Happy Anniversary: Neil Young, Comes a Time

36 years ago today, Neil Young released an album that harkened back to the sounds of his 1972 masterwork, Harvest, but which initially featured a problem in the mastering that resulted in the singer/songwriter buying 200,000 copies back from Warner Brothers, which he ultimately used as shingles for a barn roof. (Yes, really.)

Made mostly in Florida, albeit with a few key sessions in Nashville, Comes a Time was seen as such a return to form for Young that it only took a month for it to outsell all six albums that he’d released since Harvest.

In Jimmy McDonough’s Shakey, Young recalled that the album had “started out as a solo acoustic record, and then I went in to Warner Brothers and played it for Lenny (Waronker) and Mo (Ostin). Mo said, ‘We like it, but if you’re not in a hurry, why don’t you take it and see if you can put rhythm tracks on what you have. We just wanna hear you play with a band, too. If you don’t like it, fine. Give it a shot.’ Mo never makes suggestions, and he made that one. So it gave me something to do.”

As such, Young took the material he’d recorded at Triad Studios in Florida and traveled to Nashville, where he worked with Bobby Charles, Tim Drummond, Ben Keith, Karl “Junkyard” Himmel, Spooner Oldham, Rufus Thibodeaux, and – perhaps most notably – Nicolette Larson. “We sang on the same mike,” Larson told McDonough. “I could look in his eyes and keep up with him, and that’s as much rehearsal as he wants. Neil really wants you to read his mind and get the part. My entrance on ‘Four Strong Winds’ is all over the map – Neil wouldn’t let you try it twice.” Despite Larson’s criticisms of her performance, “Four Strong Winds” ended up being the only hit single to emerge from Comes a Time, hitting #61 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Well, actually, that’s not entirely true: beyond the material recorded in Florida and Nashville, there are also a pair of Crazy Horse songs in the mix: “Look Out for My Love” and “Lotta Love,” the latter of which would soon turn into a top-10 single and the biggest hit of Larson’s career.

In Shakey, McDonough somewhat teasingly suggested that Comes a Time is “certainly a contender for the unlikely title of the happiest record Neil Young has ever made.” Give it a spin and see if you agree.