The Ditch Trilogy, Part I: "Fourteen Junkies Too Weak to Work"

Neil Young probably started his twenty-seventh year in the worst possible way. Everything seemed to be looking up on November 12, 1972. Five days later, however, it all started coming apart. The drifting Danny Whitten, the best harmonist Young would ever have (and no slouch on rhythm guitar either) had been invited to join the backing group Young was assembling for his upcoming North American tour in October but Whitten wasn't quite gelling with the rest of the group, severely lagging behind the rest in his ability to learn the material from Harvest. With a heavy heart, Young sent away his former bandmate, giving him fifty dollars and a one-way ticket home to Los Angeles. Once in Los Angeles, Whitten blew the fifty on valium and alcohol, promptly overdosing and dying.

Whitten's death was the first in a series of calamities for the Canadian superstar. Young became introspective, writing new songs that were intensely personal. The first of these, "Don't Be Denied", a summarization of Young's life from 1960 to 1966 with a final verse commenting on Danny, was written on the 19th of November. Others were to follow with Young turning to his archives to find his most depressing unreleased songs to fill up set lists. Recording the rehearsals, Young had hoped to get an album out of his band, but he ultimately resigned himself to recording the sixty-five dates with the Quad-8 CompuMix, the world's first computerized mixing soundboard. To get the top-shelf session musicians who had helped him make his first hit album on the road, he paid each $100,000, the fee each demanded.

By the time the tour started in Madison, Wisconsin, everybody's moods were soured. The Stray Gators who had sounded so sweet on Harvest pulled a 180 and came off like a pissed-off country-tinged Crazy Horse instead. Pianist Jack Nitzsche, drunk to cope with his stage fright, regularly spouted obscenities into his microphone. At least once, multi-instrumentalist Ben Keith was drunk enough not to know whether he was playing lap or pedal steel. With Young playing a Flying V (his trusty "Old Black"- used to this day- was temporarily out of commission), singing in a higher register than he should have, drinking copious amounts of José Cuervo, he grew unstable. Drummer Ken Buttrey grew so frustrated at having to play louder and louder (and playing no more than Young requested) that he demanded a raise to put up with it all. Young replaced him with former CSNY and Turtles drummer Johnny Barbata. The audiences didn't know what to make of any of it.

Singing in such a high register, Young's voice was shot by mid-March, leading him to call on the second and third best harmonists he'd ever know, though each were going through their own personal hells, David Crosby trying to cope with his mother's imminent death and Graham Nash trying to cope with his girlfriend's death. With Crosby and Nash strumming rhythm guitars and singing harmony, Young's strained voice was soothed to a degree. Nash in particular brought a sense of surrealism to the mix, his exclamations coming off at times as those of a game show host. Their additions added to the cluttered mix, infuriating Nitzsche, who complained that Crosby's twelve-string rhythm guitar made it impossible for him to hear himself. With the technology of the era, I wouldn't doubt it. Neil may have needed Crosby and Nash's voices but they probably should have left the guitars at home.

The last of the tour's spirit was finally expunged a few shows before the tour ended. At the sixty-first show in Oakland, the band was tearing through a version of the After the Gold Rush anti-racist staple "Southern Man" when a white fan jumped up in glee, singing and dancing along to a song he actually knew, only to be subdued by an African-American policeman. It was all too much for Young, feeling the actions flew directly in the face of his song's message. He left the stage and abruptly canceled the rest of the show. Though the fans had practically heard a full show, they rioted, pelting the crew with beer bottles. The tour finally ended in Salt Lake City on April 3 after having traveled over 17,000 miles in three months.

Adding "Love in Mind" from the same Royce Hall show that had provided "The Needle and the Damage Done" for Harvest, the album was compiled from both the acoustic and electric sets, ensuring none of Buttrey's drumming nor any previously released material made the cut. Six of the sixty-three shows ended up providing the seven cuts from 1973 that made it onto the album. From Cleveland's Public Hall on February 11 came "Journey Thru The Past", a mournful Harvest outtake stripped down to a basic piano/vocal arrangement. From the Myriad in Oklahoma City on March 1 came both "Time Fades Away"- probably the least effective track on the album- and the aforementioned "L. A." The show at the Seattle Center Coliseum on March 17 provided "Yonder Stands the Sinner" with Crosby taking up a bit too much space. From San Diego's Sports Arena on March 19 came "Last Dance", complete with Nash's surreal game show persona in full force, while "Don't Be Denied" came from the March 28 show at Phoenix' Coliseum. From the April Fool's Day show at Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium came "The Bridge", a sweet piano/harmonica/vocal number that balances the torment wrought by "Don't Be Denied" and "Last Dance".

A radically re-worked full-band version of the Neil Young closer "The Last Trip to Tulsa" recorded in Baton Rouge on February 18 (the first show with Barbata) was left off of the album proper but was available on the back of the "Time Fades Away" single. Several as-yet unreleased cuts stayed that way, including "Lonely Weekend (Come Along and Say You Will)", "Lookout Joe", "New Mama", "Borrowed Tune" and the years-old "Sweet Joni from Saskatoon" (an ode to none other than...). The CompuMix system made everything sound muddy, with voices and instruments getting lost in the process. Young called on one "Joe Yankee" to play bass on "L. A." and for Keith to overdub some lost pedal steel. It would have probably been best for his psyche to let the tour fade away, to chuck the tapes and start anew. Then again, Neil Young's rarely trod down the safe path.

The album came out within months. By 1977, though, Young was already distancing himself from his first live album. No songs from the album made it onto the Decade anthology and the LP would be out of print soon enough. Neil Young continues to try his damnedest to see Time Fades Away out of print. It was definitely the worst tour that he ever had. The fact that the CompuMix was used to record the album ensured that the audiophile Young would never get the chance to remix the muddy album for clarity. He could surprise us, but I'd guess that seeing a standalone CD, DVD or Blu-Ray edition of Time Fades Away is about as likely as seeing the release of the rap album Young has joked once or twice about recording (which, to the best of my knowledge, he has yet to record). Then again, if the first volume of the mythical Archives has actually seen the light of day…