Neil Young

Who hasn't come across this bucolic cover in a record store at least once? And who knows how many people remember "Harvest" only as a cover image, when in fact it rightfully belongs among the milestones of music... By 1972, Neil Young was already a beloved and established singer-songwriter on the world music scene. He'd already delivered his first "heavy country" gem ("Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere") with Crazy Horse, and a landmark country-rock record in "After The Goldrush." On top of that, since 1969 he'd been working with David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young project, which had already given rock masterpieces like "Deja Vù" (1970) and "4 Way Street" (1971).

With "Harvest," the lone Canadian reached the peak of his commercial success, and despite Jack Nitzsche's insistence on piling on the heavy orchestration that had marked Young's earlier albums, the record is a gem. In 1972 - an incredibly fertile year for music - the bucolic, quintessentially "on the road" atmospheres, the tenderness of the acoustic ballads, and the energy of the two electric tracks all helped it win out over hard rock and progressive. "Harvest" was the best-selling album of 1972, outselling records like Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick" and Deep Purple's "Machine Head." It was recorded in Nashville in 1971 with the Stray Gators (Ben Keith, Tim Drummond, Kenny Buttrey, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor), but wasn't released until 1972 because Young underwent back surgery in the meantime. All the ingredients for a distinctly country-rock album are here...

The harvest opens with a gorgeous acoustic ballad, "Out On The Weekend," which picks up the "loner" theme ("see the lonely boy out on the weekend") - the solitary figure being the author himself - beyond mere lovesick melancholy. The title track, "Harvest," is the second song, following much the same line as "Out On The Weekend": a sweet country ballad built around bucolic love.

With "A Man Needs A Maid" things get more autobiographical. Young sings about his infatuation with Carrie Snodgress, the actress from "Diary of a Mad Housewife" (hence the title). The songwriter's romantic musings and his inimitable, thin voice just about keep afloat a track weighed down heavily by the orchestra's superfluous contribution. Any fear of hearing more timpani and cellos elsewhere on the record vanishes immediately with the wonderful "Heart Of Gold," which topped charts around the world for the whole year. Perhaps the most beautiful ballad of his career up to that point, "Heart Of Gold" is a true gem of music, the classic song to listen to alone or with someone special, maybe staring out of a train window or driving into a summer sunset. Ben Keith's pedal steel, the harmonica, the acoustic guitar and Young's magical voice all blend into something incredibly musical and melodious, a feeling of inner peace, something deeply cathartic. And after this avalanche of emotion comes the classic playful moment that also characterized "After The Goldrush": "Are You Ready For The Country?," a short track closing out side A (we're still talking in terms of vinyl LPs here).

Side B opens with another memorable song (the amazing thing about "Harvest" is that seven out of its ten songs have gone down in history), "Old Man," another acoustic ballad that also brings in the banjo (the quintessential instrument of classic country). Up to "Old Man" we've heard fairly easy lyrics, love songs only slightly introspective. But part of what fueled this huge cultural and commercial success was also the album's more "engaged" subject matter, which the Canadian always handled with great humanity, highlighting the details of everyday life. Young gives us a taste of this with "There's A World," perhaps the least successful track on the album - probably because of Jack Nitzsche's usual orchestral arrangements. The lyrics are hard to interpret, but they seem to open up a more serious vein within the record. Indeed, the song that follows is "Alabama," an anti-racist anthem that pairs up with "Southern Man" (from "After The Goldrush") on the theme of the South's guilt over slavery. As far as the Canadian was concerned, Alabama was stained by indelible crimes ("Alabama, you've got a weight on the shoulder that's breaking your back, your cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track"). The song sparked a feud with Lynyrd Skynyrd, who later defended Alabama and the South in "Sweet Home Alabama."

The parade through music history still isn't over, not least because the next track is the hugely famous "The Needle And The Damage Done." After the theme of racism, always close to Young's heart, comes that of drugs, an even more personal subject for the songwriter. The humanity and despair with which he addresses his friend and guitarist Danny Whitten (who would later die) is nothing short of moving. "I sing the song because I love the man, I know that some of you don't understand... A little part of it in everyone" - that's exactly the drama at the heart of the song: love for a friend as a human being, and understanding for his terrible situation. All of it delivered in Young's own aching, thin voice, accompanied only by acoustic guitar.

After the reflective moment, the usual electric charge kicks back in. The song that closes out the set is the long, splendid "Words (Between The Lines Of Age)", featuring a great tempo shift at the start and the inimitable energy that still defines the Canadian's rock soul today, despite the "wrinkles of time".

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14/11/2006