Listening to existing bootlegs, It seems that all the bootleggers got the second Carnegie Hall show. There was one at 8:PM and one at Midnight the next day. No one got that first one - the first time I walked onstage at Carnegie Hall, blowing my own 25 year-old mind!
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 those songs before they were recorded. After they are recorded, I seem to follow the recorded arrangement, but these takes are before those recordings.
This was my first acoustic show at Carnegie Hall and it’s our NYA official Bootleg. The Archives has CELLAR DOOR, the live album from a gig in Washington at a club ‘The Cellar Door’ just a few days before Carnegie Hall - Nov 30, Dec 1 and Dec 2, 1970 where ‘Old Man,’ ‘See the Sky About to Rain’ and ‘Bad Fog of Loneliness’ were performed for the very first time. Carnegie Hall was a couple of days later -December 4th and midnight later the next night - December 5th into the morning of December 6th. Dec 5th Midnight is the bootleg that has been around for over 50 years, but that’s not this first performance.
This one - Carnegie Hall, December 4th 1970, is very special to me.
Change happens fast. As I have gone through these early bootlegs, Carnegie Hall , Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Royce Hall and others, they each show a change, something you can hear - an evolution. My second time playing harmonica—Royce Hall**—is heard as well as what the harmonica replaced - heard on the earlier shows. That was interesting to me because I didn’t remember exactly when I started playing harp until I heard that.***
At Carnegie Hall, I hear myself doing a new song, one about my new ranch I had just moved to - ‘Old Man,’ Broken Arrow Ranch. Time flies.
This article was corrected dec 30 2020 after some folks at NYA and www.sugarmtn.org pointed out a dating issue in the first version. thanks - ny
**This article was corrected aug 31 2022 after some folks pointed out Dorothy Chandler was not Neil’s first time playing the harmonica.
***Neil’s first live performance on the harmonica was in Boulder, Colorado.