ROXY : TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT LIVE - Neil Young with The Santa Monica Flyers

released 4-24-2018

In 1973, I drove my 1947 Buick Roadmaster, ‘Black Queen’ to LA from the North, accompanied by Ben Keith. Once in LA, Hollywood to be exact, we met up with Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina. Nils Lofgren joined us and we drove to SIR (studio Instrument Rentals on Santa Monica Boulevard). David Briggs, producer, and Johnny Talbot, (billy’s brother) equipment manager, met us there. They had blasted a hole in the wall and set up the Green Board (an old tube board I had purchased that had been used recording many historic sessions from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds to Monterey Pop Festival, among many others) next to the Rehearsal Hall. Our 16-track analog tape machine was set up next to the board.

Tonight’s the Night was sort of a wake. We had very recently lost Danny Whitten and our roadie Bruce Berry to heroin overdoses so we were missing them and feeling them in the music every night as we played. There was no overdubbing on those nine original songs. They were recorded live, with no clean up. (That’s they way TTN will be presented in Archives Volume 2.)

Mr. Briggs, our producer, was always at the green board as we played, unless he came into the room to tell us something. For almost a month we recorded like that, starting around 11PM and playing into the early morning hours. Sometimes we had a small audience. Once Mel Brooks and a few friends came by. We drank a lot of Tequila and I wrote Tonight’s the night’s songs somewhere around the beginning. We had nine songs and played them twice every night for a long time until we thought we had them. After the session, every morning we jumped into the Black Queen and headed back to The Sunset Marquis to sleep, rolling down Santa Monica Boulevard, while coming down from the night’s recording. That’s how we got the name ‘Santa Monica Flyers’.

A year and a half or so later, after we had recorded ‘Homegrown’, (released 2020) Rick Danko of the Band visited Ben Keith and I with a few friends at the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset in Hollywood, where we were staying in a bungalow . . . . . the same one where John Belushi died soon after. We played ‘Homegrown’ to Rick. He said he liked the record and we were all feeling fine. It was a good night. We smoked and drank and hung out, enjoying ourselves.

I said “Hey Rick, want to hear another album?” It was something we all liked to do back then, sit around together listening to music. “Yes I do,” he answered, and I put on Tonight’s the Night, the original 9 songs from SIR. Rick was knocked out and so were we! It blew my mind how real that record was. Ben and I both loved it.

We had not listened to it since I played it for my friends at Warner Bros a year earlier. They were concerned that it was so loose and we had just come off of a bomb (compared to Harvest) with Time Fades Away, so we shelved Tonight’s the Night at that time.

Now, after that Chateau Marmont playback, that album was back on the front burner for me. At my ranch studio in the North I added Borrowed Tune (a song I had written at the beginning of the Time fades Away tour reflecting on whether a big stadium tour was right for me), Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown (a Danny Whitten song about heroin and the life of an addict) and Lookout Joe, a song written about a GI returning to the states from the Vietnam war. The addition of these three songs made it more like a complete album and I released it like that.

Now that the stage is set with these memories. . . .. .. . . . Let’s return to SIR…… to the original Tonight’s the Night sessions.

We had just finished recording and decided to celebrate with a gig at a new club opening on the sunset strip, ROXY. We went there, played the opening gig and recorded for a few nights- opening the ROXY. We really knew the Tonight’s the Night songs well after playing them for a month, so we just played them again, the whole original album order top to bottom, two sets a night for a few days. We had a great time. “Everything is cheaper than it looks”.

‘ROXY - tonight’s the night live’ is the live recording we made.

on our way to the Roxy. . . . .

I hope you enjoy ‘ROXY - Tonight’s the night live’ as much as we did!!!

NY