Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (1963-1972)

ロック・シーンにおける孤高のレジェンド、ニール・ヤング。
2009年にリリースされて以降長らく入手困難となっていた、彼の貴重な音源を紐解く「ニール・ヤング・アーカイヴ」シリーズの第一弾作品『NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES VOL. I (1963-1972)』の8枚組CDエディションが、10年以上の時を超え待望の復刻盤となって再登場! 高校在籍中の音源からCSN&Y期、ソロ・キャリア初期の貴重な音源をたっぷり収録したこのアーカイヴ・シリーズ第一弾作品、監修を担当するはもちろん、ニール・ヤングご本人!

ロック・シーンにおける孤高のレジェンド、ニール・ヤング。現代に伝えたい言葉をまとめあげた新作の発表にとどまらず、未発表音源のリリースや貴重なライヴ・アーカイヴ・シリーズをリリースし続け、休むことなく歌と言葉を発信し続ける伝説言葉/歌を発し続ける、まさに「生ける伝説」の名に相応しい存在だ。

そんな彼の貴重な音源を年代順に紐解いていく「ニール・ヤング・アーカイヴ」シリーズ。2021年にはその第二弾となる『NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES VOL. II (1972-1976)』がリリースされているのだが、2009年にリリースされていたこのシリーズの第一弾作品は発売直後に世界的にソールド・アウトとなり、以降長らく再発されることなく10年以上の年月が過ぎていった。発売当時は10枚組DVD、10枚組BLU-RAY、そして8枚組CDという複数形態でリリースされ、その後長らく入手困難となっていたこの第一弾作品が今回、10年以上の時を経て遂に限定復刻されることとなった! 今回復刻されるのは、8枚組CDヴァージョンのみ。

あるミュージシャンのキャリアの出発点というものは、何が実際に起こったのかを知る上で非常に興味深いコレクションであるのはもちろんのこと、それ以上に重要なのは、そのアーティストの未来がどうなっていくのか/いったのかを改めて見つめることなのかもしれない。様々な伝説を打ち立て圧倒的存在感を持って音楽史にその名を刻む孤高のレジェンド、ニール・ヤングというアーティストの物語の出発点ともいうべき1963年から1972年までの姿を、地元カナダでのハイスクール時代に組んでいたTHE SQUIRESの音源を含む貴重な音源の数々で紐解いていくこの『ARCHIVES VOL. I: 1963-1972』は、彼の終わりなき音楽的、そして精神的な冒険の序章を見事にまとめあげた作品なのだ。

各ディスクのタイトルは、下記の通り:
Disc 1: EARLY YEARS (1963-1968)
Disc 2: TOPANGA 1 (1968-1969)
Disc 3: LIVE AT THE RIVERBOAT (TORONTO 1969)
Disc 4: TOPANGA 2 (1969-1970)
Disc 5: LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST (NEW YORK 1970)
Disc 6: TOPANGA 3 (1970)
Disc 7: LIVE AT MASSEY HALL (TORONTO 1971)
Disc 8: NORTH COUNTRY (1971-1972)

Any project in the works for two decades is bound to generate its fair share of myths and so it is with Neil Young's Archives, a series of a multi-disc box sets chronicling Young's history. Originally envisioned in the late '80s as a Decade II, the project quickly mutated into a monster covering every little corner of Neil's career. With its escalation came delays, so many that it sometimes seemed that the project never really existed; it was just a shared fantasy between Neil and his faithful. During that long, long wait, fans held tight to the idea that Archives was a clearinghouse of rarities similar to Bob Dylan's The Bootleg Series, a treasure trove of unreleased songs and epochal live performances that would trump whatever bootleggers had to offer. While rare and unheard music is certainly a key part of Archives, particularly on the first disc covering the pre-history of 1963-1965, viewing this project as merely a CD box set is wildly misleading. Neil Young has designed Archives as nothing less than an immersive multimedia autobiography, an interactive experience where the music, text, video, and pictures feed off each other, creating a virtual journey through Neil's past. Because this is a biography, Archives, Vol. 1 winds up relying very heavily on previously released recordings, containing almost all of Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, and Harvest, key Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young cuts, and the previously released archival live albums Live at the Fillmore East 1970 and Live at Massey Hall 1971. Such a large chunk of familiar material is bound to disappoint any listener expecting Archives to be a rarities-only set, forgetting that its origin was as a sequel to Decade, the triple-LP set that mixed up hits with unreleased tunes. Archives follows a similar blueprint, excavating many rare gems -- some, like "Bad Fog of Loneliness" quite familiar to bootleggers; some, like an extraordinary "Dance Dance Dance" cut with Graham Nash, not -- and placing them neatly alongside his well-known jewels, so the end effect isn't a rush of discovery but ongoing quiet revelation, an impression underpinned by the set's leisurely pace. The entire Archives is designed to trace Neil's evolution, to explain how his dead ends were really detours and how his mood swings weren't all that wild; it preserves Young's history as he perceived it. To that end, the DVD and especially BluRay editions of the set are essential to understanding both the project and Neil himself, so much so that the CD edition feels almost like an afterthought, a skimming of the surface of a deep lake. Often, Young delayed Archives due to the limits of technology, a claim that seemed no more than an excuse to keep the project incomplete, but Archives in its BluRay incarnation lives up to all of Neil's promises over the years, coming close to collecting everything -- lyrics, press, artwork, TV performances, doodles, scraps of every sort -- in one place, letting users linger for as long as they'd like in a specific era. Surely, the sound quality on BluRay is extraordinary -- the music leaps out of the speakers yet never sounds overly clean, digital, or modern -- but it's the interactive nature of the set that impresses most. While the DVD set also is complexly interactive, BluRay is designed to be continually updated via the Internet, so Young can add songs and videos whenever he wants, placing the new material as a virtual pushpin on each disc's time line. Acting as a supplement to the text biographies on each disc -- the biography only covering the years on the disc -- the time line places Young's evolution on a broader scale and is illuminated by this extra material, such as a downright thrilling CSNY performance of "Down by the River" on ABC-TV, but this is merely a teaser for the main event: the virtual filing cabinet, where every song on the set has its own folder bulging with handwritten lyr to be continued...