Ditch Trilogy

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The Ditch Trilogy refers to a trio of rock music albums by Neil Young made in the wake of his chart-topping best-seller, Harvest. The moniker derives from a quote by Young, printed in the self-penned track-by-track liner notes to his career summary compilation Decade of 1977. In the text about the only #1 single of his life, "Heart of Gold," Young states: "This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."

After his success with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Harvest, Young took an abrupt non-commercial turn with the soundtrack and film Journey Through the Past. His next three albums cemented this move, negating the possibility of Young becoming an early 1970s country-rock or soft-rock sales superstar, akin to The Eagles or Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, the latter two of whom ironically sang back-up on Harvest. Much of this work is characterized by loose, almost "sloppy" playing. Young encouraged this type of performance as an alternative to the highly polished soft-rock popular at the time. Lyrical themes from this time include the hollowness of show business and commercial success ("LA" from "Time Fades Away"), the toll exacted by hard drug use, specifically the heroin-related deaths of former Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry (the title track of "Tonight's the Night"), and other, less specific but still downbeat subject matter.

The three albums of the Ditch Trilogy (also known as the "Doom Trilogy", or the "Depression Trilogy") are:

• Time Fades Away, Reprise 1973
• On the Beach, Reprise 1974
• Tonight's the Night, Reprise 1975

Young would return to commercial clover with the CSNY reunion tour in 1974, by which time all of the material for the above albums had been recorded. He followed up "Tonight's the Night" with "Zuma," a loose but more upbeat record in the vein of "Everybody Knows this is Nowhere." "Sleeps with Angels," an album Young recorded with Crazy Horse following Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994, is seen by some critics as thematically linked to the ditch trilogy.