Neil Young Archives

The Neil Young Archives is a series of archival releases by singer-songwriter Neil Young which feature previously released as well as unreleased studio and live recordings. The project has been long in the making – work began in the late 1980s. Throughout its development, Young himself has made several statements about the material included, release dates, and marketing that have proven false as the project is expanded upon to accommodate new releases or other relevant material. Young has said that there will be five volumes covering approximately 50 years.

The archives are divided into several series. The main part is a series of box sets covering separate periods of the artist's career. The Performance Series consists of individual releases of live material. Finally, there is the Special Edition series which will consist of previously unreleased albums. These different series also overlap; since, for example, two volumes of the Performance Series are included on the first Archives box set release, but are also sold separately.

The first volume, The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972, was released June 2, 2009, covering Young's early years with The Squires and Buffalo Springfield, as well as cuts, demos, outtakes and alternate mixes from his albums Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, and Harvest. Also included in the set are several live discs, as well as a DVD of the long out-of-print film Journey Through the Past, directed by Young in the early 1970s.

Volume 1 was released as a set of 10 Blu-ray discs in order to present high resolution audio as well as accompanying visual documentation. It is also available as a 10 disc DVD set and an 8-CD set. On January 31, 2010, the box set won the Grammy Award for Best Art Direction on a Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package, and was shared by Neil Young along with his art directors Gary Burden and Jenice Heo.

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