Neil Young Talks Unreleased LPs, Working On ‘World Record’
Neil Young has spoken about unfinished albums in his archives, his new album World Record and the recently unearthed 2000 album Toast in a new interview with Uncut.
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Young talked about the projects in his archives: “I got a lot of stuff to clean up. I’ve got a big mess that I left behind. I’ve created a lot of unfinished records, unfinished this and that. I now have the time to deal with it, focus on it.
“But at the same time, anything new takes precedent. Always. Once I start thinking about something new, I drop the old stuff right away and do the new thing.”
Talking about Toast, the recently released album Young recorded back in 2000. “I knew Toast was great. I knew it would come out someday. I mean – we finished it, y’know. We cared enough about it to finish it. So that says something right there. But it just didn’t seem important for it to come out at that time, or it would have.”
Moving on to discuss his latest album, World Record, Young talked about teaching the songs to the band and the recording sessions, “In the original versions there were no chords. It was just me walking through the trees whistling. I don’t usually write ewithout an instrument, so I had to figure it out. It seemed to make more sense to use a keyboard with these melodies, I could figure out the changes. I’d get on the pump organ and sing songs quickly into a file I’d send to the band. Just give ’em a verse and a chorus – not the whole song. I don’t ever like to sing the whole song unless I’m recording.”
“Some songs we’d get in just a couple of takes. Others, it could be up to 17, 18 takes – then it would turn out that we’d probably use one of the first ones.”