Neil Young Citizen Kane Jr. Blues 1974 (Live at The Bottom Line) LP

A fan favorite bootleg that is usually called "Live at The Bottom Line", this surprise solo acoustic performance following a Ry Cooder show on May 16, 1974, notably features songs that would be included on the album On the Beach. The album title comes from Neil introducing the opening song with that title, a song that later became "Pushed It over the End".

The Bottom Line, a club in New York's Greenwich Village, is a place I decided to visit one night in 1974. Ry Cooder, an artist who had been introduced to me by Jack Nitzsche, was playing there and I decided to go down and listen to him perform. Jack had raved about how great he was and I respected Jack's opinion a lot. He was great. At the same time, I had a bunch of new songs and seemed to be itching to play them, since I took my guitar with me to the club. I played a guest set after Ry played.

I recall very little about the Bottom Line - a famous small folk club, very crowded that night, with a little stage that I walked onto around 2 a.m. according to what I have read and vaguely remember. I had just recorded the album On the Beach in LA about a month before and had a bunch of new and even newer songs to play. This is the only recording of that night, recorded from a tabletop in the club on a cassette recorder. We took some of the extraneous noise out of the recording but in order to preserve all the music and vibe, we left quite a bit in. What you hear on this recording is what happened that night. I'm glad Simon Montgomery recorded it.

- Neil Young

The audio has been cleaned up considerably, but Citizen Kane Jr. Blues still feels like a bootleg recording: the crowd noises are prominent and Neil sounds just slightly pushed back in the mix, as if you're listening from the back of the audience, instead of the front. All these slight aural imperfections emphasize the extraordinary casualness of the gig. Young is loose but not sloppy as he plays songs largely unknown to his audience....Far from sounding restless, the audience pays rapt attention, and Young responds with an openhearted, slightly buzzed performance that shines light on this period of gloom.