Neil Young “Southern Man” released on After the Gold Rush

Southern Man Neil Young

Writer(s): Neil Young (see lyrics here) Released: August 31, 1970 (on After the Gold Rush) First Charted: -- Peak: 3 CL, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 17.5 video, 20.41 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Canadian singer/songwriter was one of the founders of the folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield after moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s. He followed their brief run with a solo career in 1968. After two albums, he reunited with Stephen Stills, his bandmate in Buffalo Springfield, for the chart-topping, multi-platinum 1970 album Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Before year’s end, Young was back with his third solo album, After the Gold Rush, a platinum, top-five album. One of the album’s highlights was “Southern Man.” “Its Crazy Horse-style loping tempo and Young’s burning guitar lines made ‘Southern Man’ an instant live favorite.” TC “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 Skynrd 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 in regards to his “Alabama” song, the criticism was deserved because Young was “condescending and accusatory.” WK Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Neil Young TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Page 385. WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 4/24/2024.

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 Sales (in millions): 2.5 US, 0.6 UK, 5.5 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Tell Me Why After the Gold Rush (6 CL) Only Love Can Break Your Heart (9/19/70, 33 US, 20 CB, 32 GR, 14 HR, 11 CL, 16 CN) Southern Man (3 CL, 1 DF) Till the Morning Comes Oh, Lonesome Me Don’t Let It Bring You Down (21 CL) Birds When You Dance You Can Really Love (3/13/71, 93 US, 93 CB, 59 HR, 16 CL, 54 CN) Believe in You (49 CL) Cripple Creek Ferry Total Running Time: 33:32

Rating: 4.541 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings) Quotable: -- Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: Given Young’s already diverse discography at this point in his career, it was anyone’s guess what he would deliver for his third solo album. He’d already been a part of the hugely influential group Buffalo Springfield, released a folk-and-country oriented solo album, and the “brain-shredding guitar powerhouse” TL Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. Earlier that year he gave the already successful Crosby, Stills & Nash another dose of clout when they teamed for 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.” AMG 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.” AMG The album “matched the tenor of the times in 1970.” AMG Its “dark yet hopeful tone” AMG “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 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 “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 Young “balances masterful hard rockers…with beautiful acoustic songs.” DBW In regards to the former, Southern Man was one of the album’s “few real rockers,” AMG showing a talent for tackling “political issues with angry, cranked-up guitars.” RV With “unsparing protest lyrics typical of Phil Ochs” AMG the song “attacked the racism inherent in Southern culture of the day.” RV Meanwhile the “subdued title track 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.” AMG “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. He ends each side with brief piano-led melodies you wish would go on longer (Cripple Creek Ferry, Till the Morning Comes).” DBW “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 “Only Neil Young could have written the chilling Don’t Let It Bring You Down or the homespun Only Love Can Break Your Heart – much less both on the same album.” TL The latter is “one of Young’s most beautiful tracks” RV marked by “his distinctively off-center whine warns of the perils of new love.” RV In the end this is “one of the definitive singer/songwriter albums, and it has remained among Young’s major achievements.” AMG “After the Gold Rush 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 and “Neil is close to his peak here.” JA

Resources and Related Links: DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Neil Young AMG All Music Guide review by William Ruhlmann JA John Alroy, Wilson & Alroy’s Record Reviews EK Eric Klinger Counterbalance series at PopMatters.com JM Jason Mendelsohn Counterbalance series at PopMatters.com PM PasteMagazine.com (6/3/2024). “The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time” RV The Review (October – November 2001; Vol. 128: numbers 12-23). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” by Clarke Speicher TL Time Magazine (11/13/2006). “All-TIME 100 Albums” by Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light DBW David Bertrand Wilson, Wilson & Alroy’s Record Reviews Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 8/31/2012; last updated 6/4/2024.

Edwin Starr “War” hit #1

War Edwin Starr

Writer(s): Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong (see lyrics here) Released: June 10, 1970 First Charted: July 11, 1970 Peak: 13 US, 12 CB, 11 HR, 3 RB, 3 UK, 1 CN, 37 AU, 5 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.2 UK Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 25.4 video, 85.89 streaming

War Bruce Springsteen

Recorded: September 30, 1985 (live) Released: November 10, 1986 First Charted: November 21, 1986 Peak: 8 US, 9 CB, 12 RR, 4 AR, 18 UK, 11 CN, 38 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 2.5 video, -- streaming

Awards (Edwin Starr): Click on award for more details. Awards (Springsteen):

About the Song: Motown liked to recycle songs amongst their roster of artists. In 1967, Gladys Knight & the Pips hit #2 with “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” The next year, Marvin Gaye took it to #1. 1967 also saw Gaye paired with Tammi Terrell for the top-20 hit “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” a song which would top the charts in 1970 – in fact, it knocked Edwin Starr’s “War” from the perch. “War” was another of those recycled songs. The song was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, who also penned “Grapevine.” They also wrote several top-10 hits for the Temptations, including the #1 “I Can’t Get Next to You.” The pair wrote everything for the Temptations’ 1970 album Psychedelic Shack, which included the non-single “War.” The song was “a hard, intense stomp-chant, as visceral as what the moment demanded.” SG Motown received hundreds of letters pleading for them to release it as a single FB but head honcho Berry Gordy was leary to unleash an anti-war song SG on the group’s “large and surprisinginly conservative Black middle-class audience.” BD Whitfield asked Edwin Starr if he’d like to record it. FB He was “a journeyman soul belter who was low on the Motown totem pole.” SG Essentially he had “no fan fase to alienate.” BD He’d been signed to the label in 1966, but didn’t record anything for two-and-a-half years while contract negotiations stalled. FB Finally, in 1969 he found success with the top-10 hit “Twenty-Five Miles,” but it was followed by several failed singles. The Temptations’ version of “War” “is nasty and funky, but it’s not the vein-throbbing wail that it would eventually become.” SG Starr’s version “was harder and choppier, all its power coming from that merciless rhythmic march…The groove is huge and all-consuming…There’s fuzz all over the guitars, and a nervous tambourine tingles all through it. This is weaponized music, music that’s impossible to ignore.” SG Vocally, Starr “swipe[s] all of [James] Brown’s affectations, right down to that perfectly placed ‘good God, y’all’ on the chorus.” SG Bob Dylan says, “One can’t help but wonder whether or not the peacenik sentiment behind the song was sincere or merely the next relevant subject to be mined in the attempt to reach Young America’s wallets…Even if it was a blatant exploitation of the peace movement, it’s still a stronger song than ‘Eve of Destruction.’” BD It is ironic that the song asking, “war, what is it good for?” is co-written by Barrett Strong who gave Motown “its first hit, that oft-covered anthem of avarice – ‘Money.’” BD In 1985, Bruce Springsteen performed “War” while touring in support of his monstrously successful Born in the U.S.A. album. The song was featured on the monstrously successful live box set in 1986 and was released as a single. Before singing, Springsteen offers his own perspective on the Vietnam War, for which he received a draft notice but then failed his physical. He warns the young members of the audience that the next time the country may come looking to them and that “blind faith in your leaders, or anything, will get you killed.” Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Edwin Starr DMDB encyclopedia entry for Bruce Springsteen FB Fred Bronson (2003). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (5th edition). Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 280. BD Bob Dylan (2022). The Philosophy of Modern Song. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Pages 211-5. SG Stereogum (1/10/2019). “The Number Ones” by Tom Breihan WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 11/5/2022.