Neil Young has announced plans to release “Roxy - Tonight's The Night Live”, a 1973 recording from a series of shows at the famous Los Angeles club, this March.
The set captures Young performing during the venue’s opening week with the Santa Monica Flyers, the name he gave to the band featured on his sixth album, comprised of Nils Lofgren on piano, Ben Keith on pedal steel guitar, and Crazy Horse members Billy Talbot on bass and Ralph Molina on drums.
“We had finished recording and decided to celebrate with a gig at a new club opening on the Sunset Strip, Roxy," writes Young on the NYA Times-Contrarian newsletter via his recently-launched Neil Young Archives site. "We went there and recorded for a few nights, opening Roxy. We really knew the Tonight’s The Night songs after playing them for a month, so we just played them again, the album, top to bottom, without the added songs, two sets a night for a few days. We had a great time.”
Recorded in 1973, “Tonight’s The Night” remained unreleased until 1975 because, as Young notes, Warner Bros. Records "were concerned that it was so loose and we had just come off a bomb with (the 1973 live album) ‘Time Fades Away’” that he decided to shelve it at the time.
Young also revealed plans to issue “Alchemy”, a document of his 2012/13 tour with Crazy Horse. The project will also see video from the trek released onto the archives, including a 2013 performance of "Like A Hurricane" in Switzerland where the group played in the midst of a thunderstorm. "NYA has the whole multi-camera capture of this unreal experience," explains Young, "and will preview it at the premiere of NYA's Movie Night."
Movie Night will spotlight one film from Young's vast library every week.
“For me,” adds the rocker, “Alchemy harkens back to the best of Live Rust and Weld, beginning to look like a circle….. but not totally joined.”
More details regarding both projects are expected soon.
Young launched his archives site on December 1 with a rare, intimate “hometown” acoustic show streamed live across Canada from Omemee, Ontario's Coronation Hall.
The same day, Young released “The Visitor”, a new album with The Promise Of The Real.
See also:
Neil Young launches online music archive
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Neil Young announces online music archive
Search Neil Young at hennemusic
