Tonight's the Night (Neil Young album)

Content

Tonight's the Night is a 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 Berry by name, while Whitten's guitar and vocal work highlight "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown"; the latter was recorded live in 1970. The song would later appear, unedited, on a live album from the same concerts, Live at the Fillmore East, with Whitten credited as the sole author.

Fans have long speculated that an alternate version of Tonight's the Night exists. Neil Young's father, Scott Young, wrote of it in his memoir, Neil and Me:

Ten years after the original recording, David Briggs and I talked about Tonight's the Night, on which he had shared the producer credit with Neil. At home a couple of weeks earlier he had come across the original tape, the one that wasn't put out. "I want to tell you, it is a handful. It is unrelenting. There is no relief in it at all. It does not release you for one second. It's like some guy having you by the throat from the first note, and all the way to the end." After all the real smooth stuff Neil had been doing, David felt most critics and others simply failed to read what they should have into Tonight's the Night -- that it was an artist making a giant growth step. Neil came in during this conversation, which was in his living room. When David stopped Neil said, "You've got that original? I thought it was lost. I've never been able to find it. We'll bring it out someday, that original."

The band assembled for the album was known as the Santa Monica Flyers consisting of Young, Ben Keith, Nils Lofgren, and the Crazy Horse rhythm section of Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina. One track as stated above was taken from recordings of an earlier tour with Crazy Horse, and another from an earlier session with his band for Harvest, The Stray Gators.

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 follow-up review published in the 1983 edition of The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, 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 conceptually cohesive record, and it's a great one."

And as the reviewer notes in PopMatters: "Tonight’s the Night is that one rare record I will never tire of."

Track listing

All songs written by Neil Young, except where noted.

Personnel

Neil Young – vocals; guitar on "World on a String," "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown," "Mellow My Mind," "Roll Another Number," "Albuquerque," "New Mama," "Lookout Joe," and "Tired Eyes"; piano on "Tonight's the Night," "Speakin' Out," and "Borrowed Tune"; harmonica on "World on a String," "Borrowed Tune," and "Mellow My Mind"; vibes on "New Mama"

Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar, vocal on "Tonight's the Night," "Speakin' Out," "Roll Another Number," "Albuquerque," and "Tired Eyes"; pedal steel guitar on "World on a String" and "Mellow My Mind"; vocal on "New Mama"; slide guitar, vocal on "Lookout Joe"

Nils Lofgren – piano on "World on a String," "Mellow My Mind," "Roll Another Number," "Albuquerque," "New Mama," and "Tired Eyes"; vocal on "Roll Another Number," "Albuquerque," and "Tired Eyes"; guitar on "Tonight's the Night," "Speakin' Out"

Danny Whitten – vocal, electric guitar on "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown"

Jack Nitzsche – electric piano on "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown"; piano on "Lookout Joe"

Billy Talbot – bass all tracks except "Borrowed Tune," "New Mama," and "Lookout Joe"

Tim Drummond – bass on "Lookout Joe"

Ralph Molina – drums, vocal all tracks except "Borrowed Tune," "New Mama," and "Lookout Joe"; vocal on "New Mama"

Kenny Buttrey – drums on "Lookout Joe"

George Whitsell – vocal on "New Mama"

Album

Billboard (North America)