Neil Young’s career arguably contains more milestones than any peer of his this side of Bob Dylan or Van Morrison. And After the Gold Rush (released 8/31/70) is certainly one of them, if for no other reason than it represents perhaps his greatest act of independence, a reaffirmation of his insistence, as the Sixties turned into the Seventies, that he work alone and in tandem with Crazy Horse besides collaborating with Crosby, Stills & Nash. In fact, if Neil Young hadn’t already established his credibility and independence by the time this seminal LP came out, he was probably never going to.
After all, he’d been in and out of the Buffalo Springfield at least twice before the band split in 1968—he actually bailed on the group prior to 1967’s Monterrey Pop festival (replaced by David Crosby?!)—after which he released his eponymous debut album. Shortly thereafter, he commandeered some, but not all, members of a band called ‘The Rockets’ to back him up as Crazy Horse (a modified lineup of which released its own albums subsequent to this same interim).
Despite the original intentions for After the Gold Rush as a successor to the prior year’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Crazy Horse was not present in its entirety for the duration of the sessions. But the group did accompany Neil for “I Believe in You” and a deliciously slow, mournful cover of Don Gibson’s country hit “Oh Lonesome Me”, (which first appeared only as the B-side of a single but was subsequently added to CD reissues like ‘Disc 03’ in the Official Release Series). Meanwhile, at Young’s request, prodigy Nils Lofgren, then leader of his own band Grin, sat at piano much of the time, as did Jack Nitzsche, another erstwhile member of CH and past collaborator with Neil solo and in the Springfield; this ad hoc lineup in effect proffered a sound that consolidated Neil’s dual acoustic approach of the time, a format perhaps best represented by Live At Massey Hall and Live at the Cellar Door (both entries in the Archive series).
One of the most inspired surrenders to instinct (in a long line of them), this landmark sounds equal parts purposeful and lucid, remarkably so perhaps given its departure from the initial concept. But then, during this time too, Young had been offering solo shows in a format similar to those with CSNY, that is, two sets of one acoustic and one electric. As such, then, it’s thus easy to hear this record as almost a mirror image of its predecessor, where the so-called ‘wooden music’ there (“Round & Round (It Won’t Be Long)” and “Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets”) seasoned the electric tour-de-force like “Down by the River,” rather than vice versa.
In this revised context, “When You Dance, I Can Really Love” recalls Neil & The Horse at their exultant best. Except it’s not all members of the latter band, but only its drummer Ralph Molina in a rhythm section with CSNY bassist Greg Reeves. Then there’s the unrelenting electric riffing of “Southern Man:” notorious for its trading in stereotypes upon its initial release–and wayward as it might still seem even now in terms of political correctitude– this quasi-polemic might also be construed as unusually relevant to certain high-ranking state public officials during the summer of the 2020 pandemic.
The aforementioned cover of an established country artist like Gibson reverberates even apart from its genre-bending, plugged-in arrangement. That cut embodies the melancholy reflected in such quieter original numbers such as “Birds,” “Tell Me Why” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” and, in combination with Young’s piano-dominated tunes such as the title song (with its echoes of an environmental apocalypse), only serves to fortify Neil’s persona as the deceptively fragile and vulnerable loner.
Such is the image that pervades this music and one that he projects to this day (alongside that of the irascible yet socially-conscious iconoclast of course). Having become n uncommonly durable piece of work in the half-century since it’s release, After The Gold Rush may always remain that effort of ‘Real Neil”s best offered to the uninitiated and/or curious music lover who seeks to understand the perpetual attraction of the man and the ever-so-subtle, idiosyncratic product(s) of his creative mind.
