Watch Neil Young’s Unreleased Performance of ‘Thrasher’

When he turned 50 in 1995, he told Mojo magazine’s Nick Kent, “ ‘Thrasher’ was pretty much me writing about my experiences with Crosby, Stills & Nash in the mid-’70s.” The lyrics about blades and crystals harming the band’s heavenly heights may refer to drug problems, particularly Crosby’s with cocaine:

There’s an ancient river bending​
Through the timeless gorge of changes​
Where sleeplessness awaits​
I searched out my companions​
Who were lost in crystal canyons​
When the aimless blade of science​
Slashed the pearly gates

Crosby, who died at 81 in 2023, eventually overcame his addiction. He admitted, “Man, I did everything wrong,” and apologized to Young for some of the things he said. In 2018, Crosby said he’d gladly play with Young again, but didn’t expect to. “He doesn’t need us,” he told critic Dave DiMartino. “Why would he bother? He’s playing as good as I’ve ever seen him play, ever.”

Young told Kent his song didn’t mean that he thought Crosby, Stills and Nash were dead — each and all succeeded without him — it was the burden of being in the band that he needed to shed. “At that point, I felt like it was kind of dead weight for me. Not for them. For me. I could go somewhere and they couldn’t go there. I wasn’t going to pull them along; they were doing fine without me. It might have come off a little more harsh than I meant it, but once I write I can’t say, ‘Oh, I’m going to hurt someone’s feelings.’ Poetically and on feeling it made good sense to me and it came right out.”

The “Neil Young Archives Vol. III” box set.

Courtesy Warner Records

The limited deluxe edition of Neil Young Archives Vol. III (1976–1987), available at neilyoungarchives.com for $449.98 starting Sept. 6, holds 17 CDs and five Blu-rays, plus a 160-page book and a poster. (That’s $2.15 per tune or movie; there’s also a 17-disc CD box set of only the music for $240.) It spans 11 studio albums, including country/folk Comes a Time, grunge prototype Rust Never Sleeps, rockabilly detour Everybody’s Rockin’ and Kraftwerk-influenced electronic Trans.