Neil Young To Release Bootleg Series For 1970 Carnegie Hall Performance

The First of His “Official Bootleg” Series

Neil Young is prepping the first release of his “Official Bootleg” series. He picked his solo acoustic concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall on December 4, 1970. He played a pair of shows at the venue and he even flew in his parents Scott Young and Rassy Young to watch them. It was three months after he dropped his third album “After the Gold Rush”.

He wrote on the Neil Young Archives website, “Listening to existing bootlegs, it seems that all the bootleggers got the second Carnegie Hall show. There was one at 8:00 pm and one at midnight [about 27 hours later]. No one got that first one — the first time I walked onstage at Carnegie Hall, blowing my own 25-year-old mind.”

He added, “This one — Carnegie Hall, December 4th, 1970, is very special to me. Change happens fast. As I have gone through these early bootlegs, Carnegie Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion [2/1/70], Royce Hall [1/30/71] and others, they show a change, something you can hear — an evolution. My first time playing harmonica — Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, is heard as well as what the harmonica replaced — heard on earlier shows. That was interesting to me because I don’t remember exactly when I started playing harp until I heard that. At Carnegie Hall, I hear myself doing a new song, one about my ranch I had just moved to — ‘Old Man.’ Time flies.”

He has yet to announce its release date and he’s also set to release other archival projects which will likely come out before this year ends.