Neil Young’s career spans a half century of music and activism—and you can feast upon it all in the incredible Neil Young Archives.
The app is a comprehensively stocked destination for all things Neil—his iconic albums (in hi-res audio, of course), vintage bootlegs, rare outtakes, and the iconoclastic artist’s takes on current events, all presented with a charmingly old-school feel. “It’s a time machine,” Young told us in 2019 at his L.A. studio. “We’re not trying to be the most modern.”
The interface may not be modern, but the idea is: Young is constantly communicating through Archives. News and music drops here first—including Barn, a just-released 12th album with his longtime band, Crazy Horse. The surrounding ephemera is updated regularly, and in the app’s “newspaper” (the Times-Contrarian, natch), Young himself answers fan queries about song meanings, gear trivia, and more.
We sat down with Young in 2019, shortly after Archives launched, to talk about the app, his music, and the ever-changing business.
With so much audio and video to pick from, how did you decide what to release to Archives? Is there a big spreadsheet?
There didn’t used to be! <Laughs.> The thing about the archives is it’s the story of how it was all made. Everything is there—not just the record but the art around it, the press that came out. You’ve got all the information, organized like a funky filing cabinet.
The interface is a nice throwback.
We do make people go through a few clunky things. <Laughs.>
Have you ever been surprised by an alternate take or bootleg you discovered?
I have a pretty good memory for my music, but I’ve found things that I wasn’t sure I had. And every once in a while there’s an ancillary discovery. We found video of Crazy Horse playing at the Catalyst in 1983 or something, and it’s Super 8 footage synced to the audio. It’s maybe not suitable to be a product, but it’s great background to the whole story. Things like that we’re always discovering. We filmed everything, and lots of things haven’t even been reviewed yet.
When you’re going back through these recordings, do you ever think, “Maybe I should have done the guitar this way?”
That’s history. If I’m creating something today, I’ll do that. But if I’ve already signed off on it, I’m not going to touch it. It’s done.
This whole idea feels like a gift to fans, or at least a distinct form of appreciation.
This is my chance to give back to people who love my music. People who want this have probably followed me for a long time. It doesn’t cost any more than buying an album. And there’s...who knows how many albums? I don’t even know how many albums are in there! The whole business has changed so much—why not change it some more? Put it all out there. But also try to make everything better.