A Letter Home by Neil Young: "So archaic, it’s cutting edge"

"Crazy" performed by Neil Young
The Tonight Show - May 12

As we've been reporting, a pretty diverse reaction to Neil Young's The Tonight Show appearance. Yes, it was unprecedented. Yes, it was pretty cool to see Neil, Jack White and Jimmy Fallon having a good time with their old/new toy.

But at the end of the day, what about the music?

Yes, what about the music? Or maybe more importantly -- what about the intent of the artist being true to his message and muse?

Well, whatever you do, don't call A Letter Home a "covers album", as Neil Young explained to Billboard:

"That's a term I really don't like, covers.

That misses the point of what the record is. It's actually more of a piece of performance art. It's actual songs. It's actually the performance of a song and the essence of a song. That's what it's about."

From a review on Restless and Real - Words and sounds from a shrinking world | A Letter Home by Douglas Heselgrave:

‘A Letter Home’ is pure; there’s very little show biz involved.

Maybe the most important thing the record communicates is that with a little practice, we could all learn to play these songs. Most of them don’t have more than three chords, and almost every Canadian of a certain generation could sing them – maybe even just as well - off the top of their heads with a little reminding and encouragement. And, maybe that’s part of the point. ‘A Letter Home’ dials down the mystique of the rock star culture and puts music back where it belongs – as an expression of life, joy in a shared experience, the simple pleasures of coming together with friends and family to sing. It’s so radical that it’s simple.

To paraphrase something Young once said about another album, ‘A Letter Home’ is so archaic, it’s cutting edge. The point he’s making is not complicated. The world is out of control and part of the reason is that people won’t put away their screens and talk to each other. Embedded in its simple grooves, ‘A Letter Home’ encourages us to throw out a lot of our useless shit, get the guitar out of the attic, tune it, start humming, sing, think of all the good things in life and send a letter home.

Thanks Neil!

Thanks Doug!

So there you go. A Letter Home - radical in its simplicity in these bewildering complex times. Maybe not what we wanted but just what we needed.

And that's OK.

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▶ Jim Jarmusch Q&A | Working with Neil Young on 'Dead Man' - YouTube

A great little clip of Jim Jarmusch Q&A on working with Neil Young on 'Dead Man'.

Jim Jarmusch discussed working with Neil Young on the music for DEAD MAN in a Q&A during Film Society of Lincoln Center complete retrospective "Permanent Vacation: The Films of Jim Jarmusch."

Jim Jarmusch and Neil Young have quite a working history going quite a ways back into the 1990's. See more on Jim Jarmusch & Neil Young.

Jim Jarmusch & Neil Young

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Neil Young on Jack White, Archives II and His Special Message to Mom | Rolling Stone

"Crazy" performed by Neil Young
The Tonight Show - May 12

Fairly significant coverage and reaction to Neil Young's performance on The Tonight Show this week.

There were the usual detractors claiming it was all a "stunt", a "gimmick" -- just to try and sell some cover songs on vinyl. Not really sure how something is a "gimmick" that has never been before (cutting a record before a live audience on national TV)?

But could A Letter Home be more than just a quaint "covers albums" of old songs?

As we discussed this past weekend on TW Radio ( podcast), we find the exercise remarkable.

And we see it as an exercise like ARC or Dead Man or Shocking Pinks or any of his other many experiments. Some work, some don't. Sometimes it takes awhile for an evaluation to stabilize. Exhibit A being Tonight's The Night or TRANS, for example, which were very misunderstood upon release.

Also, see the new Rolling Stone interview with David Fricke where he refers to ALH as a "covers album" and Neil gets nearly angry and says : "I resent the album being labeled a covers album".

The guy is on journey through the past and he's just gone somewhere we've never been.

relax. enjoy the ride. it's just a ride, you know that, right?

Afterall, here's a comment from Dan1:

For my money Neil has earned the right to do whatever he pleases ...

that said, the coolest thing I've read here on TW was that the process of making this album caused some of the masters to rub off on him and he's writing new material ... someone in thread alluded to this and it reminds me a little of Americana ... there were all these doubters complaining about it and then PP showed up on the back end ...

same thing here, I haven't had the time to focus on listening to it (was it ever streaming on NPR?) or buying it (although I listen to 'Changes' and Needle of Death' from Carnegie Hall incessantly) but if you end up with new material on the back end its pure gold ...

anyhow, I thought Americana would be a throw away and granted I only listened to it a few times but it was excellent and as with most things Neil these albums age beautifully and in time they somehow make total sense ... one of the things I love about Neil is that the whole trip around the music is art too ... and he's saying lots of things ... too easy to be negative and dismiss it as a gimmick ...

Neil's too busy to do gimmicks and he ain't doing it to just sell records ...

Thanks Dan1!

From Neil Young on Jack White, Archives II and His Special Message to Mom | David Fricke | Rolling Stone:

What is the status of your next memoir?

Neil Young: It's finished. I'm painting art for it now. They're very simple paintings, based on tracings of things that I love. And I water-color them, put my own little thing on them. I've never done that before. I find it relaxing and gratifying.

It's not the same kind of book [as Waging Heavy Peace]. It's about my history with cars. I told the story of what happened in every car that I got, how my life changed as I drove these cars around. I would discover these different things that I saw while I was in them. And each chapter is about the next car I got, the experiences I had until that car was done.

What is the state of Archives: Volume II? I've heard that it could be out by the end of this year.

Neil Young:It'll be finished this summer. All of the music will be done. It goes just past [1979's] Rust Never Sleeps. It's full of albums that weren't there before – stuff I did that I never put out. [Already confirmed for the set by Young: material from the unissued LPs Chrome Dreams and Homegrown and an alternate edition of the 1973 live album, Time Fades Away.]

The rest will come out pretty quickly. While we've been working on Volume II, we've been working on the other Volumes. [Young has said that there will be five Volumes, the last covering the 2000s.]

Full interview at Neil Young on Jack White, Archives II and His Special Message to Mom | David Fricke | Rolling Stone.

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TONIGHT: Jack White and Neil Young Will Perform Together on The Tonight Show - May 12

View at Neil Young: Since I Met You Baby | Video | The Tonight Show | NBC

Neil Young performs ~ Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show

Louis C.K., Neil Young, Jack White, Jimmy Fallon

"Crazy" vinyl single booth recording from The Tonight Show

Jimmy Fallon, Neil Young and Jack White

(Thanks Constanze!)

Jack White and Neil Young
(*Note - composite image)

Making history tonight - Neil Young is going to perform and press a vinyl with the help of Jack White live on the show. One take. Fun.

— jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon) May 12, 2014

From Inside Neil Young & Jack White's 'Crazy' Night on 'Fallon | Billboard by Gary Graff:

"You only get one shot," Young told Billboard about the process the day before his "Tonight" appearance. "So when you do it, you've got to do it. There's no fixing it. You really have to be prepared, which is really good for the music instead of going in and patching it together with little pieces of digital gaffer's tape and stuff. The whole idea of a performance is where you feel a song when you sing it, and you've got a great song that somebody wrote, or maybe you wrote it yourself, and it really means something to you and you know it and you sing it and you feel it with all your hearing while you're singing it. And when you're done you don't even have to listen to it, 'cause you know it is what it is. It's done, and when everybody listens to it, they should feel it, too."

Young said he was already thinking about doing an album of songs that were part of his "musical roots" when White showed him the Voice-O-Graph machine. "I tried making a record in there, I can't remember what, and I liked the way it sounded," Young recalls. "I said, 'Well, I can make an album in this thing.' And (White) looked at me, and I said, 'Yeah, I can make a whole album in this. We'll figure out a way to do it. Let's do it together. You can help me and we'll reproduce it together and we'll do the whole thing."

"It has a real timeless quality," Young said. "If you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't know when it was made. You wouldn't know if this was an old record of mine or if it was somebody else...which I found to be very fascinating and really refreshing." What he doesn't like, however, is people calling it a covers album. "That's a term I really don't like, covers," Young explained. "That misses the point of what the record is. It's actually more of a piece of performance art. It's actual songs. It's actually the performance of a song and the essence of a song. That's what it's about."

He says his next musical project will likely be a set of original material, which he acknowledged has been influenced by what he recorded for "A Letter Home."

"Oh, yes, you can't learn the masters' songs without having a little of it rub off on you," he said. "I'm writing right now. I'm writing songs, and I'm going to do justice to these songs one way or another. And life has changed; a lot of the people I used to make records with are not on the planet anymore. And I write these songs and I can hear their parts in my head and I don't want anybody else to be imitating them. So I have a little quandary there. I'm gonna have to work that out inside my own soul and figure out how to deal with that, but nonetheless I feel very confident I'm gonna be able to communicate those songs and they will live. I'm having a really good time in my life, and that's all I really need. As long as all those things are lined up, I feel very optimistic about the future. As far as the sales of records go and the commerciality and the success, I have no idea about that. As far as I am, as an artist, going to be feeling good about what I do and feel like I'm really on what I'm doing, I've got, like, a 90% chance of that happening."

broadcastarchive-umd.tumblr.com | fallontonight: Neil Young performs “Crazy” in...

May 12 - Louis C.K., Neil Young, Jack White | Video | The Tonight Show | NBC

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From Jambands.com - Need We Say More? > News > Jack White and Neil Young Will Perform Together on _The Tonight Show_: (via BNB. Thanks bh!)

Jack White and Neil Young will perform together on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on May 12 in addition to sitting down with the host for an interview. This appearance will mark Young’s first-ever live appearance on either of Fallon’s late night shows.

While White gears up for the release of his own Lazaretto, this appearance will be in support of Neil Young’s new covers album A Letter Home which was recorded at White’s Third Man Records studios. White is featured on two tracks.

Additional guests on May 12 include Louis C.K. and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page.

So, Jack, Jimmy P. & Neil maybe jam together?

Actually, let's hope Jimmy F. just let's the whole night roll and keeps himself low key. Stay in the moment of awe and anticipation. We dread a Jimmy impression or lord forbid - a walk on - where he tries to join in a Jack & neil (& Jimmy) jam. That would be a travesty.

And look what happened last time "Neil Young" was on Jimmy Fallon's show? "Whip My Hair"?! “Party in the USA”?! Oh, the horror, the horror...

Bruce Springsteen and "Neil Young": "Whip My Hair"
Jimmy Fallon seems to be making a career out of his Neil Young impressions. Last year, it all started with Jimmy Fallon impersonating Neil Young covering "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" which went totally viral. Then followed by "Pants On The Ground"

Which led to a viral video of a viral video of Neil Young's Emotional 'Double Rainbow' Ballad (VIDEO).


Graham Nash, David Crosby & "Neil Young" - “Party in the USA”

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