After the Gold Rush

After the Gold Rush
Studio album by Neil Young
Released	August 31, 1970
Recorded	August 1969 - June 1970 at Sunset Sound and Sound City, Hollywood, CA; Neil's Home Studio, Topanga, CA
Genre	Rock
Length	35:10
Label	Reprise
Producer	Neil Young, David Briggs with Kendall Pacios
Professional reviews
Allmusic link Pitchfork Media (10.0/10) link Rolling Stone (unfavourable) 1970 Rolling Stone 2004 Robert Christgau (A+) link
Neil Young chronology
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969) After the Gold Rush (1970) Harvest (1972)

After the Gold Rush is the third album by Neil Young, and one of four high-profile albums released by each partner of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping Déjà Vu album of 1970. It peaked at #8 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart; two singles taken from the album, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "When You Dance I Can Really Love," made it to # 33 and # 93 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100.

After the Gold Rush was remastered and released on HDCD-encoded CD and digital download on July 14, 2009 as part of the Neil Young Archives Original Release Series. The remaster has been released on audiophile vinyl and a high resolution digital version on Blu-ray disc is also planned although a release date for this format has not yet been announced.

History

Neil Young's third solo album was released during a prolific period of his career, with the artist having recorded two solo albums and Déjà Vu with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in less than a year; after being sidelined with a back injury, he would wait until 1972 for his subsequent LP Harvest, which would make Young a household name. Although his work with Buffalo Springfield had shown him experimenting with a variety of musical styles, on Gold Rush Young continued the mix of hard rock with the country and folk-flavored acoustic approaches from CSNY and on 1969's Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.

The Young biography Shakey ^[1] claims he was intentionally trying to combine Crazy Horse and CSN on this release, with Crazy Horse appearing alongside Stephen Stills and CSNY bass player Greg Reeves. Initial sessions were conducted with Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles amid a winter tour that included a well-received engagement with Steve Miller and Miles Davis at the Fillmore East. Due to the deteriorating health of rhythm guitarist Danny Whitten, the sessions yielded the released tracks, "I Believe In You," "Oh, Lonesome Me", "Birds," (a 45 single B-side) and "When You Dance I Can Really Love".

Most of the album was recorded at a make-shift basement studio in Young's modest Topanga Canyon home during the spring of 1970 with Greg Reeves, Ralph Molina of Crazy Horse, and burgeoning eighteen year old musical prodigy Nils Lofgren of the Washington, DC-based band Grin on piano. This was a typical idiosyncratic decision by Young; Lofgren had not played keyboards on a regular basis prior to the sessions.^[2] Along with fellow Young stalwart Jack Nitzsche, he would join an augmented Crazy Horse sans Young before enjoying his own group and solo cult success alternating with a 25 year membership in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.

Critics were not immediately enamored; the original review in Rolling Stone Magazine began, "Neil Young devotees will probably spend the next few weeks trying desperately to convince themselves that After the Gold Rush is good music. But they'll be kidding themselves. For despite the fact that the album contains some potentially first rate material, none of the songs here rise above the uniformly dull surface."^[3] As is typical of Young releases, critical reaction has improved with time. By 1975, Rolling Stone had changed its view to the point of referring to the album as a "masterpiece", ^[4] and Gold Rush is now considered a classic album in Young's recording career.^[5]

Acclaim and Legacy

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, his highest ranking on this list. Pitchfork Media listed it 99th on their 2004 list of the "Top 100 Albums of the 1970s" ^[6]. In 2006, Time Magazine listed it as one of the 'All-TIME 100 Albums'^[7]. It was ranked third in Bob Mersereau's 2007 book The Top 100 Canadian Albums. Its followup 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. New Musical Express named it the 80th greatest album of all time in 2003. On the Acclaimedmusic.net website, the album holds the #1 spot for the year 1970, the #16 spot for the 1970s and the #43 spot on the all-time list (Young's highest placing). In addition, the title track and "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" are on the site's all-time top 3000 songs.^[8]

After the Gold Rush screenplay

The credits read that "Most of these songs were inspired by the Dean Stockwell-Herb Berman screenplay After the Gold Rush." Young had read the screenplay and asked Stockwell if he could produce the soundtrack, and though the movie came to naught, the album After the Gold Rush was released nonetheless. When asked by Shakey author Jimmy McDonough which songs were inspired by the script, the only tracks Young could recall were "After the Gold Rush" and "Cripple Creek Ferry". Stockwell said of it "I was gonna write a movie that was personal, a Jungian self-discovery of the gnosis...it involved the Kabala (sic), it involved a lot of arcane stuff." ^[9]. Described in Shakey by fellow Topanga resident Shannon Forbes as "...A sort of an end-of-the-world movie...at the end, the hero is standing in the Corral parking lot watching this huge wave come in and this house was surfing along, and as the house comes at him, he turns the knob - and that's the end of the movie."

Unfortunately, not much else is known about the screenplay, as it is currently missing. ^[10] Stockwell would work with Young later in his career, creating the cover for the American Stars 'N Bars album, as well as writing and co-directing Young's film Human Highway.

Track and credits listing

All songs written by Neil Young except as indicated.

1. "Tell Me Why" – 2:54
   • Neil Young - guitar, vocal; Nils Lofgren - guitar, vocal; Ralph Molina - vocal
2. "After the Gold Rush" – 3:45
   • Young - piano, vocal; Bill Peterson - flugelhorn
3. "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" – 3:05
   • Young - guitar, vocal; Danny Whitten - guitar, vocal; Lofgren - piano; Greg Reeves - bass; Molina - drums, vocal; Stephen Stills - vocal
4. "Southern Man" – 5:31
   • Young - guitar, vocal; Lofgren - piano, vocal; Reeves - bass; Molina - drums, vocal; Whitten - vocal
5. "Till the Morning Comes" – 1:17
   • Young - piano, vocal; Whitten - guitar, vocal; Reeves - bass; Molina - drums, vocal; Stills - vocal; Peterson - flugelhorn
6. "Oh Lonesome Me" (Don Gibson) – 3:47
   • Young - guitar, piano, harmonica, vocal; Whitten - guitar, vocal; Talbot - bass; Molina - drums, vocal
7. "Don't Let It Bring You Down" – 2:56
   • Young - guitar, vocal; Lofgren - piano; Reeves - bass; Molina - drums
8. "Birds" – 2:34
   • Young - piano, vocal; Whitten - vocal; Molina - vocal
9. "When You Dance I Can Really Love" – 4:05
   • Young - guitar, vocal; Whitten - guitar, vocal; Jack Nitzsche - piano; Talbot - bass; Molina - drums
10. "I Believe in You" – 3:24
    • Young - guitar, piano, vibes, vocal; Whitten - guitar, vocal; Talbot - bass; Molina - drums, vocal
11. "Cripple Creek Ferry" – 1:34
    • Young - piano, vocal; Whitten - guitar, vocal; Reeves - bass; Molina - drums, vocal

Personnel

• Neil Young – guitar, piano, harmonica, vibes, lead vocals
• Danny Whitten – guitar, vocals
• Jack Nitzsche – piano
• Billy Talbot – bass
• Ralph Molina – drums, vocals
• Greg Reeves – bass
• Nils Lofgren – guitar, piano, keyboards, vocals
• Stephen Stills – vocals

Charts

Album

Single

Certifications

References