album of the week” on his own website:
Tonight’s the Night was recorded in SIR (studio instrument rentals) an old building on Santa Monica blvd, across from Gold Star Studios in the early 70’s. SIR was a place where bands could rehearse in rehearsal rooms. It had a pool table. SIR rented instruments to studios in Hollywood, delivering and picking up all day every day.
Gold Star was the greatest Studio in Hollywood, with its magnificent echo chamber, the home of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound.
We recorded at SIR because Bruce Berry’s brother was a part of SIR and the album was a wake for Bruce. Berry was roadie for CSNY and Danny Whitten was the original guitarist in Crazy Horse, before Poncho Sampedro and Nils Lofgren. Both Bruce and Danny died of heroin overdoses.
We played starting at midnight, through the night, and drove home just before dawn to our hotel every night for a month. Visitors came by late at night. One of these nights we practically nailed the whole album, and that is what we wanted to do… keep it real. We drank tequila and smoked weed. Teenagers, don’t do what we did. We didn’t fix the mistakes. The whole album and why we made it and I wrote those songs was all a mistake. It won’t be repeated again. Some say it’s the best thing we ever did.
nyneilyoungarchives, 04/03/2019
Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night – Ads
Review
When I was 21 years old, I started collecting Neil Young albums. In 1987 After The Gold Rush was my first purchase, still a favorite to this day. The second album followed quickly, Tonight’s The Night. I adore the album’s darkness, Young’s distorted voice hits me every time. The (at times) out-of-tune music and sometimes false singing only add to the overall sentiment.
The deeply personal document Young offered his listeners was raw, honest and above all utterly human. Maybe the two year gap between recording and releasing the album makes sense, just because of those reasons. Maybe it provided Young with the distance he needed.
As Young himself later realized (“It won’t be repeated again”), Tonight’s The Night was an anomaly, a piece of work that could not be replicated, even if Young wanted to. It’s a truly unique entity that, as far as I’m concerned, is one of the highlights of Neil Young’s entire body of work.
Songs
All songs written by Neil Young, except Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown written by Danny Whitten.
- Tonight’s The Night
- Speakin’ Out
- World On A String
- Borrowed Tune
- Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown
- Mellow My Mind
- Roll Another Number (For The Road)
- Albuquerque
- New Mama
- Lookout Joe
- Tired Eyes
- Tonight’s The Night – Part II
Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night – Back cover
Musicians
- Neil Young – vocals; guitar on World On A String, Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown, Mellow My Mind, Roll Another Number, Albuquerque, New Mama, Lookout Joe, Tired Eyes; piano on Tonight’s The Night, Speakin’ Out, Borrowed Tune; harmonica on World On A String, Borrowed Tune, Mellow My Mind; vibraphone on New Mama
- Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar, vocals on Tonight’s The Night, Speakin’ Out, Roll Another Number, Albuquerque, Tired Eyes; pedal steel guitar on World On A String, Mellow My Mind; vocals on New Mama; slide guitar, vocals on Lookout Joe
- Nils Lofgren – piano on World On A String, Mellow My Mind, Roll Another Number, Albuquerque, New Mama, Tired Eyes; vocals on Roll Another Number, Albuquerque, Tired Eyes; guitar on Tonight’s The Night, Speakin’ Out
- Danny Whitten – vocals, guitar on Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown
- Jack Nitzsche – piano on Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown, Lookout Joe
- Billy Talbot – bass, except on Borrowed Tune, New Mama, Lookout Joe
- Tim Drummond – bas on Lookout Joe
- Ralph Molina – drums, vocals, except on Borrowed Tune, New Mama, Lookout Joe
- Kenny Buttrey – drums on Lookout Joe
- George Whitsell – vocals on New Mama
Other releases
Tonight’s The Night was the third and last part of the so-called “Ditch Trilogy”. The album has an almost legendary status amongst Neil Young aficionados. The project’s emotion and heaviness still speaks to the imagination.
Neil Young – ROXY Tonight’s The Night Live
The album has spawned several side releases. On April 24, 2018, Neil Young – ROXY Tonight’s The Night Live was released. The album contains one of the shows (or maybe it’s a compilation of several of those shows?) Neil Young and his Santa Monica Flyers played on September 20, 21 and 22, 1973, where the band opened the Roxy at the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Read everything about the live album in the sub article Neil Young – ROXY Tonight’s The Night Live.
After the Roxy concerts a tour through North America an England was next, playing Tonight’s The Night two years before its release.
Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night (1973)
On November 20, 2020, the boxset Neil Young Archives Vol.II (1972-1976) was released, containing the disc Tonight’s The Night (1973). The disc holds the original August/September 1973 recordings, which were part of one of the original configurations for the Tonight’s The Night album.
Songs
All songs written by Neil Young, except Raised On Robbery written by Joni Mitchell.
- Speakin’ Out Jam (previously unreleased)
- Everybody’s Alone (previously unreleased)
- Tired Eyes
- Tonight’s The Night
- Mellow My Mind
- World On A String
- Speakin’ Out
- Raised On Robbery (vocals by Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, previously unreleased)
- Roll Another Number (For The Road)
- New Mama
- Albuquerque
- Tonight’s The Night Part II
A beautiful release, that emphasizes the session’s heaviness even further. Just how much Young distanced himself from Harvest and its success, is still quite remarkable.
Neil Young – Ad for September 20 + 21 2023
50th Anniversary
On September 20 and 21, 2023, Neil Young With Crazy Horse played the Roxy again. Announced as a 50th anniversary of the 1973 Tonight’s The Night shows, the concerts were organized to raise funds for Young’s favorite charities, The Bridge School and The Painted Turtle. On September 18, Young published the following on his website.
Neil Young – Concert announcement 09/18/2023
In closing
What’s your take on Tonight’s The Night? A highlight or an all-time low in Neil Young’s body of work?
Video/Spotify
This story contains an accompanying video. Click on the following link to see it: Video: Neil Young wrestles death, addiction and guilt on Tonight’s The Night. The A Pop Life playlist on Spotify has been updated as well.
