Critic's Review
William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Reportedly in record stores within weeks after the concert it documented, Live on Sugar Mountain was drawn from a lo-fi audience tape made at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles on the last night of Neil Young's early-1971 solo tour. Young was at a pivotal point in his career, having released his commercial breakthrough album After the Gold Rush five months earlier, following his departure from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Typically, he was already looking forward, having written a clutch of introspective confessional songs, most of which would appear on his next album, Harvest. Young disparaged bootleg albums, calling the CSNY boot Wooden Nickel a "corporate rip-off," but he provided the rationale for bootlegging at this show, since bootleg buyers got a listen to such songs as "Heart of Gold," "A Man Needs a Maid" (with the crucial discarded line "A man feels afraid"), "Old Man," and "The Needle and the Damage Done" a year early. "Journey Through the Past" and "Love in Mind" wouldn't turn up on record until the release of Time Fades Away more than two and a half years later, and "See the Sky About to Rain" wouldn't be released until On the Beach in July 1974. "Sugar Mountain" had only appeared as a single B-side, "Ohio" only as a CSNY single A-side, and "Dance, Dance, Dance" has never been released, though Young reworked it into "Love Is a Rose," which appeared on Decade in November 1977. Beyond the remarkable set list, Young, performing alone, has a warm interaction with the highly appreciative audience, explaining the selections in an intimate, funny manner. No wonder Live on Sugar Mountain became one of his most highly prized bootlegs. [A double-disc version of this show is available on the bootleg Young Man's Fancy.]
