Greendale (album)



Greendale is the twenty-sixth studio album by Neil Young. Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town. Based on the saga of the Green family, the "audio novel" has been compared to the literary classics of Thornton Wilder's Our Town and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio for its complexity and emotional depth in exploring a small town in America.

Greendale combines numerous themes on corruption, environmentalism and mass media consolidation. The album, concert, film and DVDs have produced a vast divergence of critical opinion ranging from being called "amateur" to being voted as one of the best albums of 2003 by Rolling Stone magazine music critics.

The CD was originally released with a DVD of live "Neil-only" acoustic performance of the Greendale material from Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland. The performance has since been made available as a stand-alone live album on digital download and streaming services such as iTunes and Amazon.

In 2004, the CD was released with a new DVD containing "Inside Greendale," a documentary featuring in-studio performances of the album being recorded. A DVD-Audio version and box set vinyl LP version were also released, with both Advanced Resolution Stereo and 5.1 Surround sound mixes, and a video of "Devil's Sidewalk" from the film. In late 2004, the feature length DVD with actors lip-synching the material was released.

Greendale was the last Neil Young album to feature Crazy Horse until 2012's Americana, and his ninth with that band.

Track listing
All songs written by Neil Young.

Personnel
with:
 * Neil Young - guitar, organ, harmonica, vocal
 * Crazy Horse
 * Ralph Molina - drums, vocal
 * Billy Talbot - bass, vocal
 * The Mountainettes:
 * Pegi Young - vocal
 * Nancy Hall - vocal
 * Twink Brewer - vocal
 * Sue Hall - vocal

Comics adaptation
In 2007, Vertigo Comics announced the production of the comic book adaptation of the album with the same title. According to writer Joshua Dysart, Neil Young is directly involved in the project. Greendale graphic novel (ISBN 1-4012-2698-1) was released in June 2010, with Cliff Chiang providing the art.