American Stars 'N Bars in Bloomington, MN

Neil Young
made a point of listing the recording dates of the songs on
American Stars 'n Bars
; the dates even appeared on the LP labels. They revealed that the songs had been cut at four different sessions dating back to 1974. But even without such documentation, it would have been easy to tell that the album was a stylistic hodgepodge, its first side consisting of
country
-tinged material featuring steel guitar and fiddle, plus backup vocals from
Linda Ronstadt
and the then-unknown
Nicolette Larson
, while the four songs on the second side varied from acoustic solo numbers like
"Will to Love"
to raging rockers such as
"Like a Hurricane."
Side one consisted of more lightweight compositions, while side two had more ambitious ones, with
"Will to Love,"
for example, extending the romantic metaphor of a salmon swimming upstream across seven minutes. The album's saving grace was
"Like a Hurricane,"
one of
Young
's classic
hard rock
songs and guitar workouts, and a perennial concert favorite. ~ William Ruhlmann