Neil Young - Freedom
By Mark Dohmann
| Label: | Reprise Records 25899.1 |
|---|---|
| Format: | Vinyl, LP, Album |
| Country: | Australia |
| Released: | 1989 |
| Genre: | Rock |
| Style: | Classic Rock |
“Freedom comes at a price and its $5.99”
I remember buying this album on ordinary 120 Gram pressing for $5.99. What price Freedom?
Well shortly thereafter the Neil Young Freedom Tour with the Lost Dogs happened to hit Melbourne in April of 1989 at the then National Tennis Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Well that Concert Tour played at a tennis center on the banks of the Yarra which wasn’t respected for its sonic qualities only as a place bigger than the even worse Festival Hall “House of Stoush” and the Old Olympic Swimming Pool. This was in the days before the digital wizardry and steered sound of computer technology.
Neil started the night with some old folk favourites and the crowd went wild. Then he played the Freedom “grunge” and the younger crowd went wild to No More and out Rockin in the Free World. At times the sound system and the hall collapsed sonically and feedback exterminators were not able to prevent it.
Still it was one of those nights that stick in your mind as being special. Neil live is something you have to do at least thrice in your life.
Freedom is the 17th studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released on October 2, 1989. Freedom effectively relaunched Young’s career after a largely unsuccessful decade. After many arguments (and a lawsuit), Young left Geffen Records in 1988 and returned to his original label, Reprise, with This Note’s for You. Freedom, however, brought about a new, critical and commercially successful album. This album was released in the United States as an LP record, cassette tape, and CD in 1989.
I had Harvest, Eldorado and Trans and a few Young and CSNY classics but this album had long tracks that told stories with amazing sonic soundstages.
It was an eclectic collection of tracks on Freedom with obvious different recording sessions. Three songs (“Don’t Cry,” “Eldorado” and “On Broadway”) had previously been released on the Japan and Australia-only EP Eldorado. Two other songs (“Crime in the City” and “Someday”) had been recorded in 1988 with the rhythm-and-blues-oriented Bluenotes band from Young’s previous album, This Note’s for You (another favourite).
In one interview Young explains the wide array of music in the album thus: “I knew that I wanted to make a real album that expressed how I felt. I just wanted to make a Neil Young record per se. Something that was just me, where there was no persona, no image, no distinctive character like the Bluenotes guy or the guy in Everybody’s Rockin’. It’s the first time I’ve felt like doing an album like this in years.” Although he originally planned to release a purely electric rock album (“nothing but abrasiveness from beginning to end”), Young says the final product is “almost like listening to the radio – it keeps changing and going from one thing to another.”
“Rockin’ in the Free World”, which would become one of Young’s signature songs and a live favourite, bookends the album in acoustic and electric variants, a stylistic choice previously featured on Rust Never Sleeps. An edited cut of the electric version of the song was used over the final credits of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11, and the song was re-released as a single at the time of the film’s release.
Freedom has received mainly positive reviews, especially in comparison to the rest of his ’80s work. AllMusic’s William Ruhlmann rated the album four-and-a-half out of five stars, explaining that it “was the album Neil Young fans knew he was capable of making, but feared he would never make again”. He also stated that “there were tracks that harked back to [his] acoustic-based, country-tinged albums”.
Robert Christgau, writing for The Village Voice, rated it an A. He declared that it contains a combination of “the folk ditties and rock galumph that made him famous” and “the Nashvillisms and horn charts that made him infamous”. He also said “it features a bunch of good stuff about a subject almost no rocker white or black has done much with–crack”.
My standout tracks are Crime in the City and No More. One night in New York at a Hilton a group of about ten tired show exhibitors from around the globe ended up in a small room down the end of a corridor. Show day 2 had completed and we’d had dinner and then the “secret handshake” music heads came back up to the room for a session that was only about the music. At one point around 1AM the security guard came in an interrupted to tell us to turn it down. He ended up sitting down and staying for another hour completely blown away by the music.
This album was played and Crime in the City generated a soundstage 60 feet deep and 40 foot wide in a room that was 10 x 12. Sonic hologram there right in front of us. The whisky was strictly rationed and to this day Jonathan Tinn of Evolution Acoustics fame will attest to the fun night we had in mid-2005. Jonathan is a fellow music tragic and has got a great set of ears and music knowledge. No More the other track opines “I can’t put down till the last page”. This album is like that. You can’t put it down.
David Fricke of Rolling Stone rated it five out of five stars. He called it “the sound of Neil Young, another decade on, looking back again in anger and dread”, and that it is about “the illusion of freedom” and “Young’s refusal to accept that as the last word on the subject”. He summed up the review by calling it “a harsh reminder that everything still comes with a price”.
In my case $5.99 – does that make me a cheap audiophile? Yep and it sounds like $599 amazing!
Track listing
Rockin’ In The Free World 3:35
Crime In The City (Sixty To Zero Part I) 8:45
Don’t Cry 4:15
Hangin’ On A Limb 4:18
Eldorado 6:04
The Ways Of Love 4:30
Someday 5:40
On Broadway 4:56
Wrecking Ball 5:08
No More 6:04
Too Far Gone 2:48
Rockin’ In The Free World 4:42