After The Gold Rush (1970)

The genesis of After the Gold Rush is amongst the strangest in Neil’s career. None other than Dennis Hopper funded his pal Dean Stockwell in writing a movie about the end of the world. Stockwell was an integral part of the artist community living in Topanga Canyon along with Neil, and they were great friends. So Neil said he wanted to write the soundtrack to Stockwell’s movie. It was described as a “Jungian self-discovery of the gnosis” to Neil’s biographer Jimmy McDonough in Shakey. Apparently the finale featured a huge tidal wave. Unfortunately the screenplay has been lost and the album After the Gold Rush only ended up featuring two songs based on the screenplay, the title track and “Cripple Creek Ferry.” But the album as a whole is a special one, representing a blending of styles as Neil pushed his songwriting further and further. I’ll always remember this album as the one that taught me about gatefolds. My dad opened up the LP and showed me the Joel Bernstein photo spanning the entire inside: Neil stretched out on a couch in his infamous patched jeans, looking tired, surrounded by guitars, his first wife Susan lighting up to the right. This is the image of Neil ingrained in my memory.

Overall, After the Gold Rush is less cohesive than Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, but the entire album does have a dark theme that runs through it. Whether he is talking about lost love, racism, homelessness, or nature, each song has a melancholy edge to it. His first marriage was starting to deteriorate during recording and would be completely dead by the time he started recording for the next album. That oncoming doom must have been in the air as he collected and wrote the songs that encompass this album. That sadness and sense of dread pervades the album and mixes with the apocalyptic movie concept.

The album was recorded by David Briggs in a small makeshift studio in Neil’s Topanga Canyon house with a motley crew: Ralph Molina on drums, Greg Reeves on bass, and Nils Lofgren on piano. Reeves was a Motown trained bass player who played with CSNY and Lofgren was an 18 year old prodigy who pestered Neil backstage at a gig and wound up in his house playing on his third album. The only thing was that Neil didn’t want him to play his guitar, he wanted him to play piano:

“I can’t play piano”? Perfect. That’s the sound I was looking for. I didn’t want to hear a bunch of fuckin’ licks. (Neil Young to Jimmy McDonough, Shakey)

Danny Whitten would come overdub some vocals and Billy Talbot contributed bass to one song, Jack Nitzsche surfaces on electric piano once. There’s also a flugelhorn player on the title track, but the core was Ralph, Greg, Nils, and Neil. The main reason why this wasn’t a full Crazy Horse album was Danny picking up a heroin habit during the 1970 tour for Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. Neil loved Danny and gave him some opportunities on this album and in the next couple of years, but there was a definite break from Crazy Horse for awhile. Neil could not deal with what the drugs did to Danny on a regular basis. That will soon come to a head.

I really love “Tell Me Why” and it’s very amusing to know that Neil stopped singing it because he had no idea what he meant by some of it’s most perplexing lines: “Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself? / When you’re old enough to replay young enough to sell.” He infamously quipped “What the fuck am I talking about?” about it. But just listen to that guitar. It’s amongst his most beautiful and expressive acoustic playing. This is one of the only songs on the album that Neil let Nils play guitar on, too, and their interweaving is like a tapestry of melody and rhythm. And those harmonies on the chorus (Nils, Ralph, and Danny)? Masterclass.

The title track is probably the most ubiquitous song in Neil’s career (even over songs that charted better), appearing nearly 700 times on the Sugar Mountain database. That’s his fourth most played song, but somehow the most recognizable to me. Perhaps because I listened to this album so much and had so little exposure to Harvest growing up. When Neil sings the line “And I felt like getting high,” a roar rises up from the crowd in every single live performance I’ve heard of it. It’s a beautiful song and one of Neil’s earliest about the environment and climate concerns. He has diligently updated the decade for “Look at Mother Natures on the run in the 1970s” line to ram home this has been a continuing problem that the world is ignoring.

“Only Love Can Your Heart” is another eternally memorable song for me. It’s probably the song I hear when I think of this particular album. The beautiful harmony and punchy rhythm that sticks is an earworm of the highest caliber. That loping drumbeat that feels like it goes up and down a hill every bar is perfect songwriting. “I have a friend I’ve never seen” is one of those Neil lines that instantly makes you wonder what this song is really about. Following it up with “Southern Man” is one of the odder sequencing bits, too. A sweet but woozy song leading into a noisey screed against racism is very Neil, though. I’ve always been a big fan of “Southern Man.” The blistering guitar, the drum/piano combo, the ferocious vocal, it’s all perfect to me. I like the messiness of it, the fuzzy edges, and just the latent anger in it. That polka rhythm is one of the strangest rhythms in Neil’s career and it’s all down to Nils being involved. What a coup for the young guy that hitchhiked his way into Neil’s studio. The odd sequencing continues with “Til the Morning Comes,” perhaps the slightest of all Neil compositions. There’s really not much to it but a single lyric, the flugelhorn, and Ralph’s drums. You can hear Neil’s laughing as he put this tracklist together.

I’ll admit to putting “Oh Lonesome Me” on some mixtapes for friends during high school when I was feeling particularly morose over some crush or other. This cover of a Don Gibson song features the original Crazy Horse lineup from a short Sunset Sound session instead of Neil’s house. You can definitely hear Danny’s voice shining through on the chorus, but his burgeoning habit made these sessions short lived. “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” gives us this blog’s title. It’s always been one of the Neil lyrics that stick in my mind and that riff is so strong, I can hear it in my head on command. This portrait of the downtrodden is one Neil’s best slice of life lyrics and really reflects the mood of the time. It could be a theme song for social justice in this day and age as our culture again questions the value of capitalist society. Apparently written during a trip to England (hence the “lorries”), this song was introduced by Neil on CSNY’s 4 Way Street with one of my favorite quotes of all time:

“Here is a new song, it's guaranteed to bring you right down, it's called ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down.’ It sorta starts off real slow and then fizzles out altogether.”

Out of this entire album, “Birds” is the song that really has no effect on me. When I hear it, I recognize it, but could never actually think of the name of it. There’s a good lyric and metaphor here, but the song doesn’t amount to much for me, personally. “When You Dance I Can Really Love” is likely the last recording of Danny and Neil playing together. It happened near the end of the session and has the original Crazy Horse line-up in it’s entirety, along with Nitzche playing some off the wall piano on it. I mentioned before how I’m not a big fan of “Cinnamon Girl” and this song feels like the band trying to recapture that song. My admission is that I like this a lot better. It’s still a bit on the pop side, but for me, it just rocks harder, has better harmony, and I can really hear Neil and Danny’s guitars in detail. “Cinnamon Girl” has always felt “smudged” for me, personally. I like the separation of instruments and players in this one. The off mic chatter throughout the song gives it a real live feel, too.

“I Believe In You” is similar to “Birds” for me. I know it, it sounds good, but I never think about it or really remember it after hearing it. However, “Cripple Creek Ferry” is one of my favorite Neil songs. I love the entire feeling of this song. I know it’s a big goofy, it’s short, feels like an afterthought, but I don’t care. It’s just a good time. I’d never skip this song, and it would be in any playlist of Neil songs I made. Easily makes my top three of the album.

Top 3:

1. Tell Me Why
2. Southern Man
3. Cripple Creek Ferry

Cut song: Birds

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