Neil Young has a new lost album that he’s set to release for his fans—sometime soon.
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The record, Summer Songs, is from 1987 and the legendary songwriter says that he recently came across the recordings.
In 2020, Young released Homegrown, songs from 1974. On December 10, he will release Barn with Crazy Horse. And on his website, Young let fans know about the new songs that are set for release (perhaps soon) in the future.
“We are not sure of the exact original dates of these recordings yet,” Young wrote on his site. “They were all given the same date in the NYA Vault’s records, but they all have a very similar unique sound. To give you an idea of place and time, Farm Aid and the Bridge School concerts had just begun their long runs.”
The 76-year-old, Toronto-born Young continued, saying: “This group of songs had just been written and put down in the studio at Broken Arrow (as far as we can figure). We cannot completely be sure of the engineer who was recording these and I don’t remember the sessions at all! Every song in the collection was with acoustic guitar or piano and simple added embellishments—sketches of arrangements we made to preserve the initial ideas.
“These originals were first introduced in their final master versions on the albums Freedom, American Dream, Psychedelic Pill, and Harvest Moon. They will be included in NYA Volume 3 and may be released as a separate archive album before that. It is a beautiful listen, created over a short period of time, that influenced 4 albums.
“‘The Last of His Kind,‘ ‘For the Love of Man,’ ‘American Dream,’ ‘Name of Love,’ ‘Someday,’ ‘One of These Days,’ ‘Hangin’ on a Limb‘ and ‘Wrecking Ball’ are the original eight performances. The words of these originals are significantly different from their subsequent master album releases in many cases. Several completely new and unheard verses are found in the songs of this collection.
He added, “Research is still being done to completely verify the recording history.”
Summer Songs will be released in Young’s next archival volume, which is as of yet to be determined. They may, though, be released before that. Stay tuned.
Photo by Gus Stewart/Redferns
