![]() ![]() When it appears that he had gotten what he wanted, if the love songs on Harvest are to be believed, he’s not completely comfortable with it. Young once described his music as being about “the frustrations of not being able to attain what you want”. Was the placement, the juxtaposition, a message to Snodgress, or to himself? There are no accidents in album sequencing, and Young had to have thought hard about where he wanted to place Heart Of Gold in respect to the rest of the songs. What’s unnerving is that after the ambiguity of A Man Needs A Maid, and his rather offhand declaration of love for Snodgress, he follows that song with Heart Of Gold, signifying, like Bono a decade after him, that he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. “I wasn’t a rock’n’roll girl,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. But if it was absorbing for fans to find him documenting the history of his relationship, it was even more so for Snodgress, who previously hadn’t had any notion who Neil Young was. It’s intoxicating for the listener to be able to crack open the door into the personal life of this brooding romantic. That is, of course, after first expounding in the first lines that all he really needed was ‘someone to keep my house clean, fix my meals and go away’, lines much more indicative of the character of the relationship than anyone would have suspected in those early days of 1971 when the couple met: ‘A while ago somewhere I don’t know when/I was watching a movie with a friend/I fell in love with the actress/She was playing a part that I could understand.’ He even chronicled the beginnings of his romance-cum-conquest of the actress in the third verse of the (much-maligned by feminists) song, A Man Needs A Maid. The romance unleashed something in the ordinarily emotionally austere Young, allowing him to be more forthcoming, autobiographical and less oblique than he had been before on record. More so, Harvest is the result of a confluence of serendipitous events, equally weighted by Young’s back injury – requiring him eschew his hefty electric guitars for much lighter acoustic versions hence writing on that instrument – and falling in love with Snodgress. It’s an album that deals with love of all stripes, chronicling his budding romance with Snodgress, his affection for his ranch hand Louis Avila, his sad regret over Danny Whitten’s dependence on heroin, his own search for self-love. But to be completely accurate, while it was released on February 14, 1972, the album was much more than a valentine to Carrie Snodgress. Halfway thorough his solo tour, Young decided to separate the two songs, and began to play them on guitar, cutting one single line: ‘Afraid/A man is afraid’ when the two songs became standalones. It earned Young his only No.1 record, with the single Heart Of Gold, a song that continues to live on, sung at countless weddings and funerals, and covered by artists as diverse as Zakk Wylde, Boney M, Johnny Cash, Jimmy Buffett and even Young’s Farm Aid partners Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews. Acoustic – except for two tracks – out of necessity, because of a back injury that required surgery, it took him an entire year to finish, recorded piecemeal in between tours, hospital stays, surgery recuperations and a high-profile romance that would lead to his first child.Īt one point Young called Harvest his “finest album” then, in 1977, he derided it in the liner notes of Decades, his retrospective collection, all but dismissing it as an MOR aberration.įorty years later, Harvest continues to confound critics and fans alike. “ In 1972, Neil Young released his fourth and what became his highest-charting album: Harvest. ![]() We also learn about the role and importance of Carrie Snodgress: They discuss how Harvest is a work that Young loved at first but has come to distance himself from. Classic Rock spotlighted the album last year. First, there are a couple of features that explore Harvest from different perspectives. I am going to end with a review concerning the album. Containing the iconic tracks, Harvest, The Needle and the Damage Done, Old Man, Heart of Gold and A Man Need a Maid, it is hard to understand how anyone could have anything bad to say about Harvest in 1972! With some incredible and high-profile collaborators (including James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash), there is so much to admire and pour over. Retrospective reviews have rightful acknowledged Harvest as a classic album that ranks alongside the very best of all time. Some felt that Young offered no new ideas and felt flat. Arriving a couple of years of, perhaps, his finest and most-acclaimed album, After the Gold Rush, some critics at the time felt Harvest was a retreat of After the Gold Rush. We mark fifty years of Neil Young’s fourth studio album, Harvest. ![]()
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