He spent the bulk of the year traveling the world on tours with both Crazy Horse and the Stills-Young Band, and headed into the studio during rare off time to lay down the new songs that were pouring out of him at a furious clip. In nearly every case, you’re hearing the song the first time it was captured on tape.Īs anyone that’s seen The Last Waltz knows, Young was completely fried by the end of 1976.

Nearly all of the songs came out over the next few years on American Stars ‘n Bars, Comes a Time, and Rust Never Sleeps, but Chrome Dreams caught them in their rawest, most intimate form. Unlike American Stars ‘n Bars, which veers wildly from wild Crazy Horse jams to tender ballads and experiments in country rock, Chrome Dreams is largely focused on acoustic recordings.

“In many ways,” Young biographer Jimmy McDonough wrote in his 2002 Young biography, Shakey, “ Chrome Dreams is a more powerful collection than the haphazard collection of American Stars ‘n Bars.” The original Chrome Dreams leaked out years later as a bootleg drawn from the ’77 acetate, and many fans felt he had made the wrong choice. Only his most devoted followers knew that the title was a reference to Chrome Dreams, an entirely different album he had put together in 1977 before shelving it in favor of American Stars ‘n Bars. Sixteen years ago, in 2007, Neil Young puzzled quite a few people when he released a new album called Chrome Dreams II.

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