Then Neil took some of the Homegrown / Hitchhiker / Chrome Dreams tracks and cobbled together American Stars and Bars. The back of which contained notes as too how old each track was by the time it finally got released on this album. But it did include Like A Hurricane so people were happy and willing to overlook it.

In a rare move of trying to please his audience, Neil finally released an acoustic-based follow-up to his best-selling Harvest with Comes A Time. And it worked. Neil was able to finally sell some records and court some critical goodwill at the same time. Only the very astute noticed that Neil’s folksy album contained more than a tinge of Nashville country to it.

For his next trick, Neil recorded a live album. Sort of. See, Neil wanted the live, electric feel of his concerts for the songs he had written for his next record – so he did play and record them live, but then erased the audience noise to result in a not-quite-live/not-quite-studio album Rust Never Sleeps, which did score him some a hit with My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) as well as containing new versions of some Homegrown / Hitchhiker / Chrome Dreams tracks. There was another, more concert-like live album, Live Rust, from this tour as well as a self-directed concert film also title Rust Never Sleeps that for some reason feature Jawas from Star Wars.

The Homegrown / Hitchhiker / Chrome Dreams tracks continued to dominate Neil’s career as side one of his next record, Hawks & Doves is culled from that material, while side two is all-new stuff recorded in 1980 with an even more country-ish bent. His next record, Re-Ac-Tor sounds like an attempt to go almost New Wave in the style of the Talking Heads. This was not a good fit for Crazy Horse, who even further hampered by the early morning hours of recording that were mandated by the special school that was teaching Neil’s son Ben, who had cerebral palsy. While neither of these new genre attempts was in the forefront, clearly Neil was chafing at the expectations of what a Neil Young record should sound like.

This strange experimentation and flirtation began to annoy Neil’s record company, they were more than happy to see him leave the label for David Geffen’s new record company. A record company that had promised Neil complete artistic freedom. A promise that they were soon going to regret.