| 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, California; Young's home studio in Topanga, California | |||
| Genre | Rock, roots rock, country rock, folk rock | |||
| Length | 35:10 | |||
| Label | Reprise | |||
| Producer | Neil Young, David Briggs with Kendall Pacios | |||
| Neil Young chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [1] |
| Pitchfork Media | (10.0/10)[2] |
| Rolling Stone | [3] |
| Robert Christgau | (A+)[4] |
After the Gold Rush is the third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young. Released in August 1970 on Reprise Records, it was one of the four high-profile albums released by each member of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu. Gold Rush consisted mainly of country folk music, along with the rocking "Southern Man".[5] Songs were inspired by the Dean Stockwell-Herb Berman screenplay After the Gold Rush."
After the Gold Rush peaked at number eight on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart; 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. Critics were not initially impressed with the album, though it has since been considered a masterpiece, and appears on a number of greatest albums lists.
Contents |
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. Despite the deteriorating health of rhythm guitarist Danny Whitten, the sessions yielded the released tracks, "I Believe In You," "Oh, Lonesome Me", "Birds" issued as a 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 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.[6] 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. The Young biography Shakey [7] claims Young 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.
Songs on the album were inspired by the Dean Stockwell-Herb Berman screenplay for the unmade film After the Gold Rush. Young had read the screenplay and asked Stockwell if he could produce the soundtrack. Tracks that Young recalls as being written specifically for the film are "After the Gold Rush" and "Cripple Creek Ferry".[8] The script has since been lost, though has been described as "sort of an end-of-the-world movie".[9] 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]
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."[10] Critical reaction has improved with time; by 1975, Rolling Stone was referring to the album as a "masterpiece", [11] and Gold Rush is now considered a classic album in Young's recording career.[12]
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".[13] In 2006, Time Magazine listed it as one of the 'All-TIME 100 Albums'.[14] 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.[15]
All songs written by Neil Young except when noted
Album
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1970 | Billboard Pop Albums | 8 |
Single
| Year | Single | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" | Billboard Pop Singles | 33 |
| 1971 | "When You Dance I Can Really Love" | Billboard Pop Singles | 93 |
| Organization | Level | Date |
|---|---|---|
| RIAA – US | Gold | November 2, 1970 |
| RIAA – US | Platinum | October 13, 1986 |
| RIAA – US | 2× Platinum | October 13, 1986 |
| BPI – U.K. | 2× Platinum | November 12, 2004 |
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.
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