Three Albums from 1975

Fifty years ago this year, three albums came out that deserve more than silence from me. I didn't blog about them on their actual anniversary dates—not because I didn't listen to them, but because I wrote two books and am about to publish another. I listened to Tonight's the Night, Zuma, and Eagles' One of These Nights more than once in their turn. The tunes were churning over in my head for days and weeks after. So here they are, three rather incredible records from 1975 that shaped the sound of that year and, in different ways, shaped me.

The story of why Tonight's the Night finally came out in June 1975 starts with a listening party at Neil's ranch early that year. He'd finished Homegrown, a clean, mostly acoustic album about his breakup with Carrie Snodgress, and it was ready to go. He invited some friends over to hear it, and (supposedly) at the end of the night someone suggested they play the Tonight's the Night tapes that had been sitting in the vault since 1973. When it was over, the consensus was clear: Tonight's the Night was stronger. More than that, Neil admitted Homegrown "scared" him. It was too personal, too down. So he shelved it—for forty-five years, as it turned out—and told the label to release the album about Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry instead.

Homegrown dealt with a failed relationship, the kind of material singer-songwriters build entire careers on. Tonight's the Night was a drunken wake for two dead men, recorded in a rehearsal space with a ragged band called the Santa Monica Flyers. One felt too raw to share. The other felt like tribute. Apparently there's a difference between admitting romantic failure and mourning friends you couldn't save. I wrote about Tonight's the Night back in 2020, so I won't rehash the album track by track here, but the decision to finally release it in 1975 was an exorcism. He wasn't just putting out an old record—he was purging the Ditch Trilogy and clearing space for whatever came next.

I’ll just say this. You have to be in the right mood to listen to Tonight’s the Night. It is very sloppy at times, rough on the ear and highly cynical. It rocks with guitar and piano at times but mostly it rambles in a marvelous semi-ethereal tone.

What came next was Zuma, recorded that summer at a garage studio near the beach. If Tonight's the Night was tequila and smoke from two years ago, Zuma was salt air and a tentative recovery in the present. Neil had rebooted Crazy Horse by bringing in Frank "Poncho" Sampedro to replace Whitten, and Poncho brought something new: a rhythmic floor that let Neil spiral out without the whole thing collapsing. "Cortez the Killer" is obviously the pillar here, one of the cornerstone songs in Neil’s canon, where the guitar doesn't just play—it narrates. A studio mishap, they lost a verse, but Neil kept the take because the vibe was perfect. That's the kind of decision that makes Zuma work when it works.

"Drive Back" is awesome too, and it's one of the first times you really hear that squealing quality in Neil's playing of Old Black—that high, needling tone that would define so much of what came later. Listening this time around, "Pardon My Heart" struck me as a great tune, pulled from the Homegrown sessions to give Zuma some counterpoint. But "Danger Bird" and "Stupid Girl" haven't aged well for me. "Danger Bird" drags despite the classic Crazy Horse sound—it's literally two different songs spliced together and you can feel the seams. "Stupid Girl" has some of Neil's bitterest, most dated lyrics. "Barstool Blues" has always been overrated. It’s just okay.

"Lookin' for a Love" is a smooth country rocker that's easy on the ear. "Through My Sails," the CSNY leftover from the failed Human Highway sessions in late 1974, drifts harmoniously like a postcard from a friend, which makes it a fitting closer but also reveals how patchwork the album feels. Nevertheless, this is a great CSNY song everybody forgets because of where it sits.

That patchwork quality tells you everything about where Neil was in 1975. Homegrown got carved up and redistributed—songs went to various Neil albums over the next 15 years.

My relationship with these two great Neil Young albums is complicated by chronology. I was sixteen in 1975 when One of These Nights came out, and that's what I was hearing fresh. It would be another two or three years before I discovered the Neil stuff, and I hated Tonight's the Night when I first heard it around nineteen. The Eagles were, in every way, anti-Neil. They were polished where he was ragged, pristine where he was raw. But they were splendid at what they did, so why not?

I bought One of These Nights and listened to it 100 times at least on my bedroom stereo. It launched me into the Eagles for the first time. I knew their hits from the radio—that's all we had in 1975, 8-tracks were the automobile alternative—but owning the album was different. This was what I did with as much money as I could scrape together: buy records. I'd play them over and over in my bedroom, an adrenaline rush every time. One of These Nights isn't something I need to hear repeatedly anymore, but at sixteen it was everything for awhile.

Listening to new music for the first time, you are either drawn toward certain songs, or not. But, you don’t know the hits yet if it just came out, all you know is what you like to hear. That made "Lyin' Eyes" and "The Hollywood Waltz" equally important to me then because they were both just songs that mattered. The radio didn't play "Hollywood Waltz," but that didn’t stop me from loving the song. I'd sang it to myself as I drove around in my first car, a 1965 Ford Falcon. Listening to it now, I can so clearly remember details of who I was before I became me.

"One of These Nights," the title track, was very easy to get into in high school. It was totally danceable and had a tinged-disco beat that let the band crossover into that world with this song. Awesome harmonies throughout backing up another solid Don Henley lead. The first of the three massive hits off this album.  "Too Many Hands" was a strong track that could have been a fourth hit. I still like it today. "The Hollywood Waltz" is classic old Eagles style.  This was a transitional album, the band was becoming more rock and less country.

"Journey of the Sorcerer" is the strangest Eagles song ever—most would call it filler and it most definitely is, but it is also Bernie Leadon pushing an experimental, banjo-infused instrumental even as the band was clearly moving away from that sort of thing. It was his last stand before Joe Walsh electrified everything. The song's string section gives it cinematic flair and it has inspired visual artists through the years.  It was used by various visual artists as soundtrack material for years.  I think it's excellent, one of a kind.

"Lyin' Eyes" had those inescapable five-part harmonies led by Glenn Frey singing a cliche story very well. Unabashed country rock at its finest here, definitely the last old Eagles style mega hit. The third mega hit, "Take It to the Limit," is where I fell in love for the first time, slow dancing to Randy Meisner's vocals. I used to sing it to myself all the time. I loved Meisner's vocal skills. In 1975 all the girls giggly screamed. "Visions" is weak lyrically but has nice guitar work. It features guitarist Don Felder singing lead with Henley, Leadon, and Frey—a four-lead vocal moment that qualifies Felder as the fifth Eagle to sing lead on the album. Otherwise, blah. "After the Thrill Is Gone" is overrated country blues but it’s pleasant to hear. "I Wish You Peace" doesn’t even make it to elevator music status. Leadon's vocals are nice. Don Henley later called it "smeary cocktail music," and he wasn't wrong. It's the tombstone of Leadon's relationship with the band. Already gone, indeed. 

That five-vocalist distinction is unique in classic rock history. I'll make the bold claim: it never happened in rock before or since. Maybe in pop or something else, but not in the classic rock canon. All five band members sang lead on various songs. The only rock album where that is the case. And three of its songs are standard sounds of the 1970’s. Those two facts make this album a pretty damn big deal.

So here's to these three albums from 1975, better late than never. Neil Young gave us the end of the Ditch and the beginning of whatever Zuma was trying to be. Eagles performances always give us polish and harmonies and, for a sixteen-year-old kid driving a Falcon, an early soundtrack to becoming or just being a horny teenager. Fifty years on, the sound still vibrates. I remember who I was then. In that car with my newfound freedom. I was young and naive, full of beginner's mind.