After The Gold Rush

Fifty years ago this week Neil Young released After The Gold Rush. It was his third studio album, and many consider it near the top of his prolific career. In 1970, all four of the group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young released solo albums, but Young's is the only one that is remembered well. Rolling Stone named it the 71st greatest album of all time (although in typical fashion, the initial review in that magazine was unflattering).

I was interested to read that the album's genesis was a screenplay by Dean Stockwell and Herb Bermann, titled After The Gold Rush. Young read the script and asked if he could compose songs for it. The film was never made, and the script is now lost.

The title track, which is my favorite on the album, is a delightfully weird song that Young has no idea what it's about. It has three verses, the first about medieval nights, the second in the first person about being in a burnt out building, and the third, the trippiest, which appears to be about mankind leaving a dying planet:

"Well, I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun
There were children crying and colors flying
All around the chosen ones
 All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home"

The hit from the album was "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," a classic breakup song, said to be inspired by the end of the relationship between Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell. It's the kind of song made for playing after a breakup, as one listens to it over and over again in self pity.

Perhaps the most played song on the album on today's classic rock stations is "Southern Man," a heavy-handed but hard rocking song about the racism endemic to the South:

"I saw cotton and I saw black.
Tall white mansions and little shacks.
Southern man, when will you pay them back?
I heard screamin' and bullwhips cracking.
How long? How long?"

Lynyrd Skynyrd, in their song "Sweet Home Alabama," rebukes Young: "I heard old Neil sing about her. I heard old Neil Young put her down. I hope Neil Young will remember a Southern man don't need him around anyhow." Interestingly, Skynyrd front man Ronnie Van Zandt and Young became mutual admirers. Young regretted the song. as I'm sure he realized not all Southern men were racists, and indeed a large majority of Southerners did not own slaves. And Young is Canadian, anyway.

After The Gold Rush is a fine record, imbued mostly with a country/folk flavor. Young has written songs of all stripes, but he has hewed closest to this style of music. Whether it's his best album is up for debate, as the other contender is probably Harvest, from 1972.