| After the Gold Rush | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Neil Young |
| Cover: | After the Gold Rush.jpg |
| Released: | September 19, 1970[1] |
| Recorded: | August 1969 – June 1970 |
| Studio: | Sunset Sound, Hollywood, California Sound City, Hollywood, California Redwood Studios, Topanga, California |
| Genre: |
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| Length: | 34:32 |
| Label: | Reprise RS 6383 |
| Producer: |
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| Prev Title: | Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere |
| Prev Year: | 1969 |
| Next Title: | Harvest |
| Next Year: | 1972 |
After the Gold Rush is the third studio album by the Canadian-American musician Neil Young, released in September 1970 on Reprise Records. It is one of four high-profile solo albums released by the members of folk rock group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu. Young's album consists mainly of country folk music along with several rock tracks, including "Southern Man". The material was inspired by the unproduced Dean Stockwell-Herb Bermann screenplay After the Gold Rush.
After the Gold Rush entered Billboard Top Pop Albums chart on September 19, and peaked at number eight in October.[4] the two singles taken from the album, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "When You Dance I Can Really Love", made it to number 33 and number 93 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100. Despite a mixed initial reaction, the album has since appeared on a number of greatest albums of all time lists.
In 2014, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[5]
Young recorded the album while living in Topanga Canyon, an artistic community in Southern California. It was largely recorded in his home studio there. Songs on the album were influenced by people he met while living there, including producer David Briggs, Young's then wife, Susan Acevedo, and actor Dean Stockwell, whom he met through Susan. The album was recorded with members of both of his associated groups at the time, Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as well as the first appearance by long-time collaborator Nils Lofgren. By the time the album was released, however, Young had split with Susan and had moved to his Broken Arrow Ranch in Northern California, where he would record many of his subsequent albums.[6]
Songs on the album were inspired by a screenplay written by Dean Stockwell and Herb Bermann also titled After the Gold Rush. The screenplay's plot involves an apocalyptic ecological disaster that washes away the Topanga Canyon hippie community. Stockwell, a lifelong friend of Young, was also part of the Topanga Canyon artist culture of the time. Mutual friend Dennis Hopper encouraged Stockwell to write his own screenplay in wake of Hopper's success with Easy Rider. Stockwell recalls writing the script: Young recalls coming in contact with the script in his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace:
In Young's biography Shakey, the script, now lost, is described as an end of the world movie which culminates in a tidal wave crashing into local music venue and hangout The Topanga Corral. Stockwell explains, "I was gonna write a movie that was personal, a Jungian self-discovery of the gnosis. It involved the Kabala; it involved a lot of arcane stuff."[7] In a December 1995 interview with Nick Kent for Mojo Magazine, Young recalls:
Ultimately, only two songs on the album were directly influenced by or had been intended for use in the film: "After the Goldrush" and "Cripple Creek Ferry".[8] The lyrics to "After the Gold Rush" were inspired by a dream[9] and consider a future when mankind uses space travel to perpetuate the species in wake of environmental destruction.
The chorus of "Tell Me Why" features the memorable chorus question Tell me why/ Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself/ When you're old enough to repay/ But young enough to sell? Young shares in a June 1988 interview for Spin Magazine that the lyrics lost meaning for him over time, and made it difficult to sing the song live:
The song "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" was written for Graham Nash in the aftermath of his breakup with Joni Mitchell.[10] [11] Nash would tell Constant Meijers in September 1974: "I'd broken up with Joni and Neil came to me and said he'd written a song for me, because he knew exactly how I felt. Joni is one of those people who can't make a good relationship last. When we were doing alright, she quit."[12]
The lyrics to "Southern Man" address slavery and segregation. The intensity of the song was influenced by conflict with Young's then wife, Susan Acevedo: "'Southern Man' was an angry song. I wrote 'Southern Man' in my studio in Topanga. Susan was angry at me for some reason."[13] "Those girls always get jealous when you're working on something with great intensity. Susan, who was a lot older than me, was very jealous. One morning, I got up early to work on 'Southern Man' in the studio, she threw breakfast against the door. When I opened the door to see what was going on, she threw the coffee at me."[14]
"Oh Lonesome Me" is a cover of the 1957 Don Gibson song, recorded in a somber and radically different arrangement than the original. Young's arrangement dates from his coffeehouse folk days in Toronto in late 1965:[15] "I wanted to give the acoustic solo thing a try in the Village (Yorkville). I took my acoustic twelve-string to a few gigs and got some bad reviews. I had an arrangement of 'Oh Lonesome Me' that I really liked, and people laughed at it, thinking it was a parody or something. I used it on 'After the Gold Rush', and that worked."[16] The song is the first recording by Young to feature harmonica, as well as the first song Young recorded that he didn't write himself. The song was released as a single in advance of the album in February 1970.[17]
The lyrics to "Don't Let It Bring You Down" deal with falling into depression, and how new experiences or acquaintances can snap you back out. Young explains to Spin in 1988: "Every once in awhile something could happen, especially when I was younger, that would get me really depressed, then I would run into somebody and forget about it, just because I got into an another thing. People are wonderful that way; the presence of another human being can be so strong that it’ll change your whole outlook."[18] Young wrote the song during his first transatlantic trip, while touring with CSNY.[19] On the album 4 Way Street, Young jokes as he introduces the song: "Here is a new song. It's guaranteed to bring you right down. It's called 'Don't Let It Bring You Down'. It sort of starts off real slow and then it fizzles out all together."
"Birds" dates from at least 1968. Young attempted recording the song several times before the take featured on After the Gold Rush. One attempt, available on his Archives website, was recorded as a duet with new bandmate Graham Nash. Its lyrics concern a breakup, using bird imagery as metaphor.
"I Believe in You" is a somber ode to abandoned love. Young describes the song in a June 1988 Spin interview:
Young would once again employ David Briggs as producer for the sessions, as he did for first two albums. Sessions took place over the course of a year, from August 1969 to June 1970 and were held at both professional recording studios and at a recently built studio in Young's Topanga Canyon home. During the recording of the album, Young toured with both Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills and Nash, and made solo concert appearances. Sessions also overlapped with sessions for Déjà Vu, to which Young contributed the songs "Helpless" and "Country Girl".
Initial sessions were conducted with backing band Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound Studios in August 1969. The sessions followed the band's tour of North America in support of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere from February to June of that year. Although progress was hampered by the deteriorating health of rhythm guitarist Danny Whitten, the sessions yielded two album tracks, "I Believe In You" and "Oh, Lonesome Me". Songs "Everybody's Alone", "Wonderin'" and an alternate take of "Birds" were also recorded but not used for the album. The sessions coincided with rehearsals for Crosby, Stills and Nash's tour in support of their debut album. Young was asked to join the group to facilitate performing the group's material in a live setting.[20] Young would explain to author Nick Kent:
After the sessions, Young embarked on a tour of the US with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young that would include their now-famous appearance at Woodstock. The band would also make appearances at the Big Sur Folk Festival and on American television. In October, Young would again resume sessions with Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound and Larrabee Sound Studios, recording Whitten's "Look at All the Things" and Young's "Dance, Dance, Dance" and "Winterlong," each of which would go unused. In November, Young booked time with CSNY at Wally Heider Studios to record Déjà Vu before resuming their tour of North America followed by January appearances in Europe. In February and March, Young toured North America with Crazy Horse, performing the shows that would later see release on Live at the Fillmore East. Young's split attention between Crazy Horse and CSNY would result in some resentment from the latter band:
The bulk of the album was recorded in mid-March 1970 in Young's home studio in Topanga Canyon, dubbed "Redwood Studios". Young recalls building the studio in the liner notes to Decade: "I put the wood on the walls myself and loved that feeling. My house was on a steep hill overlooking the canyon. The French horn player ran out of breath on my steep driveway." Musicians for these sessions generally feature CSNY bassist Greg Reeves, Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina and burgeoning eighteen-year-old musical prodigy Nils Lofgren of the Washington, D.C.-based band Grin on piano. The incorporation of Lofgren was a characteristically idiosyncratic decision by Young, as Lofgren had not played keyboards on a regular basis prior to the sessions.[21] Along with Jack Nitzsche, Lofgren would join an augmented Crazy Horse sans Young before enjoying success with his own group as well as solo cult success and membership in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Biographer Jimmy McDonough has asserted[22] that Young was intentionally trying to combine Crazy Horse and CSNY on this release, with members of the former band appearing alongside Stephen Stills and Reeves. The album features several song where Young performs on piano as the primary instrument; "Oh, Lonesome Me" also features his first use of harmonica on record.
The April session for "When You Dance, I Can Really Love" at Young's Topanga home studio marks the last time Crazy Horse played together with Danny Whitten. Young remembers in a post on his website: "Danny Whitten could not make the sessions but he did come in at the end and recorded with us, doing a lot of chorus singing on many songs and playing on one song, "When You Dance I Can Really Love". Jack Nitzsche was there on a wild piano. Billy Talbot on bass. What a memory that is! Ralph Molina played drums on every track."[23] He continues in his memoir: He further reminisces in Shakey:
The final session for the album produced the song "Birds." "Birds" was recorded on June 30, 1970, at Sound City Studios during a break in CSNY's summer tour. Young had made several previous attempts to record the song. The first attempt was in August 1968 with Jim Messina on bass and George Grantham on drums for Young's debut album. During the August 1969 Sunset Sound sessions, Young recorded a version featuring vibes with Crazy Horse that was erroneously released as the b-side to "Only Love Can Break Your Heart." The version lacks the second verse. Young explains in the biography Shakey: "The electric version of "Birds" with vibes turned out to be great, but it was only half the song. After the first verse I stopped. Forgot the second verse."[24] Later that month during a break in CSNY's first tour, Young recorded a duet version on acoustic guitar with Graham Nash on vocals. The final take used on the album features Young on solo piano accompanied by members of Crazy Horse on vocals.
The album cover was designed by art director Gary Burden, who would go on to work with Young on his album covers until his death in 2018. Young describes the relationship in his memoir, Waging Heavy Peace:
The cover art is a solarized image of Young passing an old woman at the New York University School of Law campus in the Greenwich Village district of New York City. The picture was taken by photographer Joel Bernstein and was reportedly out of focus. It was because of this he decided to mask the blurred face by solarizing the image.[25] The photo is cropped; the original image included Young's friend and CSNY bandmate Graham Nash.[26]
The back cover features a picture of the back of a pair of Young's jeans with several patches. His wife at the time, Susan Acevedo, would patch his jeans using her own hair as thread. Young explains in Waging Heavy Peace:
After the Gold Rush was originally released on vinyl by Reprise on September 19, 1970.[27] It was subsequently reissued on CD in 1986.[28]
After the Gold Rush is one of four high-profile albums (all charting within the top fifteen) released by each of the members of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu, along with Stephen Stills (Stephen Stills, November 1970), If I Could Only Remember My Name (David Crosby, February 1971) and Songs for Beginners (Graham Nash, May 1971).
Lead single "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 24, 1970. An outtake version of "Birds" recorded at the initial Sunset Sound sessions has now been added to the album on the Neil Young Archives website, as have two versions of the song "Wonderin'". The Sunset Sound "Birds" was first released, accidentally, as the B-Side of the "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" single.[29]
A remastered version was released on HDCD-encoded CD and digital download on July 14, 2009, as part of the Neil Young Archives Original Release Series. The remastered CD exists both as a standalone album and as Disc 3 of a 4-CD box set Official Release Series Discs 1-4, released in the US in 2009 and Europe in 2012.[30]
To mark its 50th anniversary, a CD version of the album was re-released by Reprise on December 11, 2020, as After The Gold Rush 50th Anniversary Edition, the original cover having been enhanced with a 50 below its title. A limited edition vinyl box set came out on March 19, 2021. The re-release includes two different versions of the song "Wonderin'" – on the CD as two extra tracks and in the vinyl box set as a 45rpm single in a picture sleeve. Side A, originally included on the Topanga 3 disc in The Archives Vol. 1: 1963-1972, was recorded in Topanga, California, in March 1970; Side B is a previously unreleased version recorded at Sunset Sound in Hollywood in August 1969.
Digital high-resolution files of the album are also available via the Neil Young Archives website, including a longer 3:36 outtake of "Birds" recorded at the same Sunset Sound sessions as "Wonderin'".
Critics were not immediately impressed; the 1970 review in Rolling Stone magazine by Langdon Winner was negative, with Winner feeling that, "none of the songs here rise above the uniformly dull surface."[31] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau was more enthusiastic, saying: "While David Crosby yowls about assassinations, Young divulges darker agonies without even bothering to make them explicit. Here the gaunt pain of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere fills out a little—the voice softer, the jangling guitar muted behind a piano. Young's melodies—every one of them—are impossible to dismiss. He can write 'poetic' lyrics without falling flat on his metaphor even when the subject is ecology or crumbling empire. And despite his acoustic tenor, he rocks plenty. A real rarity: pleasant and hard at the same time."
Critical reaction has improved with time; by 1975, Rolling Stone was referring to the album as a "masterpiece",[32] and Gold Rush is now considered a classic album in Young's recording career.[33]
After the Gold Rush has appeared on a number of greatest albums lists. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted After the Gold Rush the 89th greatest album of all time. It was ranked 92nd in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. In 2003, Rolling Stone named the album the 71st greatest album of all time, 74th in a 2012 revised list,[34] and 90th in the 2020 list.[35] Pitchfork listed it 99th on their 2004 list of the "Top 100 Albums of the 1970s".[36] In 2006, Time magazine listed it as one of the "All-Time 100 Albums".[37] It was ranked third in Bob Mersereau's 2007 book The Top 100 Canadian Albums. Its follow-up album, Harvest, was named the greatest Canadian album of all time in that book. In 2005, Chart magazine readers placed it fifth on a poll of the best Canadian albums. In 2002, Blender magazine named it the 86th greatest "American" album.[38] New Musical Express named it the 56th greatest album of all time in 2013.[39] The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[40] It was voted number 62 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums 3rd edition (2000).[41]
All tracks are written by Neil Young, except where noted. Track timings are from the original 1970 vinyl release, catalogue number RS 6383.[43]
Additional roles
| Peak position | ||
| Australia (Kent Music Report)[45] | 13 | |
|---|---|---|
| US Billboard Top LPs & Tape[46] | 8 | |
| UK Album Charts[47] | 7 | |
| Canadian RPM 100 Albums[48] | 5 | |
| Spain Album Charts[49] | 10 | |
| Swedish Album Charts[50] | 14 | |
| Norwegian VG-lista Albums[51] | 17 | |
| Dutch MegaCharts Albums[52] | 1 | |
| Japanese Album Charts[53] | 82 | |
| US Cash Box Top 100 Albums[54] | 7 | |
| US Record World Album Chart[55] | 4 |
| Year | Single | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" | US Billboard Pop Singles | 33 |
| US Cash Box Pop Singles | 20 | ||
| US Record World Pop Singles | 23 | ||
| 1971 | "When You Dance, I Can Really Love" | US Billboard Pop Singles | 93 |
| US Cash Box Pop Singles | 93 | ||
| US Record World Pop Singles | 59 | ||
| Year | Chart | Position | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | Cashbox Year End Chart[56] | 82 | |
| 1971 | Billboard Year End Chart[57] | 20 |
