Tonight's the Night Songwriting Credits by Neil Young

Tonight's the Night is Neil Young's wake for two friends lost to heroin, guitarist Danny Whitten of Crazy Horse and roadie Bruce Berry, and almost every song carries his sole writing credit. Young wrote the album in a single grief-soaked burst and cut most of it live with a loose band in 1973, leaving in the ragged vocals and false starts rather than polishing them away. The two exceptions widen the picture: "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" is co-written with Whitten and pulled from a 1970 live recording, so the dead man sings on the record about scoring drugs, and "Borrowed Tune" finds Young openly setting his own lyric to the melody of the Rolling Stones' "Lady Jane" because, as he admits in the song, he is too wasted to write his own. The result is one of his rawest and most personal statements, an album about death made by the people closest to it.