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An unofficial news blog for Neil Young fans from Thrasher's Wheat with concert and album updates, reviews, analysis, and other Rock & Roll ramblings. Separating the wheat from the chaff since 1996.
Many think of the Sugar Mountain website as ‘just’ the definitive
listing of Neil’s live performances and setlists to date – which of
course it is.
But there is so much more information there, and so many
more great features which many may not know about. Here then, together
with direct links, is a selection of some of the most interesting of
those lost ‘rock formations’.
But hope springs eternal and wee just received this note from NYAS's Scott Sandie that life goes on for BA! Hi,
This is Scott Sandie, your old editor from Broken Arrow. This email is going out to all the old NYAS members who are still in my contact list.
For the past year or so there has been a working party preparing all 134 issues of Broken Arrow magazine for free online release. That project has reached the end of its main stage, and some 8000 magazine pages are now ready for viewing and search. Tom Hambleton has very kindly agreed to host these pages over on Sugar Mountain and has done a really great job in laying it all out in his inimitable fashion.
You will see that can browse and open each issue. You can search on keywords from the index and access pages that way too. Each issue is roughly a 15MB PDF file, so it is a little slow loading up if you have a poor connection. To look at one page, you have to load the entire issue into memory. Tom has also been working hard on making it mobile friendly, so it might work on your phone as well.
So drop by, have a look at the magazines, carry out searches and generally play about in the pages. See what you think. And if you find any glitches please let me or Tom know.
Regards,
Scott Such great news Scott! And many, many thanks Tom on Sugar Mountain for coding and hosting.
On a personal note, we've known Scott & Tom for decades. Both Scott & Tom are a true gentlemen in every sense of the word, ultimate Neil fanatics and they have our undying respect for what they've been able to accomplish.
Broken Arrow Magazine has meant so much to so many, and the end was never easy. But what can you say other than......"Thank You!" Scott Sandie, Tom Hambleton and the incredible Neil Young Appreciation Society & Sugar Mountain | Neil Young Setlists!!!
Analysis Video: How Neil Young and Joni Mitchell Faced Adulthood
Here is an analysis of Neil Young's song “Sugar Mountain“ and Joni Mitchell's “Circle Game” and their vastly different view of teenage transition to adulthood.
Polyphonic, who creates incredibly informative video essays about music, took a look a the vastly different ways in which singers/songwriters Neil Young and Joni Mitchell approached the inevitable subject of getting older. In Young’s iconic song “Sugar Mountain“, he essentially proclaims that the age of 20 is when everyone must put away childish things, whether ready or not, while Mitchell’s song “Circle Game” offers a glimmer of hope, while still lamenting lost youth.
On Neil Young’s 19th birthday he penned a song about a milestone in his life ‘Sugar Mountain’, it’s a powerful song a lament for the loss of youth and the impending responsibilities of adulthood. It’s simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking. But upon hearing it one of Neil Young’s friends decided there was something missing from the story and so Joni Mitchell wrote a response ‘The Circle Game’, another stunning song about time and aging.
At 9/04/2017 10:11:00 AM, Blogger Syscrusher said...
SUGAR MOUNTAIN
I've never heard this discussed before so here goes. This is off the top of my head so I'm may have some of the details wrong and haven't checked my references.
For years I had always believed that Neil Young had written the song 'Sugar Mountain' on his 19th birthday in Fort William, ON. (I think there was even a detail to that story involving Steve Stills at the Victoria Hotel?).
Now I know this date and location is referenced in John Robertson's 'A Visual Documentary', but I think the story was originally told by John Einarson, probably in his book 'The Canadian Years'.
This had long been one of my most used NY factoids over the years.
Now, it seems that that information was incorrect all along. Though I wonder how such a story could come to be?
In one of Neil's recent memoirs he tells the story of writing 'Sugar Mountain' on his 20th birthday while staying at Joni Mitchell's place in Detroit. That's November 12, 1965 by the way. This story of course makes more sense given the lyrics of the song, and given Joni's close connection to it. She wrote 'The Circle Game' about 'Sugar Mountain' well before 'Sugar Mountain' had ever been released.
So has anyone else noticed these conflicting stories? Is there anyone who always New the real story? If so where did you first here it? Anything to add? Or subtract?
At 9/08/2017 08:24:00 PM, Blogger Syscrusher said...
@Babbo B.,
So I found the information after some scouring. It's the Sugar Mountain rap on Live at The Riverboat. Straight outa the man's lips. This is very important and conflicting information that I've never heard discussed before.
I don't see how Neil's memory could be wrong so soon after the events. I was thinking maybe he confused it with The Old Laughing Lady but he tells that story 3 months earlier in at the Canterbury House, about writing The Old Laughing Lady in Detroit on a Napkin.
I don't have a blu-Ray player at the moment and so don't have access to the full Riverboat rap. Is anyone able to pull up a transcript?
At 9/09/2017 01:24:00 AM, Blogger Babbo B. said...
@syscrusher: It's on YouTube, he indeed says that he wrote "Sugar Mountain" on his 20th birthday in 1965 while visiting Joni Mitchell in Detroit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puGfBfBIoKs (see above)
As we discussed previously, this contradicts the common version of the story in "Shakey" and elsewhere that the song was written on his 19th birthday in a hotel in Fort William while he was there with The Squires. And in "Shakey," discussing that period in Fort William in 1964, he says, "We were the new kids in town and we were pretty hot. Chick Roberts of the Cryin' Shames, he told me, 'That is one of the greatest songs I've ever heard.' That was just after I'd written 'Sugar Mountain.' "
So yeah, it's confusing - though certainly not the first contradiction in the Neil canon, and probably not the last. (And for those who are confused, period, this is a continuation of a discussion that started in a different thread.)
At 9/09/2017 09:44:00 AM, Blogger Syscrusher said...
@Babbo B.,
Good info, very interesting.
So I'm Waging Heavy Peace on page 277 Neil mentions the Chick Roberts story in a paragraph about Toronto in 1965. Says he heard the song at a hootenanny. In this paragraph he's also describing the evolution of his folk style writing first writing The Ballad Of Peggy Grover, then Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing, and then Sugar Mountain. That's how I read it anyway.
I think the Fort William story could be confused with the place where we first lost himself while playing, on Farmer John. Sugar Mountain in '65 where we first came into his own as a writer.
I feel like the 1964 story started with John Einarson, would like to ask him.
At 9/09/2017 01:43:00 PM, Blogger Babbo B. said...
So now we have two versions of the Chick Roberts story, too, one in Fort William in 1964 and one in Toronto in 1965. If the latter is true, guess it all depends whether that hootenanny happened before or after Nov. 12. We know Neil led off with "Sugar Mountain" during his Elektra demo session, which the Archives book tentatively dates as Dec. 15, so that really solves nothing.
And FWIW, Scott Young in "Neil and Me" repeats the 1964 Victoria Hotel version, tying it in with a letter Neil wrote him about being away from home on his birthday for the first time.
At 9/09/2017 03:07:00 PM, Blogger Syscrusher said...
Sorry for the multi-post Thrasher, meant not to do that.
@Babbo B.
Very interesting that the '64 story is in Neil & Me too. That must be the first occurrence of that story.
I feel like The Riverboat rap should get the final word as it is told only 3 years after the fact, or is it 4...
Though to further confuse the matter on The Canterbury House rap which takes place on November 9/10, 1968 he says that he wrote the song '5 years ago' which would place the song in November 1963! And this would be the earliest known reference to the writing of Sugar Mountain.
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