Landing on Water

Landing on Water is the 16th studio album by Neil Young. The album was released on July 21, 1986, by Geffen Records.

The album represents a return to a contemporary rock sound after the 1985 country album Old Ways and 1983 rockabilly album Everybody's Rockin'. Young's record company, Geffen famously had sued the artist for creating albums unrepresentative of his familiar style. For Landing on Water, Young employed producer Danny Kortchmar, engineer Niko Bolas and studio drummer Steve Jordan. The album is noted for its unique production and synthetic 1980s sound with prominent drums, synclavier and synthesizers, giving it a "claustrophobic" feel. According to Young in a 2009 interview, "one record company president in Europe told me it was the most claustrophobic record he had ever heard, and I thought that was pretty cool. He put it on in his Porsche and would turn it up real loud. He just felt like it was all over him."

Like its predecessor, Old Ways, Landing on Water was recorded over the course of over two years. The first attempt at a commercial, non-genre album dates from late 1983 and early 1984. The backing tracks for "I Got a Problem" and "Hard Luck Stories" were both recorded at Young's home studio at Broken Arrow Ranch as solo recordings with Synclavier. "Hard Luck Stories" was recorded the same day in January 1984 as an early attempt at "Razor Love", which later appeared on 2000's Silver & Gold, and a new attempt at "If You Got Love", an outtake from Trans. Some elements of Young's original 1983-1984 recordings were used as backing tracks with new drum, guitar and synth parts added during the later Record One sessions.

Young would also attempt new material at the ranch with Crazy Horse and producer Elliot Mazer. The band struggled to achieve Young's desired commercial, synthetic sound with a strong drum sound. In interviews for Jimmy McDonough's biography Shakey, the band express their frustrations with the recording process. Mazer and Young had the band record separately in contrast to their familiar live recording style. Feedback and other equipment problems culminated in Young smashing a guitar in frustration and eventually abandoning the sessions.

The band would perform the new material in a live setting at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz across four shows on February 6 and 7, 1984. The new material included album tracks "Touch the Night", "Violent Side", and "I Got a Problem" as well as the songs "Rock, Rock, Rock", "So Tired" and "Your Love Is Good To Me". The concerts were professionally recorded and circulate as bootlegs. Young and the band would attempt additional sessions at The Power Station in New York with David Briggs as producer, but again were unsuccessful at completing an album. In a 1990 Rolling Stone interview with James Henke, Young explains: "We went to New York and tried to record these songs for three weeks, and we didn’t get one track. We just blew a whole bunch of time. That was when I first introduced the horns; we had a horn section with Crazy Horse. We just never could get it to gel." According to a 1995 interview with Nick Kent for Mojo Magazine, an attempt was made to record the album with the band R.E.M., but efforts were scuttled when Geffen threatened to sue Young for recording with the group. Young's experiences with Geffen would result in the band signing with Warner instead of Geffen in their own negotiations for a major label contract that decade. Eventually, Young would place his attempts on recording a rock album on hold and go on tour for the next year with a country band instead. Young would reflect on the difficulties of recording a commercial sounding album for Geffen in early 1984 during interviews for Shakey:

"I'd listen to the radio and hear this big drum sound, and I'd say, "That's pretty cool. I wanna get that. But I don't wanna do what they're doing. I don’t wanna sound like those records—but I want that drum sound." It turned out it was a very difficult thing to do. And y’know, with Crazy Horse it’s such a special thing, because none of us can really play. We know we aren’t any good. Fuck, we’d get it in the first take every time, and it was never right—but we could never do it better. So what happens is when a real musician enters that, it fucks it all up. They were great "feel" guys, both of 'em, but it made everybody conscious of how they were really dumb players. Oh, the sessions sucked. We were all inhibited by each other—and we were all sick, fuckin' Legionnaires' disease or something. I don't know why we went to New York. We took the Horse way out of its environment. The Power Station—too many hit records had been made there. It ended up a big fuckin' bum-out. Everybody was bummed, and we didn't do anything for a long time. Because we never failed completely to fuckin' get anything. It was a rough time. I had a lot of animosity from my own team during those years—I mean, Briggs was pissed at me. Crazy Horse had a big chip on their shoulder. They were pissed because I recorded with other people. Everybody was pissed at me, y'know."

In late 1985 and early 1986, Young would make a new attempt at recording a more commercial sounding album at Record One Studios in Los Angeles. This time, Young would hire producer Danny Kortchmar, who had recently seen success with Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast. Young, Kortchmar and studio drummer Steve Jordan play all the instruments on the album, including Synclavier, synth bass and other synthesizers. Young would later play with Jordan again during his SNL performance of "Keep on Rocking in the Free World" in 1989. Jordan would also later go on to join the Rolling Stones. Kortchmar would bring in engineer Niko Bolas, launching a long term working relationship. Bolas would go on to produce several of Young's subsequent albums.

Kortchmar recalled his experiences making the album in a 2019 interview with Dale Kawashima: