Neil Young

His first album with Crazy Horse captures a decision to abandon the polish of his solo debut in favor of rough, live-sounding ensemble playing. The electric guitar music he would make over the next half century began here.

• The opening riff of "Cinnamon Girl," the signature song in this card's video, comes from a tuning in which both the thickest and the thinnest strings are lowered to D (double drop D tuning). The low strings ring out together, so even a short riff sounds heavy.
• The guitar solo in the break of "Cinnamon Girl" is famous for hammering on almost a single note. His way of driving a song with rhythm and tone rather than nimble fingers is already fully formed here, so listen not for the number of notes but for the grit of the tone.
• From this period on he played Old Black, a 1953 Gibson Les Paul painted black, plugged into a small Fender Deluxe amp. The gravelly sound of a small amp cranked loud is the foundation of the guitar tone on this album.
• "Down by the River" and "Cowboy in the Sand" are long improvised jams (jams) running 9 to 10 minutes. While Talbot's bass and Molina's drums stubbornly hold a simple beat, the two guitars tangle above them, feeling their way forward.
• Danny Whitten's high harmony vocal is layered over Young's voice in the chorus of "Cinnamon Girl." Young later remembered Whitten as the best guitar partner and harmony partner he ever had.

Written just after the Kent State shootings and out in the world within weeks, the song shows him as a songwriter who answered the events of his time at once.

• The intro opens with a short figure that Young's electric guitar lays down alone, darkly. This clipped, unadorned sound sets the tense mood of the whole song.
• In May 1970, in a Los Angeles studio, the four of them and the band recorded it in a few takes, almost as if live. Rather than polish, the raw emotion of that day remains intact.
• The drums stubbornly repeat the same beat, like a march. The rhythm, recurring without flashy variation, makes the song sound like a funeral procession.
• At the end of the song, in the passage where the sound gradually dies away (the fade-out), David Crosby can be heard letting loose an improvised, wailing cry. The story goes that he wept after the recording was done.
• Its voice is closer to communal anger than to private grief. The tone presses every listener not to look away from what happened.

In the period when he played sitting down after hurting his back, the plain sound recorded in Nashville earned him his only American number one. And it was this very success that sent him heading for the ditch.

• It opens with acoustic guitar and a harmonica played from a neck holder (harmonica rack). The traditional image of the folk singer playing guitar and harmonica at once is captured in the sound itself.
• Drummer Kenny Buttrey and bassist Tim Drummond deliberately hold back. The restraint of true Nashville session players puts the song in front.
• Ben Keith's pedal steel guitar glides from note to note, adding a country feeling. Follow the short answering phrases between the choruses.
• The harmonies on the chorus were sung by Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, who were staying in Nashville at the same time. Their two voices are thinly layered behind Young's high voice.
• In form it is a song of a little over 3 minutes that simply alternates verse and chorus. Closing on the harmonica, it ends the confession of a narrator searching for something without any ornament.

Recorded in 1973 after the loss of Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, the album was shelved for 2 years for being too dark. It is called the heart of the 3-album ditch trilogy.

• The title track in this card's video, "Tonight's the Night," appears twice, at the beginning and at the end of the album. The same song frames the album like a picture frame, giving it the structure of a one-night wake.
• Young and Briggs recalled that in the summer of 1973 they recorded live, night after night, drinking in a Los Angeles rehearsal space. Passages where the pitch wavers and the tempo drags were left in, not erased.
• On the title track, Young's own piano hammers heavily at the low notes, while Ben Keith's pedal steel guitar slides above it like a sob.
• “Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown” is a 1970 live recording from the Fillmore East in New York, with Danny Whitten on lead vocals. In effect, the voice of a departed friend sits at the very center of the album.
• Young's vocals are deliberately cracked and loose, as if drunk. It is a manner of delivery that chooses an honest record of the state he was in that night over singing well.

It was his answer to the arrival of punk, calling out Johnny Rotten's name as it asked how rock survives. 15 years later the song would become entangled with Kurt Cobain's final note.

• Rust Never Sleeps opens with the acoustic “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and closes with this electric version. Hear the same song side by side as whisper and roar, and the album's design comes into view.
• From the very first chord, the sound of Old Black, his Les Paul, bursts out warped almost to the point of tearing (distortion). He lets each chord ring long as he moves on to the next, so the sound piles up like a massive wall.
• Crazy Horse's rhythm is slow and heavy. Talbot and Molina tread out a simple beat one firm step at a time, laying down a floor on which the guitar's roar can spread as far as it likes.
• The basic track is said to have been taken from a live performance on the 1978 tour, with the crowd noise erased and the sound polished. It is a sound standing on the border between studio recording and live performance.
• On the 1978 tour he played this song with fake amplifiers taller than a person standing on the stage. In the decades that followed, it became one of the songs he performed most often in concert.

Sung in a voice found again at the end of a 1980s spent wandering among genres, this is a song of irony that sets a giddy chorus against dark verses. He later often played it on stage with Pearl Jam.

• Freedom opens with an acoustic live version of this song and closes with the electric version. The design repeats the paired structure of Rust Never Sleeps from 10 years earlier.
• The riff is built on just three chords. A progression simple enough for anyone to play along with is precisely what gives the song the force of a shout.
• His 1989 appearance on the American television program “Saturday Night Live” is famous. Playing as if hurling himself into it alongside bassist Charley Drayton and drummer Steve Jordan, he gave what is counted as the moment that announced his comeback.
• The mode is irony. The verses flatly report a cityscape tangled in homelessness and drugs, while the chorus bursts into a giddy shout that does not fit. That mismatch is the point of the song.

After the roaring tour he turned to quieter music, and this is the song he dedicated to Pegi, his wife of many years. The players from Harvest 20 years earlier gathered once again.

• The drums are played not with sticks but swept with beaters shaped like little brooms (brushes). There is also a story that the sound of an actual broom sweeping the floor was recorded and added as percussion.
• A short melodic pattern on acoustic guitar repeats throughout the song, returning like its theme. Fix that pattern in your memory during the intro, and the song's course becomes easy to follow.
• Ben Keith's pedal steel guitar glides smoothly between notes, laying down a moonlit backdrop. Try comparing it with the sound of “Heart of Gold” from 20 years earlier.
• The mode is a tender whisper, asking someone long at his side for another dance. Rather than a young man's confession, what comes through is the warmth of a love that has weathered the years.