Neil Young Returns to “Casting Me Away From You,” a Song Written More Than 60 Years Ago

Neil Young has shared a new version of “Casting Me Away From You,” a song he believes he wrote in 1964 or 1965, when he was still playing in the Winnipeg band The Squires. The recording arrives ahead of Second Song, the album with his current band The Chrome Hearts, due September 18 via Reprise Records.

The Squires never released the song. A sparse early recording with Young’s high school friend Comrie Smith later surfaced on the 2009 box set Neil Young Archives Vol. I (1963–1972), close in spirit to an Everly Brothers ballad. The new take was recorded at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu and leans further into a lonesome, countrified register. For now, the only place to hear it is the Neil Young Archives website, where the track is paired with footage David Meyers shot at Broken Arrow Ranch in the early 1970s. Young’s note on the site recalls running out of material during the Second Song sessions, pulling the song “from the deep past,” and recording it with The Chrome Hearts the next day.

The band recently canceled a planned European tour, but they are scheduled to appear at Farm Aid and perform two shows with Willie Nelson next month.