Neil Young – American Stars ‘n Bars

American Stars ‘n Bars is the eighth studio album by Canadian folk-rock musician Neil Young, released by Reprise Records on May 27, 1977. The selection of tracks was made from recordings made over a period of 29 months and includes “Like A Hurricane”, one of Young’s best-known and most popular songs. It peaked at number 21 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold in the United States.

In the summer of 1976, Young revived his collaboration with Stephen Stills, resulting in a tour that ended abruptly and the album Long May You Run. He then embarked on a second tour with Crazy Horse, although he was out of action for the first half of 1977. His previous album, Zuma, had been released in November 1975. After recording several country rock compositions in April 1977, he assembled additional tracks from a variety of previous recordings to cover the rest of the new album.

The April 1977 recordings featured Crazy Horse, further augmented by a short-lived band called “The Bullets”, featuring pedal steel guitarist and longtime Young collaborator Ben Keith, violinist Carole Mayedo, and backing vocals by Linda Ronstadt and Nicolette Larson.

“Homegrown” and “Star Of Bethlehem” were originally planned for the unreleased LP Homegrown. Both songs, along with “Like A Hurricane”, “Hold Back The Tears” and “Will To Love”, were also planned for another unreleased Young album, Chrome Dreams. Seven of the album’s nine tracks feature Crazy Horse, and “Star Of Bethlehem” features the voice of fellow country star Emmylou Harris. All of the songs from the April 1977 recordings are country-style.

The album’s cover art was designed by actor and close friend of Young’s, Dean Stockwell, who also wrote the screenplay that inspired After The Gold Rush. It shows Connie Moskos, then the girlfriend of producer David Briggs, leaning forward with a bottle of Canadian whiskey in her hand and a drunken Young with his face pressed against the glass floor.

The album can almost be seen as a sample, but not the sum, of Young’s diverse styles from After The Gold Rush and Harvest to On The Beach and Zuma.

According to William Ruhlmann, in a review for Allmusic, Neil Young had noted the recording dates of the songs on American Stars ‘n Bars, dates that even appeared on the LP’s labels. These dates revealed that the songs had been recorded at four different sessions of the group dating back to 1974. But even without this fact, it would be easy to say that the album was a stylistic hodgepodge, with its first side having a country feel with steel guitar, fiddle, and backing vocals from Linda Ronstadt and a then-unknown Nicolette Larson, while the four songs on the second side ranged from acoustic solos like “Will To Love” to angry rock sounds like “Like A Hurricane”. “Will To Love” is a particularly terrifying yet ambitious track, romantically describing the movement of a salmon swimming upstream for seven minutes.

The centerpiece of the album, however, which I select, is “Like A Hurricane”, one of Young’s classic hard rock songs and a concert favorite.

Tracklist

The Old Country Waltz 2:58
Saddle Up The Palomino 3:00
Hey Babe 3:35
Hold Back The Tears 4:18
Bite The Bullet 3:30
Star Of Bethlehem 2:42
Will To Love 7:11
Like A Hurricane 8:20
Homegrown 2:20