Tonight's the Night

Tonight's the Night
Studio album by Neil Young
Released	June 20, 1975
Recorded	August–September 1973 at Studio Instrument Rentals, Hollywood, CA (except "Come On Baby": Fillmore East, NYC, March 1970; "Lookout Joe": Broken Arrow Ranch, December 1972 and "Borrowed Tune": Broken Arrow Ranch, December 1973)
Genre	Rock
Length	44:52
Label	Reprise
Producer	David Briggs, Tim Mulligan, Neil Young, Elliot Mazer (track 10 only)
Professional reviews
Allmusic link PopMatters (Positive) link Robert Christgau (A) link Rolling Stone (not rated) 1975 Rolling Stone 2005
Neil Young chronology
On the Beach (1974) Tonight's the Night (1975) Zuma (1975)

Tonight's the Night is the eighth album by Neil Young, released in 1975 on Reprise Records, catalogue MS 2221. It was recorded in 1973, its release delayed for two years. It peaked at #25 on the Billboard 200. In 2003, the album was ranked number 331 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Content

Dark, heartfelt, and raw, Tonight's the Night is a startlingly direct expression of grief. Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and Young's friend and roadie Bruce Berry had both died of drug overdoses in the months before the songs were written. The title track mentions Bruce Berry by name, while Whitten's guitar and vocal work highlight "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown", recorded live in 1970. The song would later appear, unedited, on a live album from the same concerts, Live at the Fillmore East, and credited to Whitten only as author.

Liner notes

Included with the vinyl release of Tonight's the Night was a seemingly strange insert that added to Neil Young's claim that Tonight's the Night was the closest he ever came to art. Emphasising the personal nature of the album, the self-penned liner notes contained an apology: "I'm sorry. You don't know these people. This means nothing to you." The original inserts/liner notes included in the vinyl release were quite cryptic in their conveyance.

On the front of the insert is a letter to the mysterious "Waterface" character, no explanation is given to their identity, although in Shakey: Neil Young's Biography by Jimmy McDonough, Young says that "Waterface is the person writing the letter. When I read the letter, I'm Waterface. It's just a stupid thing—a suicide note without the suicide." (McDonough).

The back of the insert was equally puzzling, as it appeared in the insert superimposed over the credits to Young's On the Beach album, released a year prior. This passage is reportedly the lyrics to an unreleased song titled "Florida", referred to in Shakey as "A cockamamie spoken-word dream, set to the shrieking accompaniment of either Young or (Ben) Keith drawing a wet finger around the rim of a glass." (McDonough).

When unfolded, comprising a whole side of the insert was a lengthy article printed entirely in Dutch and is in fact a review of a Tonight's the Night live show by Dutch journalist Constant Meijers for the Dutch rock-magazine "Muziekkrant Oor". In 1976 Young said he chose to print it "Because I didn't understand any of it myself, and when someone is so sickened and fucked up as I was then, everything's in Dutch anyway." Also, Neil Young told Constant Meijers during a week's visit he made to Young's ranch in California, that he chose the article after some Dutch girls who were visiting him translated the story and made him aware of the fact "that someone on the other end of the world exactly understood what he was trying to say."

The Reprise Records sticker on the vinyl record itself was printed in black and white rather than the standard orange color, a process Young undertook again on the CD label art for 1994's Sleeps With Angels. Original printings of the sleeve were done on blotter paper which proved quite costly as reprints of the album are no longer printed that way.

Scratched into the run-out grooves on Side One is the message "Hello Waterface" while the run-out grooves on Side Two read "Goodbye Waterface". The picture of Roy Orbison is taken from a bootleg tape Young came across and, feeling bad that Orbison most likely did not know the bootleg existed, printed it in the insert for him to see.

In Shakey: Neil Young's Biography by Jimmy McDonough, Young maintains that along with the inserts there was a small package of glitter inside the sleeve that was meant to fall out ("Our Bowie statement." (McDonough)), spilling when the listener took the record out. However, both Jimmy McDonough and Joel Bernstein (Young's archivist) have yet to find a copy of Tonight's the Night featuring the glitter package.

Critical reception

Dave Marsh wrote in the original Rolling Stone review:

"The music has a feeling of offhand, first-take crudity matched recently only by Blood on the Tracks, almost as though Young wanted us to miss its ultimate majesty in order to emphasize its ragged edge of desolation. [...] More than any of Young's earlier songs and albums-even the despondent On the Beach and the mordant, rancorous Time Fades Away—Tonight's the Night is preoccupied with death and disaster. [...] There is no sense of retreat, no apology, no excuses offered and no quarter given. If anything, these are the old ideas with a new sense of aggressiveness. The jitteriness of the music, its sloppy, unarranged (but decidedly structured) feeling is clearly calculated."

In a followup review published ten years later, Marsh wrote:

"The record chronicles the post-hippie, post-Vietnam demise of counterculture idealism, and a generation's long, slow trickle down the drain through drugs, violence, and twisted sexuality. This is Young's only conceputally cohesive record, and it's a great one."

Track listing with personnel

All songs written by Neil Young except "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" by Danny Whitten and Neil Young.

Side one

1. "Tonight's the Night" – 4:39
   • Young – vocal, piano; Keith – steel guitar, vocal; Lofgren – guitar; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums, vocal
2. "Speakin' Out" – 4:56
   • Young – vocal, piano; Keith – steel guitar, vocal; Lofgren – guitar; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums, vocal
3. "World on a String" – 2:27
   • Young – vocal, guitar, harmonica; Keith – steel guitar, vocal; Lofgren – piano; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums, vocal
4. "Borrowed Tune" – 3:26
   • Young – vocal, piano, harmonica
5. "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown" (Live) – 3:35
   • Young – vocal, guitar; Whitten – vocal, guitar; Nitzsche – electric piano; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums, vocal
6. "Mellow My Mind" – 3:07
   • Young – vocal, guitar, harmonica; Keith – steel guitar, vocal; Lofgren – piano; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums, vocal

Side two

1. "Roll Another Number (for the Road)" – 3:02
   • Young – vocal, guitar; Keith – steel guitar, vocal; Lofgren – piano, vocal; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums
2. "Albuquerque" – 4:02
   • Young – vocal, guitar; Keith – steel guitar, vocal; Lofgren – piano, vocal; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums
3. "New Mama" – 2:11
   • Young – vocal, guitar, vibes; Lofgren – piano; Keith – vocal; Whitsell – vocal; Molina – vocal
4. "Lookout Joe" – 3:57
   • Young – vocal, guitar; Keith – slide guitar, vocal; Nitzsche – piano; Drummond – bass; Buttrey – drums
5. "Tired Eyes" – 4:38
   • Young – vocal, guitar; Keith – steel guitar, vocal; Lofgren – piano, vocal; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums
6. "Tonight's the Night—Part II" – 4:52
   • Young – vocal, piano; Keith – slide guitar, vocal; Lofgren – guitar; Talbot – bass; Molina – drums, vocal

Personnel

• Neil Young – vocal, piano, guitar, harmonica, vibes
• Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar, vocal, slide guitar
• Nils Lofgren – guitar, piano, vocal
• Danny Whitten – guitar, vocal
• Jack Nitzsche – electric piano, piano
• Billy Talbot – bass
• Tim Drummond – bass
• Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
• Kenny Buttrey – drums
• George Whitsell – vocal

Band credits

• Tracks 1, 2, 3, and 6 on side one, and 1, 2, 5, and 6 on side two credited to Neil Young and The Santa Monica Flyers
• Track 5 on side one credited to Neil Young and Crazy Horse
• Track 4 on side two credited to Neil Young with The Stray Gators

Charts

Album

Billboard (North America)

External links

• Lyrics at HyperRust.org
• Liner Notes also at HyperRust.org