Neil Young: What Did You Do To My Life? (Reprise, 1969)I used to manage a record shop for Beggars Banquet. That's probably one of the reasons I'm sat here writing this now rather than doing something more sensible like binge drinking or bear baiting. Anyway, some parts of working in a record shop are great and some are bloody awful. One of the best bits was when someone brought their old record collection in to sell. And when that person was Ivo Watts Russell of the Beggars affiliated 4AD label wanting to clear the decks before he moved to LA, then it was happy flaming days indeed.
So, one day me, Justin and Billy were sat there pissing around when Ivo walks in. He has a load of boxes of records in his car. Do we want them. Do we want them? Um, yes. We do. Like we want air and food and lager and girls and cigarettes and all that stuff.
So he brings them in. Loads of original, mint condition English folk, Harvest prog, Eno, Big Star on Ardent (Justin nicked that and nearly ran down the street with it), shit loads of great, great records. And this. Which I just loved immediately, despite reading (some years later) that Neil Young dislikes it. Well, tough shit cowboy.
And what a package. Thick cardboard sleeve. Gatefold. The lyrics printed in indecipherable script. No date, no barcode, no warnings, barely a legible copyright notice.
Which makes me feel a bit better.
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