Reprise Records must’ve been a little worried when the first album Neil recorded for them after the whole Geffen debacle was the horn-laden R&B/Soul album This Note’s For You. While the album was about as authentic as The Blues Brothers, it actually had a bit of a hit with the title track. That may be down entirely to MTV’s peevish decision not to play the video for the song which made fun of corporate rock’n’roll in general and Michael Jackson’s hair catching fire during a Pepsi commercial shoot in particular.

However at this point Neil stopped making “uncharacteristic” music. His first moment on the apology tour was another album with CSN&Y that Neil promised he would help out with if Crosby finally got clean. We all know how well that worked out.

Next up, Neil released his most characteristic album in decades with Freedom. It included both the heavy electric Crazy Horse side of Neil and the laidback stripped down acoustic Stray Gators side. Much like My My Hey Hey and Hey Hey My My on Rust Never Sleeps, Neil even created a hit song with versions in both styles in Rockin’ In The Free World. Although keeping with Neil’s more self-sabotaging side, Freedom came from the foundation of an EP called Eldorado that was only released on Japan or something, but is purportedly much better than the official album – and completely unavailable anywhere (legally).

Rather than attempting to replicate the “all Neils for all people” strategy that work on the last album, Neil cranked up the amps for the follow-up, Ragged Glory, featuring Crazy Horse and their most simple, basic, and loud. It wasn’t a widely regarded as Freedom, but it at least felt like something that was in Neil’s wheelhouse for a change.

This might seem like a startling conventional move for someone who was so deliberately anti-commercial in the previous decade, but his next record was even more pandering. While Comes A Time might have seemed like a belated and half-hearted sequel to the best-seller, Harvest, 1992’s Harvest Moon was rather blatant in its attempt to sell-out – starting with the title. People were happy to have it. Critics were relieved that they could start saying nice things about Neil Young again.

One other thing helping Neil out here was that as the 80s had turned into the 90s, Neil was experiencing a bit of a renaissance as the “Godfather of Grunge”. Apparently simply wearing flannel and playing a distorted guitar is all it took, but question was how would the prickly Neil react or capitalize on this new phase.