Neil Young: Harvest at 50

It comes as a shock that I have apparently lost my copy of Neil Young's Harvest album.  I never owned it in vinyl but bought the CD sometime in the 80's.  But I can't find it in the vast number of CDs that make up my audio collection.  Although I haven't listened to it from start to finish in a long while (I have listened to many songs on the album individually), Harvest is a lifelong favorite so I can't imagine what happened to it.  I discovered it was missing when I decided to give it a listen to celebrate its 50th anniversary today.

About 5 years ago I transferred my entire CD collection to digital MP3's.  It took me months to finish this project.  So, I have a copy of Harvest there.  Somehow I lost my copy in the last few years.  Very odd but then, I find oddity is more prevalent the older I get. This was one of those albums that most of my roommates and friends in college owned.  So I could always listen to or borrow theirs.  Which is why I didn't buy it until the late-80's to flesh out my collection.

It is strange for me not to be able to locate this recording.  It was 1972's top-selling album in the US, the only one that Neil ever had.  It rocketed him to super-stardom.  It featured the number one hot single “Heart of Gold” (which is the first song I remember hearing by Neil). It also put him, as he would later put it, “in the middle of the road.”  True enough, this is probably Neil's most accessible album.  Though primarily acoustic and tinged toward country folk, Harvest offers some interesting diversity and experimentation along with its popular appeal.  It remains one of my favorite Neil records and it felt really nice to listen to it a lot recently.

The recording sessions that led to Harvest began with Neil's appearance in February 1971 on The Johnny Cash Show, which attracted a lot of younger musicians, all of whom respected Cash's music.  By coincidence, James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt also appeared on that show.  Everybody hung out together afterwards.  Neil also met producer Elliot Mazer at this same time, who managed to coax Neil, James, and Linda along with some set musicians that Neil would ultimately dub The Stray Gators into a Nashville studio to try out some of Neil's new material.

The session included recordings of Neil's future number one hit “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man,” two songs he had been performing in live concerts for awhile.  It was a completely spontaneous recording session but Neil liked the results so much that he returned to Nashville in April for another Stray Gator session after completing other new songs while taking a break on his ranch.  Everything was clicking and sounded great.

The album was delayed by a few events.  First of all, ever experimenting with his sound, two of the new songs required a backing symphonic orchestra, which resulted in Neil traveling to London for a couple of sessions. Then Neil was experiencing severe back problems that required major surgery.  (His constant back pain was one reason he wanted to play at the piano and sitting with an acoustic guitar rather than standing with an electric guitar.  Hence, the need for folksy country-centric material.) Finally, the Gators traveled to Neil's ranch in September 1971 to record the final three songs in one of Neil's barns.  They were literally sitting on and around hay-bales playing into equipment hooked into a truck backed up to the barn.

Graham Nash joined-in near the end to supply some backing vocals.  This led to an interesting, humorous experience.  According to Nash and Neil's biographer, Jimmy McDonough, Neil invited Nash to have a private conversation with him.  To Nash's utter confusion, they got into a canoe and rowed out into the middle of a large pond near the ranch house and the barn.  Nash was wondering what in the world was going on until Neil yelled to start the music. 

Harvest was then played in its entirety with Neil's entire house set up as “left speaker” and the barn set up as the “right speaker.”  There they sat in the middle of the pond listening to this marvelous music being belted out by this gigantic improvised stereo system.  After the album finished, Elliot came down to the pond and asked how it sounded.  Neil shouted in reply “More barn!”

“Out on the Weekend” was recorded during the second Nashville session.  It sets the tone for the whole album.  I took an immediate liking to this tune in my college days.  I often sang along when playing it and several of my friends joined me at various times.  It was just such a relateable number with its clever lyrics, its love relationship themes, acoustic feel, and that incredible pedal steel work by Ben Keith.  I can't describe how wonderful it sounds to me today.

The title track is even slower, almost like a waltz or Texas two-step.  The obscure lyrics are even better than the previous track.  It is another love song (of sorts, it is about how love is harvested), with a sharp country twang, that invites several possible interpretations.  Along with “Out on the Weekend” and “Heart of Gold”, this tune was inspired by Neil's budding relationship with actress Carrie Snodgrass.  Another fantastic tune that I never tire of hearing.

“A Man Needs a Maid” is one of the songs backed by the London Symphony Orchestra.  Here Neil reveals the haunting depths of his passion and need for commitment.  The song actually sounds rather sexist by today's politically correct standards.  The orchestration (by Jack Nitzsche) is beautiful as is Neil's minimalist piano performance, a mini piano concerto.  This is obviously a tribute to Carrie as well.  The orchestra gives this song a refreshing grandeur that is not present on the earlier tracks.

“Heart of Gold” is Neil's most successful song ever, though its popularity would be rivaled later with some of the grunge material on Rust Never Sleeps (1979), the rocking stuff on Freedom (1989) and the country-folk follow-up album Harvest Moon (1992).  This is from the initial, spontaneous Nashville recording session and ends prominently with backing harmonies by Taylor and Ronstadt.  It is the result of several talented artists (both famous and unknown) coming together and producing music that captured the attention of the whole country.  It was also a number one hit in Canada and made the Top 10 lists in West Germany, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa and the United Kingdom.  

“Are You Ready for the Country?” is from the September sessions in Neil's barn.  It features backing vocals by Nash and David Crosby.  It is a nebulous song which doesn't reveal what Neil means by “country.”  Is it a political song?  A religious song?  Is it a song about the country styled music that Neil is experimenting with on Harvest?  Like a lot of Neil tunes, the lyrics crisscross between multiple themes.  Whatever, it is a fun, uptempo, honky-tonk type number that finishes off side one of the record.  

“Old Man” starts the flip-side.  Neil wrote this as a tribute to the elderly ranch hand that came with the place when Neil bought it.  There is a video of the guy on the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 release.  This is from the same session as “Heart of Gold” with Taylor and Ronstadt featured again on backing vocals.  Taylor plays the banjo wonderfully in accompaniment as well.  This is one of those songs Neil has performed multiple ways through the years.  It has that sort of staying power.  Even when he grew tired of playing “Heart of Gold” he continued to make this is a standard part of live acoustic sets.  This might be the song he has performed most off Harvest into the 21st century.  There are no “bad” versions of “Old Man.”  It always sounds great.

“There's a World” is a return to the symphonic experiment.  It has a bombastic quality to it.  Again, the orchestration is more intricate than the lyrics might suggest.  Stray Gator Nitzsche traveled with Neil to London to arrange and orchestrate both this recording and “A Man Needs A Maid.”  This is probably the weakest tune on the album and, for me, is not particularly memorable though it contributed to Neil's exploration of the symphonic form he would return to several times throughout his career.

“Alabama” introduces an electric sound to Neil's barn session.  It is sort of a follow-up to “Southern Man” from his After the Gold Rush (1970) album, a put-down of the racism and backwardness of this particular state compared with the rest of the country.  As such, it is easily the most politically charged song on the album.  It took some time for me to get comfortable with the song when I first heard it, though I really enjoy it today.  “Alabama” has the rough bite that is present in most of his political material like "Ohio" and "Rocking in the Free World."  The song is most famous for inspiring Lynyrd Skynyrd to write their hit “Sweet Home Alabama” which is a direct challenge to this song.  This, in turn, elicited rumors of animosity between them but, in reality, they admired one another.  Crosby and Stephen Stills provide the backing vocals on this one.

“The Needle and the Damage Done” is a song Neil performed on The Johnny Cash Show.  This particular track was taken from a January 1971 live performance rather than being rerecorded in the studio.   The lyrics here are not difficult to understand.  The song deals with heroin addiction, which had taken the lives of Danny Whitten and Bruce Barry earlier in Neil's life.  He would explore this theme in much more depth on Tonight's the Night (1973, 1975).  Audiences welcomed this “anti-drug” song at the time, though it is really just anti-heroin, since Neil partook of marijuana and cocaine for years.  It is a simple and easy to listen to song though the lyrics are rather bleak, a contrast that pervades much of his oeuvre.

“Words (Between the Lines of Age)” is the album's most experimental number and a strong concluding track.  Its length (almost 7 minutes) allows for several fine electric guitar riffs and mini-jam sessions which stand in contrast to the rest of the record.  Nitzsche is great on piano and threads well with the almost crying sound of Keith's work.  Nash and Stills are the backing vocals here, you can really hear Nash particularly, fantastic vocal harmonies drown out by power of the band.  The song strangely switches between radically different time signatures which gives it this constantly shifting up and down, disjointed feel.  This is one of Neil's most unique sounding songs up to this point in his still young career. (Hear an extended cut from that session here.)

Harvest is one of the best albums I've listened to in my life.  Oddly, critics did not receive it well in 1972.  Perhaps it was too popular for them and, critics being critics, they associated its success with kitsch.  Like with so many things, though, their assessment changed with the passage of time.  In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it 82nd on their list of the 500 greatest rock albums of all time.  I guess making the Top 100 puts you in the top-tier category.

I don't know where I'd put it in my own Neil rankings.  It is definitely in the top five for me, sometimes the best when the mood is right.  I have listened to it during every stage of my life starting with my college years, although I knew “Heart of Gold” and “The Needle and the Damage Done” from high school.  Regardless of my life circumstances, Harvest always has the easy feel of a well-worn pair of tennis shoes, comfortable and familiar.

Harvest was released 50 years ago today.

Late Note:  A week later I'm still enjoying this album.  Been playing the extended version of "Words" more than anything but a lot of "Alabama" too.