The first thing Neil Young heard from Comes a Time was wrong. The Canadian-American singer-songwriter had shipped his new master tape to a mixing facility, and somewhere in transit the high frequencies vanished. He bought back the first two hundred thousand copies of the record, pulled them from stores, and remixed the whole thing himself from a safety copy he had kept at home. Neil Young released Comes a Time on October 21, 1978.
Six years running from folk
It was a strange turn for an artist who had spent six years running from exactly this kind of record. After the huge success of Harvest in 1972, Young had steered away from the image of the sentimental folk troubadour. He made darker, rougher albums, played loud with Crazy Horse, and avoided the gentle acoustic style that had made him a household name.
Comes a Time, released in 1978 on Reprise Records, was a deliberate return to that romantic folk and country sound. Most of the album stays quiet, built around acoustic guitars and soft harmonies. The singer Nicolette Larson, who had already worked with Young on American Stars 'n Bars, sings harmony on most tracks and shares lead vocal on Motorcycle Mama. Her voice gives the record an easy, glowing warmth.
From solo tapes to Nashville
The album began almost by accident. In September 1977, Young went into Triiad Studios in Fort Lauderdale and recorded solo acoustic versions of his songs, adding his own overdubs. He assembled those tapes into a finished solo album called Oceanside/Countryside. Then Mo Ostin, the head of Reprise, suggested adding rhythm tracks.
So Young took the songs to Nashville, where he brought in a full band including Ben Keith, Tim Drummond and Karl T. Himmel. They added bass, drums, steel guitar and strings. Five of the songs ended up with more than thirty musicians on them, a wall of sound far from Young's usual preference for recording everything live in the studio with no overdubs.
Intimate songs, blooming arrangements
That contrast defines Comes a Time. The songs feel intimate, almost whispered, but the arrangements bloom around them. Young later said the title track was nearly a perfect recording. The album is the sound of a man who had spent years dodging his own gentle side, finally letting it back in the door.
The album is the sound of a man who had spent years dodging his own gentle side, finally letting it back in the door.
The mastering disaster nearly killed the record before it reached listeners. Young said the damaged tape had lost all its high end, leaving the music dull and muffled. He bought back the first two hundred thousand copies and personally remixed the widely available version from his preserved copy. It was an expensive, obsessive act of protection for an album he clearly loved.
Forty-eight years after its release, Comes a Time still stands as one of Young's warmest records. He called it one of his best albums in his memoir Waging Heavy Peace. The album went on to place eighth in the Pazz & Jop critics' poll at the end of 1978. The quiet, smiling record had survived its own near-destruction.
The defective copies did not go to waste. Young's father Scott later saw boxes of the pulled records on the ranch, shot through with rifle holes. In 2014, Young said he had used the ruined vinyl as shingles for a barn roof.