NEIL YOUNG Tonight's The Night 1975 UK REPRISE 1st PRESS w/INNER & INSERT

NEIL YOUNG
Tonight's The Night

UK REPRISE (K 54040) FIRST PRESSING (June 1975)
COMPLETE WITH THE ORIGINAL PRINTED INNER SLEEVE & FOUR PANEL "WATERFACE" INSERT
LOVELY COPY - SEEN LITTLE, IF ANY PLAY

RECORDED IN 1973 BUT DISLIKED SO MUCH BY REPRISE THAT IT'S RELEASE WAS DELAYED FOR OVER TWO YEARS
IT’S SUBSEQUENTLY BECOME ONE OF NEIL YOUNG'S MOST CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED WORKS

Written and recorded in 1973 shortly after the death of roadie Bruce Berry, Neil Young's second close associate to die of a heroin overdose in six months (the first was Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten), Tonight's the Night was Young's musical expression of grief, combined with his rejection of the stardom he had achieved in the late '60s and early '70s.
The title track, performed twice, was a direct narrative about Berry: "Bruce Berry was a working man/He used to load that Econoline van." Whitten was heard singing "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown," a live track recorded years earlier. Elsewhere, Young frequently referred to drug use and used phrases that might have described his friends, such as the chorus of "Tired Eyes," "He tried to do his best, but he could not."
Performing with the remains of Crazy Horse, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina, along with Nils Lofgren (guitar and piano) and Ben Keith (steel guitar), Young performed in the ragged manner familiar from Time Fades Away -- his voice was often hoarse and he strained to reach high notes, while the playing was loose, with mistakes and shifting tempos. But the style worked perfectly for the material, emphasising the emotional tone of Young's mourning and contrasting with the polished sound of CSNY and Harvest that Young also disparaged.
He remained unimpressed with his commercial success, noting in "World on a String," "The world on a string/Doesn't mean anything." In "Roll Another Number," he said he was "a million miles away/From that helicopter day" when he and CSN had played Woodstock. And in "Albuquerque," he said he had been "starvin' to be alone/Independent from the scene that I've known" and spoke of his desire to "find somewhere where they don't care who I am."
Songs like "Speakin' Out" and "New Mama" seemed to find some hope in family life, but Tonight's the Night did not offer solutions to the personal and professional problems it posed. It was the work of a man trying to turn his torment into art and doing so unflinchingly.
Depending on which story you believe, Reprise Records rejected it or Young withdrew it from its scheduled release at the start of 1974 after touring with the material in the U.S. and Europe.
In 1975, after a massive CSNY tour, Young at the last minute dumped a newly recorded album and finally put Tonight's the Night out instead.
Though it did not become one of his bigger commercial successes, the album immediately was recognised as a unique masterpiece by critics, and it has continued to be ranked as one of the greatest rock & roll albums ever made.

PRESSED WITH THE FIRST ISSUE REPRISE LABELS (no WB logo which was introduced just a couple of months after this June 1975 release)
MATRIX & ETCHINGS: K 54040 A2 "HELLO WATERFACE" / K 54040 B2 “GOODBYE WATERFACE"
THE ALBUM IS HOUSED IN THE ORIGINAL TEXTURED MATT GATEFOLD SLEEVE PRINTED BY "Shorewood Packaging Co. Ltd., England"
COMPLETE WITH THE PRINTED INNER SLEEVE
AND FOLD-OUT INSERT "K54040 P 1975 WARNER BROS. RECORDS, PRINTED IN UK"

Included with the vinyl release of Tonight's the Night was a seemingly strange insert that added to Neil Young's claim that Tonight's the Night was the closest he ever came to art. Emphasising the personal nature of the album, the self-penned liner notes contained an apology: "I'm sorry. You don't know these people. This means nothing to you."
The insert has a printed letter to the mysterious "Waterface" character, no explanation is given to their identity, although in Shakey: Neil Young's Biography by Jimmy McDonough, Young says that "Waterface is the person writing the letter. When I read the letter, I'm Waterface. It's just a stupid thing—a suicide note without the suicide."
Other text is equally puzzling, as it appeared in the insert superimposed over the credits to Young's On the Beach album, released a year prior. This passage is reportedly the lyrics to an unreleased song titled "Florida", referred to in Shakey as "A cockamamie spoken-word dream, set to the shrieking accompaniment of either Young or (Ben) Keith drawing a wet finger around the rim of a glass."
When unfolded, and comprising a whole side is a lengthy article printed entirely in Dutch and is in fact a review of a Tonight's the Night live show by Dutch journalist Constant Meijers for the Dutch rock-magazine "Muziekkrant Oor". In 1976 Young said he chose to print it "Because I didn't understand any of it myself, and when someone is so sickened and screwed up as I was then, everything's in Dutch anyway."

Side 1:
Tonight's The Night (4:39)
Speakin' Out (4:56)
World On A String (2:27)
Borrowed Tune (3:26)
Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown (3:35)
Mellow My Mind (3:07)
Side 2:
Roll Another Number (For The Road) (3:02)
Albuquerque (4:02)
New Mama (2:11)
Lookout Joe (3:57)
Tired Eyes (4:38)
Tonight's The Night - Part II (4:52)

LABELS: MINT
Clean, unmarked labels - no evident spindle traces
VINYL Visual: EXCELLENT+
Both surfaces retain their original sheen with nothing but wispy hairlines under bright light
VINYL Audio: EXCELLENT+/EXCELLENT
Even though this copy has seen little, if any play there is the occasional light tick (nothing continuous) and a touch of low-level surface on some of the track divisions - also a three revolution split second hiss after the music at the end of Side Two into the run-off - nothing major and nothing I found in the slightest intrusive - very nice copy
SLEEVE: NEAR MINT
As clean, crisp, sharp and fresh as the day it was made
INNER SLEEVE: EXCELLENT
Again, like new but with a small 4cm central bottom seam split where the sharp edge of the thin vinyl has cut through
INSERT: NEAR MINT
Untouched and probably never even opened before my photographs

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