Neil Young Announces "Official Bootleg" Release of First-Ever Carnegie Hall Performance in 1970

BY Josiah HughesPublished Sep 8, 2020

The ever-dependable Neil Young continues to cram his archives full of new releases, and up next he's treating a highly sought-after bootleg to an official release.

Specifically, he's going to officially issue his first appearance at Carnegie Hall — an acoustic performance from December 4, 1970 — as an official bootleg.

There were two sets that night, although bootleggers had previously only had their hands on the second. That means until Young lets it loose, no one has heard the first time Neil performed at Carnegie Hall.

"No one got that first one — the first time I walked onstage at Carnegie Hall, blowing my own 25-year-old mind!" he writes on his Archives site.

"We have both show masters. That earliest show, the one no one made a bootleg of (that we can find), is the best one by a lot. Listening to it now, I hear things in my voice I've never heard before, singing these songs before they were recorded. After they are recorded, I seem to follow the recorded arrangement, but these takes are before those recordings."

The official bootleg of Carnegie Hall does not have a release date just yet, but Young is also prepping to release a new EP called The Times on September 18.

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