‘Chrome Dreams’ by Neil Young Review: From Bootleg to Banner Release

livemint.com:

Music obsessives of a certain stripe—the type of people who make endless Top 5 lists and recognize themselves in the characters from the 2000 film “High Fidelity," say—like to argue about the best band or act of a given decade. The Beatles in the ’60s is a common choice, as is Prince in the ’80s. Competition is especially fierce in the ’70s, the height of the LP era, when music sat at the center of the pop-culture conversation.

Stevie Wonder? Excellent choice, probably the most logical. David Bowie? Also reasonable, especially considering how his stature has grown in the past 15 years. Or Led Zeppelin, a band that changed the sound of hard rock? Or maybe even soul singer Al Green, a master of consistency whose first seven albums of the decade hardly had a weak song? But we also have to consider Neil Young.

During that decade, the Canadian singer-songwriter released eight studio albums and another studio LP with Stephen Stills; he recorded with Crosby, Stills & Nash; he issued a live album, “Time Fades Away" (1973), filled with all-new songs, many of which are brilliant, and another, “Live Rust" (1979), that’s considered among the best in-concert rock albums ever made. Based purely on what came out at the time, it’s a hugely impressive decade of work, more than enough to put Mr. Young in the running for the most important artist of the ’70s.

But those official releases aren’t the entire story. Mr. Young recorded constantly in the ’70s and made decisions based on instinct, scrapping projects at the last minute for reasons known only to him.