Neil Young released After the Gold Rush

After the Gold Rush Neil Young

Released: August 31, 1970 Peak: 8 US, 7 UK, 5 CN, 13 AU, 12 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 2.5 US, 0.6 UK, 5.5 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Click on a song title for more details. Tell Me Why [2:45] After the Gold Rush [3:45] Only Love Can Break Your Heart [3:05] Southern Man [5:41] Till the Morning Comes [1:17] Oh, Lonesome Me [3:47] Don’t Let It Bring You Down [2:56] Birds [2:34] When You Dance I Can Really Love [3:44] I Believe in You [3:24] Cripple Creek Ferry [1:34] Total Running Time: 33:32

Rating: 4.541 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings) Quotable: “While Young has had a long and storied career filled with multiple near-perfect albums, this one stands above the rest as his absolute masterpiece.” – Consequence of Sound Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Young’s Background Given the already diverse discography of “Canadian-born, California-based rock troubadour Neil Young” TM at this point in his career, it was anyone’s guess what he would deliver for his third solo album. He’d already made three albums with the hugely influential group Buffalo Springfield. He then released a folk-and-country oriented solo album, and the “brain-shredding guitar powerhouse” TL Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. Those two albums already made it clear that Young viewed “albums as explorations of distinct moods.” TM Then he joined forces with the already successful Crosby, Stills & Nash the blockbuster album, Déjà Vu. The two cuts he contributed to that album (“Helpless” and “Country Girl”) “returned him to the folk and country styles he had pursued before delving into the hard rock of Everybody Knows.” AM They also set the course for After the Gold Rush, an album in which he “laid claim to the field of sensitive singer-songwriters” RV by crafting a collection of “country-folk love songs.” AM The Players and the Recording After working with CSNY, Young “regrouped with his regularly backing band, Crazy Horse, which was comprised of guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina. He also recruited the then-unknown 17-year-old…Nils Lofgren in an effort to move away from the hard-rock sound of his previous solo released, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.” TB Lofgren was then a “hotshot guitarist… but Young assigned him to the piano, an instrument he had never played in his life.” 500 Young “installed recording equipment in the cellar of his Topanga Canyon home, near Los Angeles.” 500 “He soundproofed [it] with lead and pine milled from the trees in his backyard. A modest collection of gear included a Scully 8-track, a small mixer, and a handful of mikes.” TB The songs were “inspired largely by the Dean Stockwell-Herb Berman screenplay that gave the album its title.” TB How Gold Rush Was Received The album “matched the tenor of the times in 1970.” AM It struck a chord “with the disillusion felt by many after the death of the 1960s dream.” TB It “is full to the brim with classic songs of heartbreak and mystery.” CQ Its “dark yet hopeful tone” AM “represents the morning after the mayhem, both personal and cultural – the sound of Young waking up with a post-‘60s hangover, catching his breath, and trying to sort through the wreckage.” TL The album “presents Young at his most diverse, with brooding folk songs followed by rabid rock howls.” TM He appears to have “he left his best work off of Déjà Vu and kept it for this one. But most of these songs would not have worked as well for Déjà Vu, since they are not real sing-a-longs.” KN “Much like Bob Dylan, Neil Young has a not-conventionally-attractive voice, and both of them have an ability to write the kind of indelible melodies that make their songs pop even when the singer’s larynx falls short.” EK Throughout the album “the arrangements are simple, with none of Young’s earlier studio trickery or multi-part mini-symphonies.” CQ “The 11 songs embrace the truth of loss that comes after the magic, after the bum-rush of serotonin and possibilities, after you realize the holes inside haven’t been plugged, that the overflow of emotion you poured in ran right out.” PM Its Legacy “After the Gold Rush was not immediately universally recognized as a brilliant album, but over the years, even initial naysayers have changed their mind.” CQ It has come to be regarded as “one of the definitive singer/songwriter albums” AM and it established Young “as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation.” TB “Along with Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, After the Gold Rush is one of the greatest break-up records ever made regardless of intention.” PM The “starkly poignant record” RD “hits the sweet spot between his ‘popular’ work and his ‘difficult’ work.” EK “Much of what Young has done throughout his career…can be found crystallized right here.” EK “It’s brilliant all the way through.” JA “While Young has had a long and storied career filled with multiple near-perfect albums, this one stands above the rest as his absolute masterpiece” CQ and “his best solo album.” CQ The Songs Here are thoughts on the individual songs from the album.

Tell Me Why Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 3/12/1970 at Home Studio in Topanga, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 15.80 streaming About the Song: The opening cut, Tell Me Why, is one of Young’s “quaint little questioning songs…that are the aural equivalent of needlepoint samplers.” TM This, along with “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” “go some way to solidify his reputation as a hopeless romantic.” RD

After the Gold Rush Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 3/12/1970 at Home Studio in Topanga, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970), Decade (compilation: 1977) Peak: 6 CL Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 32.14 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: The “subdued,” EK “otherworldly,” CQ and “beautifully evocative title track” RD “laments the destruction of the earth” RV serving up “apocalyptic doom-saying juxtaposed with delicate piano.” EK It “evokes perfectly the circa-1970 shift between the naiveté of the hippie dream and the paranoia that would come to strike even deeper.” EK It is “a mystical ballad that featured some of Young’s most imaginative lyrics and became one of his most memorable songs.” AM

Only Love Can Break Your Heart Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 3/15/1970 at Home Studio in Topanga, California Released: 9/19/1970 (single), After the Gold Rush (1970) Peak: 33 BB, 20 CB, 32 GR, 14 HR, 11 CL, 16 CN Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 50.82 streaming About the Song: The “poignant” CQ “homespun Only Love Can Break Your Heart” TL is “one of Young’s most beautiful tracks” RV marked by “his distinctively off-center whine warns of the perils of new love.” RV

Southern Man Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young (see lyrics here) Recorded: 3/19/1970 at Home Studio in Topanga, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970), Decade (compilation: 1977) Peak: 3 CL, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 30.97 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: While Southern Man was surprisingly never released as a single, it became a staple on classic rock radio and “its Crazy Horse-style loping tempo and Young’s burning guitar lines made ‘Southern Man’ an instant live favorite.” TC This is not just “the best song on” KN After the Gold Rush but one of the album’s “few real rockers” AM and “arguably Young’s all-time most harrowing performance.” TM Here Young shows a talent for tackling “political issues with angry, cranked-up guitars.” RV With “unsparing protest lyrics typical of Phil Ochs” AM the song “attacked the racism inherent in Southern culture of the day.” RV “As with many of his apocalyptic tales, this is filled with images of burning estates and a society in flames.” TC The lyrics “describe the racism towards blacks in the American South…Young tells the story of a white man (symbolically the entire white South) and how he mistreated his slaves. Young pleadingly asks when the South will make amends for the fortunes built through slavery.” WK The song gained a new level of attention when the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” in response to the song, as well as Young’s “Alabama” from his 1972 album Harvest. The band took offense at what they saw as Young’s accusation that the entire South for to blame for American slavery. Young responded by saying he was a fan of the song and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Young also said that regarding his “Alabama” song, the criticism was deserved because Young was “condescending and accusatory.” WK

Till the Morning Comes Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 3/19/1970 at Home Studio in Topanga, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 10.79 streaming About the Song: Young “ends each side with brief piano-led melodies you wish would go on longer” DBW such as with Till the Morning Comes and “the twangy folk of Cripple Creek Ferry.” CQ

Oh Lonesome Me Neil Young

Writer(s): Don Gibson Recorded: 8/2/1969 at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 4.51 streaming About the Song: “Young’s own perverse appreciation for roots music, which he’s returned to again and again throughout his career, is on display as he transforms Don Gibson’s jaunty 1958 country classic Oh Lonesome Me into the moper’s lament that it probably always was under the surface.” EK

Don’t Let It Bring You Down Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 3/17/1970 at Home Studio in Topanga, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 21 CL Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 18.33 streaming About the Song: “Only Neil Young could have written the chilling” TL but “catuiously optimistic Don’t Let It Bring You Down” TB and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” “much less both on the same album.” TL

Birds Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 6/30/1970 at Sound City in Hollywood, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 4.88 streaming About the Song: After the Gold Rush “emphasizes delicate acoustic warbling with a dark hue; 'Birds' just might be his loveliest song.” EW’12

When You Dance I Can Really Love Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 4/6/1970 at Home Studio in Topanga, California Released: 3/13/1971 (single), After the Gold Rush (1970) Peak: 93 BB, 93 CB, 59 HR, 16 CL, 54 CN Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song: A

I Believe in You Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 8/5/1969 at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970), Decade (compilation: 1977) Peak: 49 CL Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:

Cripple Creek Ferry Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: 3/17/1970 at Home Studio in Topanga, California Released: After the Gold Rush (1970) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 4.75 streaming About the Song: Young “ends each side with brief piano-led melodies you wish would go on longer” DBW such as with Till the Morning Comes and “the twangy folk of Cripple Creek Ferry.” CQ

Resources and Related Links: DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Neil Young AM AllMusic.com review by William Ruhlmann JA John Alroy, Wilson & Alroy’s Record Reviews CQ Consequence.net (9/12/2022). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” EK Eric Klinger, PopMatters’ Counterbalance series (2010-2012) JM Jason Mendelsohn, PopMatters’ Counterbalance series (2010-2012) TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Page 385. RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 204. EW’12 Entertainment Weekly (9/27/2012). “Top 100 Albums” KN Keno’s Classic Rock Album Reviews TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Page 885-6. PM PasteMagazine.com (6/3/2024). “The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time” RV The Review (Oct./Nov. 2001). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” by Clarke Speicher 500 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” TB Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 133. TL Time Magazine (11/13/2006). “All-TIME 100 Albums” by Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light WK Wikipedia page for “Southern Man” DBW David Bertrand Wilson, Wilson & Alroy’s Record Reviews Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 8/31/2012; last updated 9/12/2026.