Albums will always be my memory markers in life. Their strength and their spirit have a living presence, and define certain events growing up so vividly that nothing else can replace them. To think about important experiences usually comes along with an accompanying album’s songs. Put them together and history comes alive. And to hold a vinyl album cover is to enter a time machine to when it first appeared. There is nothing else quite like it.
I’d been buying 45s for a few years, starting in 1956 with Elvis Presley’s monstro-hit “Hound Dog.” After that first one, I’d buy everything Presley put out, first at the Henke’s grocery store near our home in Houston, and then at Moses Melody record store once I discovered it down the street. It became my local shrine. By the time the Memphis rock & roll king went into the Army I had about 20 of his singles, and a half-dozen EPs, which were the same size as 45s but came in a cardboard cover with photos and credits printed on it. They were like miniature albums, which could also be played like 45s on my small RCA Victor machine with a big spindle to hold the records. You could stack five or six of the small platters on it, and when one was over another would drop onto the miniature turntable and start playing. I was convinced it was the greatest invention since automobiles, and didn’t even know what a full-blown hi-fi system was. I already had everything I needed. Which, I would later learn, is the true beauty of childhood: you can’t miss what you’ve never heard of.
Then one day when I started junior high school in 1960 a friend mentioned the word “album.” I had never veered into the area of the record store where they were sold, because I just assumed they were for adults, and cost way more than the 59-cents I was paying for singles. And who knew what was on them. If you loved a song, that always seemed like it was enough. It never occurred to me that 10 songs by one person would be ten times better. Perfection was unimprovable, and to hear Elvis Presley sing “Too Much” or Little Richard set fire to “Lucille,” what else was needed?
That all changed the day I walked into the Sharpstown Center’s record store. It was in the very first air-conditioned mall in Houston, so my family would go there to cool off during a 105-degree day. We weren’t shopping, we were just hiding from the heat. But there it was that day in 1963: a big 12×12 black album cover with the words “The Blues Volume 1″ printed large on the front in two different shades of blue. Below that were nine names, from Muddy Waters to Howlin’ Wolf. Something seemed so official about the design, like this collection was the one true instruction manual on the blues. By then I’d been following Lightnin’ Hopkins and Juke Boy Bonner around Houston in the early ’60s and had become hypnotized by their music. It seemed otherworldly, like the singers had been anointed by something indescribable which allowed them to seem magical. And here was a primer in the music that had come to mean so much to me. So I made a deal with my mother to buy me the album, and I became an indentured servant for the summer mowing our front and back yard. I would have agreed to anything, though, because something inside me said I had to have this album.
That summer day was when I came to completely understand the power of the album. It was like a neutron bomb went off inside me. A few months later I bought the Rolling Stones’ first album titled ENGLAND’S NEWEST HITMAKERS, and that was it. Everything that never made sense before came into focus. Albums held the secrets to living. I was off to the races buying the 12” platters, and I’ve been running around the track ever since. It is something I have lived with now for over 50 years, and while formats have come and gone (8-track tapes anyone?), the vinyl album still seems like it’s what music is supposed to be delivered by.
Ask any artist and they will tell you vinyl is the way to get the highest premium sound delivered to the listener, not to mention providing a bigger canvas for the artwork to take on an inspiring life of its own. For those of us who feel music is a saving grace, the album is our Bible. It’s where everything comes alive, like personal letters sent from the artist. I would lean them on the floor up against the wall circling whatever room I was living in, so I could look at them at night before I went to sleep, picking out whichever ten seemed like my favorites. It would change nightly, and I would move them around like winning horses in a race. There is something to be said for non-threatening obsessive behavior, and surely album collecting ranks at the top of that pursuit.
Of course, over the history of rock & roll there have been albums that were avidly discussed, but for whatever reason never got released. Sometimes vast conspiracy theories sprang up around those mysteries, and sometimes the album just disappeared without a trace before anyone knew about it. But in the mid-’70s Neil Young was on a massive roll and when it became known his 1975 scheduled release HOMEGROWN had vaporized, his loyalists were on the hunt. Nobody knew exactly what happened, but soon enough TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT was released and the world rolled on in the explosive fashion that we’d come to expect from rock & roll. The world was being plummeted from various angles, but as long as new music was being released that promised a path forward, music lovers kept the faith.
Still, for the past 45 years there have been questions about where HOMEGROWN went. Some of the songs appeared in various forms on later albums, but for many Neil Young fans HOMEGROWN always felt like the one that got away. That changes now when the album is being released in its glorious original form, complete with the album cover that had been planned for it all those years ago. And, of course, it is available on vinyl.
In 2020, HOMEGROWN feels like an extremely personal letter sent from Neil Young back in 1975 that somehow got lost and sat behind a filing cabinet in some dusty Post Office back room all these years. Until now, when it’s finally being delivered. In so many ways, it’s a revelation of the past, a first draft collection of a dozen songs that fill the heart, jolt the memory, asks unanswerable questions and prove, once again, that rock & roll will never die. Some of these songs will tear your heart out, and others will extend a loving hand. And a few will post big questions. Like with all great rock & roll, there are never any final answers, but instead an offering of the hope that we all need. It’s the asking that keeps life moving forward. Or, as Young sings, “Happiness is never through.”
So much of HOMEGROWN hits with a deep questioning of spirit. Love is on the chopping block, and it’s always a touch and go run at salvation as Neil Young swerves through road blocks and around boulders. The opening track, “Separate Ways,” takes the biggest questions head-on: what happens when love splits apart and two people’s paths diverge. A passionate plea floats through the song thanks to Ben Keith’s haunting steel guitar, while the drums almost move into the lead instrument slot. In the end, the song shows that nothing ever really ends and sometimes that’s the best that can be hoped for. As a song to start an album, it’s like it’s a tip to put on the seat belts for what’s ahead. In one song it’s obvious this is a Neil Young album for the ages, no matter when it’s finally released.
From there HOMEGROWN takes off on a never-less-than-thrilling ride: the possible reconciliation of “Try,” a romantic run to “Mexico,” a sweet prayer-like return to a steady course on “Love is a Rose” and the apocalyptic boogie of the title song “Homegrown.” Five songs on an album that has instantly become an old friend who wandered off into the woods in the mid’-70s but comes back to life now like nothing has happened. It shows the power of music to bend reality into its own continuum of time. There are surely moments in life that move beyond what Dr. John used to call “the meat world” into a place of fluid consciousness, one that flows and goes like an ocean tide.
In today’s world, where it often feels like our tether to the past has been cut in two and we’re all waiting for a new one to come by and grab hold of, certain songs float into the ozone that speak to the other world. “Florida” does just that, a tone poem born somewhere just beyond our reach, something that glides above us. Which makes “Kansas” sound like the antidote, a weeper without tears, and a chance to put both feet back on the earth.
It’s often said the half-way point of an album is the best time to kick everything up a notch, which is exactly what “We Don’t Smoke It No More” does. It sounds like bluesman Jimmy Reed has wandered onto the stage looking for directions home, while Young and the band crank up the sound and turn the song into a harmonica-fest of the highest proportions. Now that things are buzzing, “White Line” strolls right in, announcing “the daylight will soon be breakin’…” and it’s time to come down and pretend to be normal again. Of course that’s out of the question, so “Vacancy” rushes in as a pounding jolt of adrenaline to make sure the heart keeps beating. Some things should not be ignored.
Heading into the final songs of HOMEGROWN, “Little Wing” is a quietly gorgeous wish, one that captures the point where childhood and growing up come together in a radiant place of love. All that is left is “Star of Bethlehem” to shine a light to follow the road home. It is one of Neil Young’s eternally-inspired songs, with a sense of the spirit in the sky that guides us all. Of course, there are questions to ask, because the moving parts of life rule out certainty as surely as the sun comes up every day. All is promised, but nothing can be taken for granted. When Young asks, “Maybe the star of Bethlehem wasn’t a star at all,” it is not a trick question, but rather a clue to where the inner ring of eternity starts.
HOMEGROWN, like all timeless music, is a puzzle full of promises, one that blends memories with visions, and is a trusted sound to turn to in the time each of us still has to share this life with others. It is an album to look at on the floor leaning against the wall while its songs play at night in the dark, knowing that it–and hopefully we–will be there in the morning. It is, like Neil Young, a friend for life.
Bill Bentley