Music

Neil Young’s ‘lost’ album: Before you start leaping up and down in your slippers . . .

Johnny’s Island is from experimental phase that prompted rocker’s record label to sue him

Neil Young: in the early 1980s the now grizzled old rocker filtered his Crazy Horse sound through an array of synths, vocoders and other gizmos. Photograph: Pete Still/Redferns/Getty

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Kevin Courtney
Mon Feb 1 2021 - 14:52

It’s the news that has Neil Young fans rockin’ with excitement: a “lost” album from the archives, retrieved, dusted off and rereleased for our delectation.

Johnny's Island is the latest "gift" to his fans from the grizzled old rocker, who at the age of 75 has been busy digging out previously unheard material from his career, which now spans more than a half century, and making it available via the Neil Young Archives. No wonder we're all leaping up and down in our slippers.

But before we get too excited and have to have a lie-down, the release comes with a caveat: don’t expect another Harvest or Rust Never Sleeps. The album was recorded in Hawaii in 1982, and the same sessions – at the Commercial Recorders studio in Honolulu – also produced the album Trans, generally considered to be one of his worst. That album was Young’s attempt to get down with the hip new electronic sounds of the day, and it saw him filtering his traditional Crazy Horse rock sound through an array of synths, vocoders and other gizmos.

Geffen sued Neil Young for releasing 'deliberately uncommercial' and 'unrepresentative' material, but never retrieved its money. The star had well and truly stuck it to the man

The result was a strange sonic chimera that baffled his fans and annoyed his new record label, Geffen, which was expecting a more “traditional” album from the star. Young had signed to Geffen after leaving Reprise, the label he had been with since his first solo album, in 1968, and his contract guaranteed him $1 million per album and complete creative control.

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Bad idea. Trans and its follow-up, Everybody’s Rockin’, an album of rockabilly songs, were among Young’s biggest flops. The next year Geffen sued the star for releasing “deliberately uncommercial” and “unrepresentative” material, but never retrieved its money. Young had well and truly stuck it to the man.

Some of the tracks from Johnny’s Island ended up on Trans, including Like an Inca – not the worst of the songs, and relatively free of electronic tampering, so the hope is that the rest of the album, which was originally entitled Island in the Sun, will also sound a little more like the Neil Young we know and love.

“It was a tropical thing all about sailing, ancient civilisations, islands and water,” was how Young described the lost album in a 1995 interview with Mojo. Could there even be some sea shanties on it? That would put Young right smack in the zeitgeist.

Young has famously railed against the idea of brands using rock music to sell products, but his Hipgnosis deal could mean that many of his best-known songs may now be heard in ads for household cleaners, booze or white goods

Young’s output has always been an up-and-down affair, and fans know they’ll have to plough through much filler before they get to the killer. Same with his live gigs: you could be standing in the rain through three hours of twiddly guitar solos before you hear a hit. But Young promises us we won’t be disappointed by Johnny’s Island, saying “it’s a beautiful record, coming to you soon”. We’ll take that with a pinch of saltwater.

Young seems to be doing the musical equivalent of clearing out the garage these days. Besides digging out old stuff and rereleasing it, the Canadian rocker – who is married to the actor Daryl Hannah – this month sold the rights to half of his music catalogue, worth an estimated €120 million, to Hipgnosis Songs Fund, joining a slew of other artists rushing to cash in on their back catalogues.

Young has famously railed against the idea of brands using rock music to sell products – he recently sued Donald Trump for using his music at his Maga rallies – but the Hipgnosis deal will mean that many of his best-known songs may now be heard in ads for household cleaners, booze or white goods. Unless, of course, Young has just sold the filler to Hipgnosis and kept all the killer for himself.