Neil Young's Film "Journey Through the Past" on NYA Hearse Theater - UPDATED

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 10/10/19 - UPDATED 11/19/19

Frame via Neil Young's Film "Journey Through The Past"

As noted earlier, an updated schedule for Hearse Theater is now posted on Neil Young Archives which includes the premiere repeat screening (on Hearse Theater) of Neil Young's film "Journey Through The Past" earlier this week on Tuesday.

Hearse Theater on NYA is now playing this weekend Neil Young's underground-cult-classic-midnight-movie "Journey Through The Past".

And -- unsurprisingly - some folks were underwhelmed and thankful Neil pursued a musical rather film career. Some folks just never get it. sigh.

via EXPERIMENTATION WITHOUT FEAR: JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST | NYA

In January, Neil Young announced that his 1973 film "Journey Through the Past" would be coming to NYA Hearse Theater. The 1973 film -- presciently referred to as "Early Neil Young as Reality TV" -- has long been an underground cult classic for fans with it's quite weird trippiness and stream of consciousness incomprehensibility.

As Neil Young wrote on Times-Contrarian | NYA:

"I was not trying to impress anyone with my film making prowess and I succeeded."

Journey Through the Past - Film Poster

Or -- as Neil Young puts it in his inimitable approach to the creative artistic process:

Interestingly, look closely at the desert scene in the film Journey Through the Past where there is a shot revealing The Graduate wearing a Woodstock shirt just before shooting up.

The Graduate (note Woodstock shirt)

The film is saturated with extremely symbolic imagery which has been the subject of vigorous debate for decades (on Neil forums like RUST) as to what Neil may have been implying. In particular, the images of those inside the chauffeured limousine, which represent Church, Military and Business.

The Military, The Church, and The Business

After re-watching on NYA, it seems clear the implication is that this "Holy Trinity" is directly involved in conspiring to kill the hopes and dreams of future generations of young adults. It would would be much longer before terms such as "Military-Industrial-Complex" entered mainstream discussions as the root cause of societal dysfunction, breakdown and decay. Very prescient, Neil. All a rather profound and provocative "truth bomb/wake up call" from a "stoned hippie's home movie" (as critics dismissively declared upon release).

So here's to "experimentation without fear"! discuss.

Also, see Journey Through the Past - Film Review by Janet Maslin, New York Times, ~1973.

More on the album Journey Through The Past.


Neil Young Films
Also, was the cover of album Decade shot during the filming of JTTP? Was the person Carrie? See Neil Young's Decade: The Images Behind The Album Cover.

Uncropped Image for Neil Young's Decade
by Tom Wilkes
(Click photo to enlarge)

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Neil Young Archives | Letter to the Editor: Restoring Neil Young to New Woodstock Documentary?

Letter to the Editor - Neil Young Archives Times-Contrarian
RESTORING NEIL YOUNG IN WOODSTOCK FILM | NYA

As much as we were amused by the recent Letter to the Editor on Neil Young Archives Times-Contrarian on Mailing-Lists thread, along comes the publication of Thrasher's Wheat's Letter to the Editor published on Neil Young Archives Times-Contrarian.

The letter and response above on NYA is based off the news that Producer Bill Gerber Is Restoring Neil Young In New Woodstock Documentary. All of this as part of Woodstock’s 50th anniversary this August, 2019. Warner Bros is finalizing the re-release the landmark concert film.

Woodstock’s 50th Anniversary Re-Release - August 2019

Neil Young is to be "restored" in a new Woodstock documentary. Although this seems to be news to Neil as well judging from his reply to our letter of "I am too." We've always loved your brevity and economy NY.

Woodstock: 3 Days of Music, Peace & Love
More on Producer Bill Gerber Is Restoring Neil Young In New Woodstock Documentary.

Also, see Woodstock: The Day After with CSNY.

Also, see Tales of Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young at Woodstock.

Also, more on whether it was all just a hippie dream?

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Neil Young "Restored" In New Woodstock Documentary

Woodstock: 3 Days of Music, Peace & Love

Neil Young is to be "restored" in a new Woodstock documentary.

In an interview with Warner Bros executive Bill Gerber in After 11 Years Pushing ‘A Star Is Born’, Producer Bill Gerber Is Restoring Neil Young In New Woodstock Documentary | Deadline by Mike Fleming Jr.:

One of them solves the lingering mystery of the absence of Neil Young in Woodstock, the 1970 Michael Wadleigh-directed documentary. Young will be seen in a new docu that Gerber is producing as a companion piece to the original, and the singer is reunited onscreen for the first time with ex-bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. Gerber is hard at work on a documentary that will be released within a re-release of the 1970 Michael Wadleigh-directed documentary chronicle of – sorry, Live Aid, Queen and Freddie Mercury — the most famous and infamous mass rock concert in history. Woodstock’s 50th anniversary arrives in August and Warner Bros is finalizing rerelease plans.

“The film has new interviews and is also the Young Men With Unlimited Capital story of John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, these two young guy who started Woodstock as a capital raise to build a recording studio,” Gerber said.

“There is also material no one has ever seen. Neil Young was not in the movie for a variety of reasons, until now. There is unseen footage of Janis Joplin and performance footage that hasn’t been seen. There are some great stories, like how Nelson Rockefeller was going to send in the National Guard to shut the festival down. Roberts and Rosenman had family in finance and banking and they got on the phone with the governor and pleaded with him to call off sending in the National Guard on that first Saturday.

Otherwise, the festival never would have happened.

And it would seem that's Neil Young's feelings towards that "helicopter day" only seemed to harden over the years. A quote from biographer Jimmy McDonough's Shakey has been bouncing around the blogs driven by a look at the flip-side of Woodstock in The Globe and Mail:

“Woodstock was a bullshit gig. A piece of shit. We played fuckin’ awful. No one was into the music. I think Stephen [Stills] was way overboard into the huge crowd. Everybody was on this Hollywood trip with the fuckin’ cameras. They weren’t playin’ to the audience as much as to the cameras…I could see everybody changing their performances for the fucking camera and I thought that was bullshit. All these assholes filming, everybody’s carried away with how cool they are…I wasn’t moved.”

In an interrview on Howard Stern Radio in 2014, Neil Young said about Woodstock:

“I didn’t like the fucking cameras, they didn’t have to be on stage. They’re cameras, ‘Hello! Use your zoom, dickhead!”

“Who cares? It doesn’t matter, I was there, I saw it. Who gives a shit? I couldn’t care less.”

More on Woodstock: The Day After with CSNY.

Also, see Tales of Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young at Woodstock.

Also, more on whether it was all just a hippie dream?

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Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young at Woodstock

Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock
August 18, 1969

It's been 40 years since Jimi Hendrix caught up with Neil Young at Woodstock.

On that helicopter day, a million stories were made. And here's one of our favorites -- Jimi & Neil trying to make it to the Woodstock concert along with the nearly half a million strong.

We had long believed it to be an urban legend that Jimi and Neil stole a truck in order to make it to Woodstock. It turns out that is not too far off the mark.

From a radio interview program "On The Record" by Mary Turner in 1979, Neil was asked about what he remembered of Woodstock:

Young: "One of things I remember about Woodstock was trying to get there to play. As it turns out, the charter plane I was on with Jimi Hendrix flew into the wrong airport. We were supposed to be picked by a helicopter. The roads were jammed and there was nobody at the airport, so we had no way to get to the concert.

So we're standing at the airport with Melvin Belli [an attorney] trying to figure out what to do. And Melvin Belli steals this pickup truck parked at the airport.

So it's the three of us in this stolen pickup truck trying to get to the Woodstock concert to play -- Jimi, Melvin & me.

That's what I really remember about Woodstock.

peace

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More on Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at Woodstock.

Also, see Woodstock: The Day After.

UPDATE 8/17: Another variation of the story appears in David Zimmer's CROSBY, STILLS & NASH: The Biography with Neil hot-wiring the truck and Elliot Roberts, Young's manager, is driving the pickup truck with Jimi Hendrix on the hood.

Elliot says: 'Jimi Hendrix was a hood ornament! It was insane.'"

As they say, if you remember Woodstock, you weren't there...

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