Ahead of his Official Bootleg series, Neil Young has announced that his first 1970 Carnegie Hall concert will be the inaugural release.
Earlier this year, the Neil Young Archives announced that they would release vintage bootleg recordings of Young’s works with improved sound and art. The Official Bootleg series were supposed to be one of many archival releases scheduled by the NYA.
Now, Young has finally announced that his first 1970 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York is to be the series’ inaugural release.
While the release date remains unknown, Young prefaced it with a short statement on his website. Reflecting on the legacy of the concert, he introspects on how going through his previous work made him aware of his own musical evolution.
“This one — Carnegie Hall, December 4th, 1970, is very special to me,” Young wrote.
“Change happens fast. As I have gone through these early bootlegs, Carnegie Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and others, they show a change, something you can hear — an evolution. My first time playing harmonica — Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, is heard as well as what the harmonica replaced — heard on earlier shows.
“That was interesting to me because I don’t remember exactly when I started playing harp until I heard that,” he said. “At Carnegie Hall, I hear myself doing a new song, one about my ranch I had just moved to — ‘Old Man.’ Time flies.”
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Young also explained why he specifically chose this particular concert as the first release in the Official Bootleg series. Avid fans will remember the reason the series was born in the first place: to fight back against bootlegged reproductions of his albums.
Somehow, he says, only his second concert at Carnegie Hall fell into the hands of bootleggers. The first one, as far as he knows, slipped through the cracks.
“Listening to existing bootlegs, it seems that all the bootleggers got the second Carnegie Hall show,” he says. “There was one at 8:00 pm and one at midnight. No one got that first one — the first time I walked onstage at Carnegie Hall, blowing my own 25-year-old mind.”
In a short film from 1970/1, hosted on the Neil Young Archives, Young is shown going shopping for records and comes across bootlegs of his own albums. After pondering over how to tackle this issue, NYA announced the Official Bootleg series through a cheeky statement on their website.
“We have ripped off all of the original art from the bootlegs, continuing the tradition. No expense will be spared. The only difference will be the radically better sound from our masters.” the statement said.
Check out ‘See The Sky About To Rain’ by Neil Young:
