After 8 years of listening to Neil Young I finally got round to getting Tonights the Night, and I have no idea why I left it so long. I think it might be partly due to the fact that the actual song Tonights the Night isn't a Neil Young song that initially endeared itself to me and seeing as the man has such an extensive back catalogue to work through it was quite easy to get sidetracked.
Recently I had been talking to one of my friends about "classic" Neil Young albums and Tonights the Night kept on cropping up, yet neither of us owned it. Reading staple Neil Young fan Biography, Shakey, really gave me a taster of what to expect on this album and helped open a door into the psyche of Neil Young at the time. Tonights the Night was put together after the deaths of two of Young's closest friends, Bruce Berry and Danny Whitten, who both died of drug overdoses and this seemed to signify the end of the pot smoking hippy days that accompanied his previous six albums. The Tonights the Night studio days are described as a "drunken Irish wake" and I'd say the songs are a fair reflection of that statement. What I like about this album is that it just sounds like a bunch of music loving friends have got together in the dirtiest of studios, got drunk, and then started recording in a bid to lay their friends to rest, but maybe stoke up some more demons on the way.
There is such a rough, stumbling feel to the album, like the songs are just hanging together by a thread, and at some points such as the withering Mellow My Mind, you feel the thread is about to snap. Neil Young doesn't have the best voice in the world but he offers such character in these songs and you can sense that this is a man who is frayed at the edges and worn down, even if you don't have prior knowledge of what was going on in his personal life. The bar room blues of Speakin' Out ( "I've been a searcher, I've been a fool. But I've been a long time comin' to you") and the lonesome Borrowed Tune ("I'm singin this borrowed tune, I stole from the Rollin' Stones, alone in this empty room, too wasted to write my own") show Young as vulnerable and looking for answers, possibly to where the hippy dream went wrong. Albuquerque is another favourite of mine for its sweeping lap steel that adds a raw emotion to a song about escaping and getting far away to "somewhere where they don't care who I am". The penultimate song on the Tonights the Night, Tired Eyes, is the story of how things had really changed since the days of Harvest and After the Goldrush. Cocaine and Heroin were fast becoming the drugs of choice in L.A and one nasty deal-gone-wrong saw one of Young's acquaintances shoot and kill another dealer. In typical Young style you wouldn't get all this just from listening to the song but it is a classic example of how he shrouds real life in mystery whilst still painting a clear enough picture that gives you a glimpse of what happened.
The theme is pretty clear throughout Tonights the Night and for me this is an album about Neil Young escaping from the darkness that seemed to be taking over the chilled out vibe of L.A in the 70's. It is documented that this was one of Young's heaviest periods of drink and drug abuse and in a way I think that has helped allow him to tap into his feelings and present an honest and open body of work. The band is formed of people he had around him for years and it's this shoddy, loose playing that sets the vibe for these songs. As Neil Young goes, this isn't an experimental record, comprised of a simple band of guitar, bass, drums, lap steel, piano and harmonica. It is an album that is original and personal, yet using formulas that have been done many times before. It is albums like Tonights the Night that make me really appreciate the simplicity of the music the 70's gave us and the lasting effect it has had on us. It is rare to find something like this now, without it being produced within an inch of it's life or written by someone else for someone else to sing.
Ya Diggin'? Then try these: Nick Cave, David Bowie, Bob Dylan
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