Young’s Greatest Commercial Success
Harvest “made Young into a bona fide star and cemented his legacy.” JM “According to Billboard’s Year-End Archives, Neil Young’s Harvest was the best-selling pop album of 1972… Buoyed by the singles ‘Heart of Gold’ and the only slightly less ubiquitous ‘Old Man,’ Neil Young had finally become a major league act in his own right—and something about that spooked him good.” EK He “famously said that Harvest placed him in the middle of the road, and that sent him heading back to the ditch.” EK
It’s an interesting take from an artist who’d already become firmly planted in the mainstream. Young’s previous two solo efforts, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After the Gold Rush, mined gritty rock anthems and folky love songs to perfection.” SY The latter was a top-five double platinum album, coming on the heels of Déjà Vu, the seven-time platinum #1 album from earlier that same year.
Stumbling Accidentally into Mainstream
“This album is a lot of things, but it hardly sounds like a naked grab for the mainstream.” EK Still, while “Harvest may not have been an intentional cash grab but it is by far the most accessible suite of songs he had written thus far in his career.” JM The album featured “the solitary troubadour…at his most elegiac.” ZS “It’s the perfect album when the mood and time are just right.” EK
“What makes Neil Young such a compelling songwriter (when he is in fact being a compelling songwriter) is his facility with melody. Much like Bob Dylan, Young has a voice that could be described as not conventionally attractive, so when he’s able to match that voice with effective lyrics and a compelling melody, he’s one of the best songwriters in the business.” EK
The Album’s Overall Sound
“On his previous record, After the Gold Rush, there are some major swings with electric shronk to straight folk. On Harvest, there is more of an even keel, as if Young had achieved an equilibrium that had thus far been eluding him.” JM “Harvest has a much better flow than After the Gold Rush.” JM “Instead of having to digest Young’s unique take on melody from several angles and several genres, we get to see him showcase his melodic skill as it snowballs through the entire album before coming to a slightly psychedelic conclusion on ‘Words (Between the Lines of Age).’” JM
In reference to the album’s “simple arrangements, simple songs” AD some “critics accused him of dumbing down at the time.” JI One could argue that “the narrowing of Young’s palette makes Harvest a less compelling listen than After the Gold Rush.” EK Although Harvest “lacked the through-the-night-until-the-morning-after crush of its predecessors” SY it “can now be seen as simply another facet of Young’s musical personality, representing the acoustic, pastoral idyll that usually preceded another barrage of electric howl.” JI In any event, it was Young’s “most popular album” AM and sealed his “voice-of-a-generation fate.” SY
Young recruited a crew of session players he christened the Stray Gators to craft a record in Nashville that fit into a “country-folk vein” SY but he still “employ[ed] a number of jarringly different styles” AM including “an acoustic track [and] a couple of electric guitar-drenched rock performances.” AM Still, Young’s writing here is “more concise and cohesive” JM and the album has “an overall mood and an overall lyric content, and they conflict with each other: the mood is melancholic, but the songs mostly describe the longing for and fulfillment of new love.” AM
The Album’s Place in History
Harvest can be viewed as the birth of “the not-yet-officially-minted genre of alt-country. With the lap steel and the slide guitar in tow, Young found a way to combine the folk stylings and the electric shronk that seemed to play off so diametrically opposed on After the Gold Rush.” EK It can also be viewed as “the climax of that first wave of rootsy sounds that came in the wake of the Sgt. Pepper era.” EK “Harvest, by virtue of its massive popularity and orchestral sheen, sounds like a tipping point…After this, L.A. rock kept getting slicker and less folksy, even as Neil started making his journey toward the ditch. Countrified rock came to mean the Eagles.” EK
“Harvest has another legacy that extends into the ’90s, when you consider the extent to which Neil Young was adopted by Pearl Jam and other alternative-flavored acts of the time. As that generation experienced its own angsty ambivalence toward success, Neil Young became a pretty suitable guru,” EK although “ it seems strange that he would be anointed the anti-fame guru for a new generation, thereby making him all that more famous.” JM
The Songs
Here are insights into the individual songs.
“Are You Ready for the Country”
Ultimately the overall “sound was Americana…stripped down and rebuilt with every jagged edge exposed.” 500 That means “much of it is country-tinged” AM such as on Are You Ready for the Country, when “Young detoured briefly to the Nashville mainstream.” AZ
“A Man Needs a Maid” and “There’s a World”
“Young’s concerns are perhaps most explicit on the controversial” AM and “string-drenched domesticity” SY of A Man Needs a Maid. The song “contrasts the fears of committing to a relationship with simply living alone and hiring help.” AM
That song and There’s a World were recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Barking Assembly Hall in Barking, London, England. In the PopMatters.com column Counterbalance, Eric Klinger says, “Jack Nitzsche’s overly lush arrangements…make them sound like they could be outtakes from the Original Cast album of South Pacific.” EK
“Out on the Weekend”
“His usual dissonant touches, like the otherworldly guitar in Out on the Weekend, are less spooky in this new context.” AZ
“Words (Between the Lines of Age)”
Songs like “the hypnotic rocker” AZ Words (Between the Lines of Age), with “a little distorted guitar along the way,” AD “predict Tonight’s the Night, Young’s haunted 1975 classic.” AZ
“Old Man”
“The singer’s acquired-taste voice comes across smooth and beautiful” AZ in songs like the aforementioned “Out on the Weekend” and “rolling laments like Old Man” SY which “are unusually melodic and accessible.” AM
“Heart of Gold”
Nowhere is this more apparent than Heart of Gold, “by far Young’s most commercial-sounding song,” AZ complete with “steel guitars and Linda Ronstadt’s backup vocals.” AZ The latter “helped set the stage for the Seventies soft-rock explosion.” 500
“Harvest”
“Much of the album was written whilst Neil was in love, a new blooming love affair.” AD As such, “Neil sounds yearning and the lyrics are very evocative” AD on the title cut. “The steel guitar, the piano – the backing track is perfectly done, beautifully felt – a real classic song, no question.” AD
“The Needle and the Damage Done”
“The harrowing portrait of a friend’s descent into heroin addiction” AM on “the deceptively gentle” AZ The Needle and the Damage Done is “one of the most poignant songs about drug addiction ever recorded.” ZS It is a “haunting” and “honest plea” which was recorded live. AD This and the love songs “remain among Young’s most affecting and memorable songs.” AM It was recorded live at UCLA on January 30, 1971. WK
“Alabama”
The song Alabama was “an unblushing rehash of ‘Southern Man,’” WK a song from Young’s After the Gold Rush album. Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd responded to the song with their iconic hit “Sweet Home Alabama” in 1973, saying, “I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern Man don’t need him around, anyhow.” WK In his Waging Heavy Peace autobiography, Young said he “richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave mewith their great record. I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending.” WK
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