Neil Young Revives Rare Live Gem ‘Silver & Gold’ With New Performance Video

Neil Young gifted fans a special treat on Christmas by releasing a video on Instagram featuring a rare performance of “Silver & Gold.” Young hasn’t played the song live in over 17 years.

While the earliest known recording of “Silver & Gold” was laid down in 1982, the song wasn’t officially released until Young revisited the cut for inclusion as the title track of his 2000 studio album. The 1982 recording was shared this past September as part of the massive Neil Young Archives Vol. III 1976-1987 box set.

Neil Young discussed the genesis of the song and why it took him so long to revisit “Siver & Gold” during a March 2000 interview for Austin radio station KGSR:

“Well, ‘Silver and Gold’ I think I wrote back in – I don’t know 1981 or ’82. And I did record it several times. I tried it several ways. And it was such a nice – it’s just such a song, you know. It just kind of lives with the guitar. It’s just there. And it’s always a kind of song you do it the first time, its fine, it sounds great. And then you do it the second time and it’s like, you know, why are you doing it again? You just – you’ve already done it. It’s such a simple thing that either you – I would get it right the first time and then by the time the band knew it, it sounded so contrived to me that I could never get it. So I really recorded, I think, a total of 11 times with different people in all kinds of different configurations. And we got ’em all, none of them are worth listening to. But this one here finally just got back to the roots of it and just sat down with my guitar and played it and said, ‘That’s it.’ Because I love the song and I feel the song now and it means something to me now. And so I just did it. When I got back from the HORDE tour a couple of years ago, I went in the studio, sat down and did this one the second day after I was back, I think.”

According to fan site Sugar Mountain, Young premiered “Silver & Gold” live on October 11, 1984. The song was trotted out sporadically by Young over the following decades, with the most recent performance before the new video played at Farm Aid in 2007.

Most past “Silver & Gold” performances were solo versions and Young went it alone for the take shared on Christmas. Watch it below: