Cara Nickerson - Yesterday - CBC
Chad Silva, owner of Flashbacks Records on Concession Street in Hamilton, received a large donation of cassette tapes last year.
Silva, 24, said most record shop owners wouldn't have given the pile of homemade mixtapes and recordings a second glance.
"I went through everything because I'm thorough," he said. "Everything else was almost trash worthy."
That is, except for two unlabelled tapes containing notes in looping handwriting on the back of the set list for a lost 1973 McMaster University Neil Young show.
The Hamiltonian who recorded the cassette tapes wanted her husband to be able to listen to the concert, because he couldn't attend.© Cara Nickerson/CBC
"As a fan, I was like, 'Oh my God, Neil Young at McMaster University. I never even thought he would play there,'" Silva said.
The Sugar Mountain Neil Young fan website has curated a list of all the known shows by the Toronto-born artist and their recordings. Silva found the date of the McMaster show: Oct. 28, 1973.
"Beside that date, it said not recorded, presumed to be lost. And I was like, 'Well, I have it in my hands right here,'" Silva said.
A 'unique and unusual' concert
The tape Silva found was part of Young's Tonight's the Night tour.
Paul Panchezak, a McMaster student at the time and longtime volunteer at CFMU, McMaster's student radio station, said even though it was almost 50 years ago, he remembers it well.
"It was just before Halloween. It was raining and cold," he said.
"[Young] wore the white suit like the cover of Tonight's the Night and had a palm tree with a light bulb on top of it. And every once in a while, he flicked the light bulb on and said, 'Welcome to Miami Beach. Everything is cheaper than it looks.'"
After the concert, an article in McMaster's student paper, The Silhouette, that was written by Carol Ann Wilson brought up the stage dressing in a scathing review of the show.
"If an artificial palm tree and a light bulb 'sun' can convince you you're in Palm Beach, then you also probably feel that the long awaited Neil Young concert was worth the $5.00 ticket," the article says.
Panchezak said the crowd of students also didn't know how to take the concert.
"They didn't recognize any songs and, you know, it was interesting, but … it wasn't familiar."
To this day, Panchezak said, the 1973 concert is in the top three shows he's ever attended.
"I've been to a fair amount of concerts in my life but it's up there because it was so unique and unusual, and had so many unexpected twists and turns, and they played great."
'Neil's pretty consumed with his archives'
Silva said the woman who recorded and donated the bootleg copy of the concert never intended for it to be distributed.
"The story is her husband couldn't make the show, so she just brought her tape recorder for him to hear it later."
Silva said the woman who donated the tapes was worried Young would file a lawsuit against her, after reading that Eric Clapton allegedly sued a German widow who had put a bootleg CD of his on eBay in 2021. Clapton did not pursue the lawsuit.
"I don't think a lawsuit is even in the realm of possibilities," said Astrid Young, Neil Young's sister. "I think it's more of a matter of interest at this point, like a, 'Let's see what it sounds like' kind of thing."
In fact, in 2020, Young released six bootleg recordings of his concerts as vinyl records.
Astrid said that in recent years, Young has turned his focus to archiving his life's work, and he's currently working on his music from the 1990s and 2000s.
"Currently, Neil's pretty consumed with his archives," she said, adding her brother, who's 76, has recordings of most of his concerts from his long, prolific career.
"There is so much material, and they started working on this probably in the late '80s, sifting through shows, and a lot of it's on tape too," Astrid said.
Young performs at the 4th Annual Light Up The Blues at the Pantages Theatre on May 21, 2016 in Hollywood, Calif.© Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
"If you can imagine having to listen to 300 different versions of Down by the River, each one of them being 20 minutes long or something like that. It's definitely a full-time job for quite a few people..
"There's a lot of bootlegs floating around. Some of them are really good and some of them are really bad." Neil's interest comes down to how clean the audio is, she said.
CBC Hamilton listened to the tape at Flashbacks Record Store and found the audio was clear.
Silva said he has been in contact with Young's management and is donating the tape to the Young archives.
He said he's happy he ended up with the tape, so it doesn't go into the trash.
"I truly think in my heart of hearts, if any other store received this donation, it'd be in the landfill right now," Silva said.
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