It was finally set for release as part of Record Store Day 2020, amid Neil Young's ongoing Archives campaign.

At the last moment however, Young chose to drop Homegrown and release instead Tonight's the Night, another shelved album recorded in 1973.

In response to a fan letter on his website, Young states the song was intended to have backing vocals, but they were never recorded.

[6] Young would revisit the song in a more soulful arrangement in studio with Stephen Stills' backing band for 1976's Long May You Run and again on his 1993 tour with Booker T & the MGs.

"Florida" is a narrated nightmare accompanied by the cacophonous sound of Young and Keith rubbing the rims of wine glasses and playing with piano strings.

A booklet that accompanied the original vinyl release of Tonight's the Night featured the lyrics superimposed over the credits for On the Beach.

Young re-recorded the song without the verse containing the drug-referencing title with Crazy Horse in 1975 during the American Stars 'n' Bars sessions and again with the group in 1990 for Ragged Glory.

In a 1975 Cameron Crowe interview for Rolling Stone, Young indicated a desire to release parts of Homegrown on subsequent albums, citing, for example, the "beautiful harmonies" of Emmylou Harris.

During the rehearsals, Young recorded several new songs on June 15 as a solo performer, on the 16th with bassist Tim Drummond, and on the 17th with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

[10] On June 15, Young recorded solo demos of "Love Is a Rose", "The Old Homestead", "Love/Art Blues", "Through My Sails" and "Barefoot Floors".

Crosby called up Peter Fonda, and we sang "Hawaiian Sunrise" for him over the phone from my cabin living room, all four of us.

The group helped Young with a new arrangement of "New Mama", made an attempt at "Love/Art Blues", and recorded additional vocals for the previous day's take of "Hawaiian Sunrise".

[12] Two days before the group's performance at Wembley Stadium, Young recorded another new song, "White Line," with the Band's Robbie Robertson.

[2] The duo recorded the song on acoustic guitars, with Robertson providing flourishes to complement Young's playing.

After the CSNY tour, Young traveled to Amsterdam for a week and a half in late September/early October with Graham Nash, Joel Bernstein, and Dutch journalist Constant Meijers.

Takes of "Vacancy," "One More Sign," "Frozen Man," "Give Me Strength," and "Bad News Comes to Town" all eventually appeared on Neil Young Archives Vol.

Young also revisited "Bad News Comes to Town", this time with a horn section, during his 1988 tour with the Blue Notes, captured live on 2015's Bluenote Café.

Young remembers in Waging Heavy Peace: "When we all got to Chess Studios, we found it on the fifth floor of a big old brick building that really had a historic vibe.

The first day there, we recorded with Kenny Buttrey on drums, Tim Drummond on bass, Ben Keith on steel, and me on acoustic guitar.

[7]On December 11, Levon Helm replaced Buttrey and the group recorded "The Old Homestead" and "Daughters", as well as the two songs that open Homegrown, "Separate Ways" and "Try".

Another band session at the same studio on December 13, this time with Karl Himmel on drums, yielded "Star of Bethlehem", "Homegrown" and "Deep Forbidden Lake".

[15] "Deep Forbidden Lake" was released on Decade in 1977 where Young says in the liner notes that "it hopefully signified the end of a long dark period which started with Time Fades Away."

"Bad News Comes to Town," "Frozen Man" and several versions of "Changing Highways" were also recorded during these sessions at Quadrafonic.

"Motorcycle Mama", written for his new romantic interest and eventual wife Pegi, were later recorded for 1978's Comes a Time.

[15] In 2010, Neil Young's on-line newspaper stated that Homegrown along with other period unreleased albums were being "rebuilt" for inclusion in the second volume of his Archives project.

Unlike similar unreleased collections from this period of Young's career, such as Chrome Dreams and the session acetates for Tonight's the Night, Homegrown never circulated in whole as a bootleg.

The official site for Neil Young Archives shows several pictures of the tape boxes and respective handwritten notes, revealing much of the work that was required to create new analog masters using the original as a source.

On November 21, 2019, an article was posted to Neil Young's Archives website announcing Homegrown as the first vinyl release scheduled for 2020.

The article also included a short video of engineer John Hanlon overseeing an all-analog transfer of one of the album's songs ("We Don't Smoke It No More").

If anything, the passing time has helped intensify the lush intimacy of the recordings, making Young’s spare and rich instrumentation (and old-school minimalist production) stand out all the more in an era of auto-tuned digitalization.