Guitarist Nils Lofgren is excited — a comprehensive, nine-CD career retrospective that surveys his 45 years of music-making just came out.
He is also relieved. Compiling music culled from long solo stretches couched between high-profile sideman roles was akin to a scavenger hunt.
He spent 18 months battling with long-gone record labels holding on tight to music long out of print, and figuring out who was in faded photographs found packed away in his homes in Scottsdale and Maryland.
“I found a lot of surprises especially looking for bonus tracks, basement tapes and reviewing my old demos,” the 63-year-old said of the San Francisco-based Fantasy Records collection released in early August.
Two of the CDs have a total of 40 unreleased bonus tracks, including basement recordings with Lofgren’s early 1970s band Grin. He recorded four critically acclaimed albums with the band before it broke up in 1974 and he went out solo. He joined Springsteen’s E Street Band in the early 1980s.
People are also reading…
Lofgren, who returns to Fox Tucson Theatre Saturday, said when he reviewed old Grin recordings, he was reminded just how pure the music was when he was young and the music industry was less susceptible to creative manipulation.
“There’s an honesty and integrity there and freshness that’s so great to hear after all these years,” he said. “It was a great journey on a lot of levels.”
One of the great surprises was finding the original master of his ode to Keith Richards, “Keith Don’t Go,” that he wrote in the early days when he was on the road with Neil Young. He released the song on his eponymous debut solo album in 1975, a year after he and Grin parted ways.
“We found a version from a couple years prior to the original release that nobody ever heard in a studio in Virginia with my band Grin. And Neil Young sat in on piano and vocals,” he recalled.
This is Lofgren’s fourth solo show since coming off a two-year road stretch with the E Street Band, and his first trip to Tucson since 2011.
“It’s kind of exciting to get back to your own show and sing your own songs for people who want to hear them. I’ve been immersed in music for a couple of years with the E Street Band, so I’m kind of bringing that sharpness to the shows,” he said.
