In 2004 Rustie, Mike "Expecting 2 Fly" Cordova posted a series of articles on his experience listening to all of Neil Young's albums in chronological order. Here is one in the series. For a complete listing, see Albums in Order reviews.
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:51:36 -0800 (PST) Yes, I know this is way out of order. The last album I
covered, Greendale, came out in 2003. 4 Way Street was
released in 1971. I changed the scope of this series after
I passed up the 4WS timeframe (I had initially intended to
only do the albums of all-new material.) But in a way, it
kind of brings the albums-in-order series full circle. 4WS
was not the first Neil album I bought, but I did get to
hear it before I went out and got ATGR and 4WS was one of
the reasons.
I had heard the song Only Love Can Break Your Heart on the
radio around 1970 and thought the singing was, well, too
high. Sounded like a female. This is the first time though
that I remember hearing the name Neil Young. Then I
started figuring out this guy had been around a few years
and had made some other music. Eventually, sometime in
1971, I went to a friend's house and heard 4 Way Street.
Neil's songs and even his high-pitched voice now,
intrigued me. I liked the others' songs, but Neil's were
much more communicative to me. And significantly, I
learned that he played lead guitar on some of the exciting
electric tracks, that's he's the one who wrote Ohio, and
that he had a sense of humor.
Some of the between-song banter is some of my favorite
parts of this album. "We'd like to introduce our friend,
Neil Young." "Here's a new song guaranteed to bring you
right down. It's called Don't Let It Bring You Down. Sort
of starts out real slow and fizzles out altogether." About
Southern Man: "This is usually a really long song, folks,
but tonight we're going to play it slow to make it
longer."
Neil's songs are all excellent on this live album. Lovely
version of On The Way Home. Of course, when I first heard
this album, I had no idea that this was a Buffalo
Springfield song that had been sung on the last BS album
by Richie Furay. I heard the solo acoustic Cowgirl here
before I heard the electric version from EKTIN. It's
beautiful.
The electric stuff, especially Neil's, is absolutely
killer on this record. The Young/Stills guitar trade-off
on Southern Man is a highlight. Hearing these songs at my
friends house back in '71 did a few things for me. It
helped bring together the things about Neil I didn't know,
like he was the songwriter for Ohio and that he was an
excellent guitar player. I also learned that his voice had
some kind of effect on me, it communicated to me. Another
way to say this is that my natural "Neil gene" was
activated. Hearing this album, I *had* to go out and buy
his latest album which happened to be After The Gold Rush.
And then I listened to it and loved it and got all the
rest of the albums that had Neil Young songs on them and
bought the albums throughout his career as they came out
and joined the Rust list and started a series called
Albums in order of which this is the last entry.
It's been a great run. Thank you all for indulging me.
Listening to all the albums again has been a wonderful
experience for me, it felt good to get connected with the
music that I love so much again; some of those albums I
had not listened to for a long, long time. I've taken
great pleasure in reading all your comments and opinions
about about the albums.
I very much enjoyed listening to 4 Way Street today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: 4 Way Street
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
More on the band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Neil Young - Thrasher's Wheat Archives: A Fan's Un Official Pages
Neil Young Reviews of Albums