Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Neil Young has posted on
his website a picture of a test pressing of
Homegrown, announcing that the album recorded 45 years ago will be his first release in 2020.
Warner Bros.’
Robin Hurley sent the platter to Young with a note saying “this album is incredible!” to which Young responded that, in his 50 years of working with Hurley, it’s the first time “I have ever received a test pressing with a message like this and it make me feel really great inside.”
Homegrown is one of the many unreleased treasures in Young’s vaults. He wrote in mid-December the album should have been the follow-up to
Harvest. “It’s the sad side of a love affair. The damage done. The heartache. I just couldn’t listen to it. I wanted to move on. So I kept it to myself, hidden away in the vault, on the shelf, in the back of my mind.”
Recorded in 1974 and early 1975, the album features steel guitarist
Ben Keith, bassist
Tim Drummond and pianist
Stan Szelest with
Levon Helm drumming on some tracks and
Emmylou Harris singing on one. Some of the songs have been released on other albums, among them “Star of Bethelehem,” “Love is a Rose” and “Little Wing.”
Known for his fanatic attention to audio quality,
he also announced that his Hi-Res streams will be part of
Lenbrook’s BluOS enabled products.