PLUS! KURT VILE J MASCIS ALAN SPARHAWK MARGO PRICE ON THEIR FAVOURITE TRACKS
THERE was a celebratory mood among the guests as they filed into Quaglino’s. The most famous of Mayfair’s society restaurants, by 1974 it had seen better days – yet on September 14 it became the setting for a very exclusive party. Reunited after a four-year break, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had launched one of the biggest rock tours ever attempted at that point; a 31-date stadium jaunt that had reached its conclusion earlier that night at Wembley Stadium. Now everyone was at Quaglino’s for the aftershow.
With Rod Stewart, Marianne Faithfull, Ron Wood, Bianca Jagger and Joni Mitchell in attendance, and standing room in the aisles, a rock’n’roll covers band had been hired for the entertainment. Unfortunately, they didn’t meet the exacting standards of Stephen Stills, who unceremoniously booted them off stage and hijacked their instruments. He was joined first by Neil Young, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm – before a second configuration took shape around Stills, Young, CSNY’s Tim Drummond, Jimmy Page and, briefly, John Bonham.
At this point, Young took charge of this well-refreshed supergroup. Rather than play something simple – “Heart Of Gold”, maybe, or “Old Man” – he led them through a couple of songs from his recently released solo album, On The Beach.
“Vampire Blues” and “On The Beach” were spaced out and sinister, far away from the sunny utopianism of CSNY. Even despite the heavyweight backing, Young stole the show: “Young was a force of nature that night,” NME’s Nick Kent later recalled. “No-one could intimidate him or outplay him.”
“On The Beach was his freakiest album in terms of the people, the subjects and what went down,” says Young’s roadie Will Fuqua, aka Willie B Hinds, Baby John and BJ Fuqua. “It was very loosey goosey. But there was always something underlying or to the side with Neil. He wasn’t afraid of shadow. He could do that, he could handle it and it didn’t take him down. That’s not available to everybody.”
stands apart from anything else in Young’s canon. Stylistically, it’s neither country or rock but something closer – spiritually at least – to the blues. Thematically and lyrically, Young hitches his own personal traumas – his ailing relationship with Carrie Snodgress and despair at the shallowness of fame – to the splintering of mid-’70s America. It was paranoid, depressing, resigned and fractious, full of fearless close-ups and emotional vérité. As it transpired, seemed too intense even for Young – it remained out of print for
