After the Gold Rush

This is the title track of Neil Young's third album, "After the Gold Rush" (1970). The three verses are thought to represent a movement from the past, through the present to the future. Here is a video of Neil Young performing it.

In his later concerts, Young changed the line "Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s" to "Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 21st century."

It has been covered by several artists, including Prelude, Natalie Merchant, Nana Mouskouri, Radiohead, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. In Dolly Parton's version the line, "I felt like getting high," was changed to "I felt like I could cry" (with Young's permission). When she was recording the song with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, she asked them what it meant: "They didn't know. So we called Neil Young, and he didn't know. We asked him, flat out, what it meant, and he said, 'Hell, I don't know. I just wrote it. It just depends on what I was taking at the time. I guess every verse has something different I'd taken.'"

Here is an interesting discussion about the meaning of the song.

Here is my rendition.

Heart of Gold

This song from the album Harvest (1972) was Neil Young's only number one hit single. It had back-up vocals by James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. It was one of a number of gentle acoustic numbers that he wrote when he had a back injury and was unable to stand for long or play his electric guitar. He could sit down to play his acoustic guitar. Originally the song was played on piano, but halfway through his 1972 tour, Young started playing it on guitar.

This song took Young into the mainstream of pop music. In the liner notes for his compilation album, Decade, he wrote, "This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch."

Although he liked Neil Young, Bob Dylan was not impressed by this song. In 1985, he wrote: "The only time it bothered me that someone sounded like me was when I was living in Phoenix, Arizona, in about '72 and the big song at the time was 'Heart of Gold.' I used to hate it when it came on the radio. I always liked Neil Young, but it bothered me every time I listened to 'Heart of Gold.' I think it was up at number one for a long time, and I'd say, 'Shit, that's me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me.'"

The song has been covered by many artists, including Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Boney M. and the James Last Orchestra. CBC Radio One, named it the third greatest Canadian song of all time after If I Had $1000000 (Barenaked Ladies) and Four Strong Winds (Ian and Sylvia).

Here it is sung by Sampson Chan at a session of the Hong Kong Folk Society at The Canny Man.

The Needle and the Damage Done

This song from the album Harvest (1972) is about the way some of Neil Young's musician friends became heroin addicts, in particular his Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, who later died of an overdose. The same theme came up again in Tonight's the Night, a song about the heroin overdose and death of Bruce Berry, a roadie for Crazy Horse.

On the handwritten liner notes included in the compilation album, Decade, Young said of the song, "I am not a preacher, but drugs killed a lot of great men."

It has been covered by various bands, including Duran Duran, Simple Minds, and The Pretenders, who lost members to drug-related deaths. English folk singer Laura Marling covered it on her August 2008 tour of Australia.

Neil Young sings it here on the Johnny Cash show (1971).

It is sung here by Nick Benzie at a session of the Hong Kong Folk Society at the Canny Man in Wan Chai. (coming)