Neil Young – Homegrown

Much has been said and written about Neil Young’s so called lost or abandoned 1974 Homegrown album. Fans have had over 45 years to speculate on which of the 30 odd songs Young recorded around the time would ultimately end up on the album and what the final track listing running order would be. Following the phenomenal success of Young’s global breakthrough hit with his 1972 Harvest album, Young had an unprecedented burst of creativity. By mid 1974 he had three albums in the can (On The Beach, Tonight’s The Night and Homegrown) and a fourth one in the works (Zuma). Ultimately when it came time to release Homegrown, with cover art already finalized, Young decided to ditch the album in favour of his 1973 unreleased album Tonight’s The Night, later citing the aforementioned record as a “very down album” with material “a little too personal” in nature.

In Jimmy McDonough’s 2002 Neil Young authorized biography Shakey, Young states, “Homegrown is the missing link between Harvest, Comes a Time, Old Ways and Harvest Moon.”. That said it would still take Young another two decades before the much sought after album would see the light of day. Finally, on June 19, 2020 Young unveiled to the world the 12 songs he had decided would be, at last, the definitive version of his 2020 vision of what Homegrown should be. And the fans rejoiced.

To say 2020’s Homegrown is a proper album in the true sense of the word is a misnomer. The 12 pieces hand picked by Young to represent what Homegrown should be are more or less sketches of songs, outlines, ideas and demos, mostly incomplete and unfinished. Pieces start off strong and fade out long before things really get cooking. Like demos, these 11 songs sketches (and one studio banter/spoken word piece “Florida”) are nowhere’s near fleshed out and lacking production in general. No doubt die hard fans will be satisfied the door is finally closed on this chapter of Young’s recording career but one must bear in mind that this is just one possible version of what Homegrown could have been, with 18 other tracks up for consideration for the finished product. No doubt there are most certainly some unpolished gems in the work, some diamonds in the rough to be sure, but until a time machine is invented sadly it remains impossible to travel back to 1974 to see what the 29 year old Neil Young would have released as Homegrown should he have put it out at the time. Hindsight leaves us with the perspective of a 74 year old senior citizen’s revisionist reconstruction of his long ago embattled brokenhearted twentysomething self. Long may you run.

7/10