Neil Young - Harvest

Released - February 1972

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Neil Young; Elliot Mazer; Henry Lewy & Jack Nitzche

Selected Personnel - Neil Young (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Harmonica); Ben Keith (Pedal Steel); Jack Nitzche (Piano/Slide Guitar/Arrangements); Tim Drummond (Bass); Kenny Buttrey (Drums); James Taylor (Banjo/Backing Vocals); Linda Ronstadt (Backing Vocals); David Crosby (Backing Vocals); Stephen Stills (Backing Vocals); Graham Nash (Backing Vocals)

Standout Track - Heart Of Gold

I mentioned in my review of Neil Young's After The Gold Rush that I owe my awareness of Neil Young and, in some respects, my increased interest in folk and country music since 2010 to my friend Emily, who also happens to be one of two people I have ever actually shared this blog with and might be reading this now. While her gift of that album to me on my birthday that year had opened my eyes to Young's music and spurred me to discover other artists from the same scene and genre, it wasn't until I moved to London in early 2011 that I finally got round to devoting more time to other areas of Young's discography - I think perhaps at least partly because I missed her having just moved to a big frightening city and wanted to capitalise more on the music she had opened up for me. The logical place to start seemed to be 1972's Harvest, which to this day is Young's best-selling album and features his only Number One single in "Heart Of Gold." Emily and I have always been in agreement that, ultimately, it lacks the cohesion and consistency and sense of an independent identity that After The Gold Rush has, but what it has in its favour is a number of individual songs that are actually even better than the individual tracks of his previous album, which works best when considered as a work in its own right rather than as a collection of songs.

In the aftermath of the success of After The Gold Rush, Young embarked on solo acoustic tour of the States, playing reworked, stripped-down versions of songs by Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and from his own solo records while also gradually beginning to introduce new songs he'd written on the road, many of which would find a home on Harvest. The initial plan he hatched with his record company was to release a live album to document this acoustic tour, but these plans all changed when Young arrived in Nashville to perform on the Johnny Cash show along with Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and others. Invited to visit a local recording studio by producer Elliot Mazer, Young was so impressed by what he saw, and by the local session musicians working in the studio, that he set about recording some of his new songs that same night, with Ronstadt and Taylor themselves contributing additional vocals and instrumental overdubs. The final album took longer to be polished off, with Young adding extra sessions back home in California with some of his more regular musical cohorts like Jack Nitzche, but the plans for the live acoustic album were scrapped and replaced with a whole new studio album in the course of a single day. It's remarkable that anything to come out of such a spontaneous period of creativity should be as masterful a work as Harvest, and even more miraculous still that it should end up being the best-selling record of the year, and of Young's career.

The mood in general is slower and more reflective than on After The Gold Rush. Some of the anger and dynamism of that album seems to have been diluted here, though it's still present. In its place is a thoughtful young man taking stock of the world around him and offering his reflections on it. This newfound sense of peace and distance might partly be attributed to Young's recent back injury, which prevented him from doing much writing or playing on electric guitar, preferring to focus on acoustic which he could play sitting down. It's also presumably significant that for the Harvest sessions Young was mostly working with musicians he'd never worked with before, so had to rely entirely on his own creativity and ability rather than knowing he can lean on his bandmates in places. So the record he ended up creating is a mellow country-folk record, comprised largely of slow, introspective ballads. The album opener "Out On The Weekend" is one of the most affecting songs in his repertoire, with its slow bass chug and lazy country harmonica lines conveying a hazy mellow feel that betrays the lonely, soul-searching desperation of the lyric, concerning the apparent abandonment of a loved one in an attempt to sort out one's own problems and find some direction in life. It's a theme at least partially revisited in "Heart Of Gold," Young's most well-known song. Again, it's that wonderful harmonica playing, paired with the keening cry of Ben Keith's pedal steel, that sets the song apart from others, and it sees Young reflecting on his constant journey to find the purity and goodness within him, no matter how long it might take or where that journey might take him. It's one of the more uptempo songs on offer, but it's still pretty meditative in its pace when compared to the more dynamic songs on After The Gold Rush. In general, the songs on Harvest seem to find Young trying to make sense of a newfound peace in his life having bought a ranch in California and had his first child with the actress Carrie Snodgress (who is the subject of the simple domesticity of "A Man Needs A Maid," a melancholic piano-based song transformed by the orchestral overdubs recorded by Nitzche with the London Symphony Ochestra). It seems a natural enough response to writing songs while on tour to have one's thoughts return to the place you call home and try to work out what it means to you. So it is that "Old Man" sees Young addressing the elderly caretaker on his ranch and try to bridge the generational gap between them to discover some meaning in his current lifestyle.

"There's A World" again sees Young supported by the LSO, although now those orchestral overdubs seem overly dramatic and threaten to swamp the song, but it's followed up by the wonderful "Alabama," at which point some of the anger of the Neil Young of old begins to show itself again. "Alabama" is a spiritual successor to the blisteringly vitriolic "Southern Man" from After The Gold Rush. It sees Young again making the southern state the target of his ire for its lack of cultural and social progress (southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd would later make a characteristically brainless and inane riposte in the guilty pleasure classic "Sweet Home Alabama" - "Well I heard Mister Young sing about her, well I heard ole Neil put her down. Well I hope Neil Young will remember a Southern man don't need him around anyhow.") From "Alabama" onwards the mellow reflection of most of the album is a thing of the past. "The Needle And The Damage Done" may not have the anger of "Alabama," but it has ten times the bleakness and desperation. The only survivor of the initial "live and acoustic" idea, it finds Young alone at his guitar, singing a desperately tender song about his own observations of the lives wrecked by heroin abuse, in particular Danny Whitten of Young's band Crazy Horse, who had lost his life to substance abuse. Just as the live audience give politely restrained applause at the song's close things lurch abruptly into the album closer, "Words (Between The Lines Of Age)," which sees Young back at the electric guitar and unleashing all its gnarled, raw power. It's allegedly a song about his frustrations with the people surrounding him at the ranch and his desire for solitude and peace, and channels all the rage and vitriol that's been pretty much absent elsewhere on the record, closing things on a bleak and fiery note which, while undeniably powerful, feels slightly out of keeping with the generally quiet and thoughtful tone of Harvest as a whole.

Harvest would prove to be Young's greatest success, but it also became something of an albatross around his neck for the rest of his career. Perhaps the spontaneity of its recording meant Young didn't have time to stamp much of his own personality or ideology onto the songs, but he would later bemoan it, and "Heart Of Gold," for making him into a "middle of the road" artist who had made concessions to the musical mainstream. He would resolve to move further away from the popular consensus in future and to keep searching in the fringes for inspiration. His next project would certainly be far bleaker and less radio-friendly than Harvest, but this is certainly not an album that any self-respecting artist need be ashamed of. Popular it may have been, but it's certainly not a mainstream embarrassment by any stretch of the imagination. The songs, by and large, are stronger than on After The Gold Rush and the album as a self-contained work with its own agenda and identity is only slightly behind that earlier classic. It's an album that's deserving of far more of Young's pride and respect than he gives it.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Neil Young.

1. Out On The Weekend

2. Harvest

3. A Man Needs A Maid

4. Heart Of Gold

5. Are You Ready For The Country?

6. Old Man

7. There's A World

8. Alabama

9. The Needle And The Damage Done

10. Words (Between The Lines Of Age)