(Reprise)

Okay, I’m a believer even though I thought it would never happen. Neil’s long promised but nary delivered Archives series—proposed as an ongoing, wide-spanning, “from the vaults” rarities retrospective—now has its second title on the shelves following Live at the Fillmore, which finally kickstarted the series in 2006. This latest one’s a doozy, too. Young’s solo performance at Toronto’s venerable Massey Hall in March of ’71 chronicles material much of which was then mostly unknown to the audience but would go on to become key pieces in the artist’s epic oeuvre. Alongside a handful songs from his supergroup collab with Crosby, Stills and Nash and breakthroughs Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After the Goldrush, here were the guts of the downbeat blockbuster Harvest along with songs that would appear on the charged live recording Time Fades Away and the bleak masterpiece On the Beach. This was a man laying all his cards on the table. Young had been in traction for almost a year following a back injury and not able to stand up and play electric guitar. Young wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to play live, loud rock and roll again. The material he was writing—paining himself just to strum an acoustic or play a few bars at the piano—was coming from a mellower but pensive place. This stop on a one-man tour captures the essence of Young’s mood and non-ebbing creativity circa ’71. “Journey Through The Past,” one of Young’s most outwardly autobiographical songs, is delivered from the piano with a tremble and dose of reality as he sings of “going back to Canada” from the Toronto stage. “Cowgirl in the Sand” is rendered quietly and compactly, in contrast to the 10-minute Crazy Horse version, but remains every bit as wonderfully raw and direct. This also is the first official release of the long-cherished Young nugget “Bad Fog of Loneliness.” Live at Massey is not only an important, long-lost document from one of Young’s many great, fertile phases but also a near perfect up close live document.