Rare Footage Of Neil Young Recording ‘Alabama’ Surfaces, And It’s Everything We’ve Ever Wanted

Rare Footage Of Neil Young Recording ‘Alabama’ Surfaces, And It’s Everything We’ve Ever Wanted | Society Of Rock Videos

photo credit: YouTube via junkman

The Harvest Sessions, 1971

There’s nothing we love more than seeing how some of our favorite albums were created. Whether it’s stumbling across lyric sheets, vocal tracks or studio outtakes, there’s magic to be found in seeing how some of rock’s best and brightest crafted together the songs that would eventually become their legacy – so naturally, when we came across this footage of a 26 year old Neil Young recording his iconic and incendiary “Alabama,” we knew we’d struck some serious gold!

Seen here in the fall of 1971 with his band The Stray Gators, Neil is in the middle of recording “Alabama” from the comfort of his California ranch, opting for his home studio fashioned from an old barn instead of a traditional recording studio and exchanging headphone monitors for a remote recording system and PA speakers –  which explains why Harvest is so sonically gorgeous.


photo credit: npr.org
photo credit: npr.org

From start to finish, Neil’s recording session is a homerun and takes us back to the days when artists relied only on their own talents and that of the musicians whose help they enlisted to make their vision a reality, and we’d be lying if we said it wasn’t a surreal moment to watch a legend of Neil’s caliber carve such a monumental part of his legacy out of stone. Check it out in the video below – it’ll give you a brand new appreciation for Neil’s art!

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