With the number one song, "Heart of Gold," tucked in his hip pocket, Neil Young was all set to become a superstar. But in his own words "this song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch." I think that statement could be expanded to include the album Harvest, from which the song was culled.
Whether it was his intention or not to write a hit song, "Heart of Gold" provided him with one. He could have easily churned out albums like these, sat back, and collected his paychecks. That scenario alone might have prompted him into going another direction. After all, he has something of a maverick personality. But I have another thought: after listening to the finished album, Young knew it was below his talent, so he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and made a hard right turn.
Harvest is Neil Young's most popular album, but I fail to see why. It is a jumbled mess of hippie country, pretentious orchestral arrangements, and uninteresting rockers. For various reasons, Young chose to work with the Stray Gators, a country-rock band, instead of his usual backing band, Crazy Horse. This unfortunate decision led to a real drop-off in the music.
Much of the subject matter that Neil Young covers on Harvest deals with looking for love. However, the lyrics seem beneath Young's standards. Not that he was the most descriptive of lyricists, but some of what he penned would make even a first-year English major wince:
Dream up, dream up
Let me fill your cup
With the promise of a man
What works: "Heart of Gold" became Neil Young's first #1 hit in 1972 (in fact, it is his only Top 10 song, for those of you keeping score). I remember hearing it on the radio when it first came out when I was five years old. So, it is a sentimental favorite of mine, but it is also easy-going and gets to the point ("Searching for a heart of gold/And I'm getting old").
"Old Man," which became a minor hit, is in the same category. This track utilizes a banjo to give it a slight bluegrass flavour as Young draws the conclusion that old and young men are alike because they both need love in their lives. A trite sentiment, but a seemingly sincere way to bridge the generation gap.
For my money, the album's best song is toward the end with "The Needle and the Damage Done," a stark, haunting anti-drug piece. It is performed by Young on acoustic guitar and was recorded in concert. Though only two minutes long, it laments those musicians who succumbed to heroin's lethal, Siren-like seduction. In particular it was written for Danny Whitten, a member of Young's backing band, Crazy Horse, who was kicked out of the group because of his drug habit. Within a year of this album's release, Whitten would die from a heroin overdose.
What doesn't work: Damn near everything else. The first two tracks, "Out on the Weekend" and the title cut, are lazy, loping country-rock tunes. In and of themselves they are not that bad a pair of songs, but because they lack energy they just don't get the album off to a good start and I quickly began to lose interest. "Are You Ready for the Country?" contains some decent slide-guitar work, but cannot mask its puerile lyrics.
I was talkin' to the preacher
Said God was on my side
Then I ran into the hangman
He said it's time to die.
The bridge on "A Man Needs a Maid" is pretty, but it gets lost on this over-orchestrated number, and the ill-chosen lyrics and title give the song a chauvinistic undertone. "There's a World" is another overblown arrangement. On both numbers, arranger Jack Nitzsche, who worked with Young in Buffalo Springfield, recruited the London Symphony Orchestra. Let's just say that these two tracks are not a career highlight for anyone involved.
The two times Young goes electric don't add excitement, either. "Alabama" is an inferior re-write of "Southern Man" from Young's previous album, After the Gold Rush. Never mind that the lyrics tread the same, outdated notion of the South. What makes "Southern Man" a better song than "Alabama" is the interaction between guitars, piano, and rhythm section. Again, a difference between playing with Crazy Horse and playing with the Stray Gators. Meanwhile, the finale "Words (Between the Lines of Age)" sounds like a slapdash jam with the Stray Gators trying for all their might to sound like Crazy Horse. That it got tacked onto the end seems to indicate that Young felt the need to cover up all that had come before it.
Truth be told, there is nothing here that Gram Parsons, for example, didn't do at least as well. Though I believe Young is capable of making a good country-rock record, Harvest isn't it. It is as middle of the road as an artist of Young's caliber can get, plain and dull like the cover art that dresses it.
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