Everybody Knows this is Nowhere was my starting point. It's a good one, too.
That's a good one to start with.
Harvest is an unfocused, borderline uncharacteristic record but if you liked at least some of it, then you're probably going to enjoy his better records a lot more. Skip the self-titled debut, you can come back to that later. If you preferred the rockers - his first record with Crazy Horse is
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, essentially a two guitar blow out. If you preferred the folk/country songs, there's another weird mess of a record called
After The Goldrush which is actually really great. I think you really have to hear these three records before you embark on The Ditch Trilogy, which is indisputably his best material.
The Ditch Trilogy refers to Neil's wilderness years after the accidental success of
Harvest. He was booked to play a worldwide stadium/arena tour and was basically expected to reprise the
Harvest material. Instead, Neil being Neil, he more or less entirely played new material he had written after Nashville or indeed, was writing whilst on tour. The combination of his distaste for large arena style shows, constant financial and creative disputes with his own touring band, guilt from the death of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and persistent alcoholism made the tour a living hell, captured aptly on the sadly deleted but widely-bootlegged live album
Time Fades Away, which features no songs from his previous studio records. This one might take a while to click but it's worth hearing before moving on to
Tonight's The Night, which is rightfully described as "a drunken Irish wake of a record". Dedicated to the memory of Whitten and former roadie Bruce Berry, both of whom had died of drug overdoses, Young lead his band through a series of dark, deeply personal songs. Essentially recorded live from the floor,
Tonight's The Night is a unique record in the sense that it was more or less improvised on the spot and indeed, the performers were also rolling drunk throughout. Regardless, it's a dour masterpiece of raw, undiluted mourning.
Understandably wary of releasing the difficult, inebriated
Tonight's The Night, Young's record company delayed the release until after the superb
On The Beach, which is for me his career highlight. Alternately rocking and downbeat, it was the first time Young had found the perfect compromise between the two sides of his music. Side One is relatively upbeat (defiant but also scathing and sarcastic) but Side Two is an absolute bummer, featuring several folky ruminations on the trappings of fame, the demise of Young's second marriage to actress Carrie Snodgrass and the general disillusionment felt by the inhabitants of the West Coast in the wake of the demise of sixties idealism, replaced by a collective hangover of apathy, distrust and guilt. Clearly on a roll, Young reunited Crazy Horse and cut the equally brilliant
Zuma, a guitar heavy cousin of
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere with the naked emotional exposure of the preceding Ditch Trilogy. The following records are decent but in truth, Young never really managed to scale the same peaks of creative brilliance ever again.
American Stars N Bars,
Comes A Time,
Rust Never Sleeps and
Hawks & Doves have their moments, some people make an impassioned defence of the bizarre
Trans but overall, I don't ever listen to anything post eighties.
Incidentally, Neil was also the subject of one of the best books ever written about rock music - the biography
Shakey. That's the best buy you could make if you're looking to get into Neil.