headlessparrot's Full Review: Harvest by Neil Young
The day my brother left home for University is certainly one of the happiest days of my life, if not the happiest. It’s not that I don’t appreciate him as a brother, it’s just that we couldn’t stand each other (and by the way, yes, this is going somewhere; just hold on) and very rarely agreed upon anything. He was a never ending source of bruises, fat lips and black eyes, and smart-*ss comments (although in retrospect, I think I may have picked up on some of that from him). He liked Math, I preferred English. It wasn’t really pleasant having to live under the same roof as the guy for 18-plus years. When he finally moved out, it was as if a huge weight had been lifted from everyone’s shoulders.
Of course, there was one exception to our mutual disgust of each other. That was music. It was rare that we ever agreed on anything that wasn’t music related. But when it came to rock & roll, he and I were nearly identical. We both listened to the same radio station, and we each owned several albums that the other did (mainly Metallica and Nirvana, but also others). That’s why when he came back a couple of months ago for a long weekend, praising Neil Young, I thought he’d been hit in the head one too many times. I flipped through his new collection of Cds that he’d purchased since leaving and discovered bands there that I’ve never even heard of. There was the standard stuff like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, but he also had records of everyone from the aforementioned Neil Young to Hayden and Phish. In fact, he took to telling us the story of the time him and his college buddies visited Young’s childhood home.
I just assumed he’d gone nuts, and for a couple of days, he dragged me around to several used record stores to go hunting. Apparently, he bought all his albums used because of his status as “broke college student.” While I thought the idea was cool, and now regularly visit used record stores, I was also a little freaked out by the fact that my brother spent $140 on used records, made up almost entirely of Neil Young discs. In fact, he cleaned out the stores entire Neil Young section. I didn’t know whether to be ashamed or just stunned.
Anyways, he left a couple of days later, and time passed until I finally got around to downloading KaZaa on my computer. After I got a couple of songs from albums, I ran out of ideas of what to download. After a couple of hours, I figured that I should try to get some Neil Young stuff.
I shouldn’t have doubted my brother, because the stuff I got was absolutely amazing music all-around. So I did some research, and a couple of days ago, I went down to the CD store and picked up a brand-new copy of Harvest, the album generally recognized as Young’s best solo work.
After achieving fame as a member of Buffalo Springfield, and more notably Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Canadian born Young struck out on his own with a self-titled solo-effort, and, a year later, After The Gold Rush. But it wasn’t until 1972 that Neil Young really got the recognition and appreciation he deserved.
Young’s third album, recorded with a back-up band known as the Stray Gators, in an exercise in everything from folk to bluegrass to country to even all-out rock and roll. Harvest is well-known not just because of the quality of the music, but because there are so many different variations of the rock and roll theme here. But through each of the different guises the music takes, it still remains powerful, haunting, and emotionally exhausting. At times, a single listen of Harvest, from beginning to end, can be like a punch to the stomach in it’s direct honesty and darkness.
Many music-experts and fans alike call Neil Young the “father of the grunge movement.” And while sometimes it’s easy to dispute the claims of the music professionals, this is one case where it’s hard to disagree. After listening to Harvest, I was left with nearly the identical feeling I had after polishing off Nirvana’s In Utero or Alice In Chain’s Dirt - two albums that were cornerstones of the grunge movement. Even Pearl Jam credits Young as an influence, and has played with him on several occasions. The music used to convey the message is different - Young used acoustic guitars and country instruments while the new generation used feedback-drenched guitars - but the message really wasn’t changed. In both cases, the songs are examples of powerful social commentary, angst, and personal issues. The only real difference is that Neil was doing it twenty-plus years before.
Harvest is not only home to Young’s only number-1 single (Heart Of Gold) and his best-selling album, but it’s also his personal favourite work. In an interview with NME (New Musical Express), he said that Heart of Gold “put me in the middle of the road; travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch,” but at the same time said that “Harvest is probably the finest record I’ve made.” It’s hard to make an argument when the claim comes right from the musician themselves, and this is no exception. In fact, I think that the majority of the world agrees with him.
Recorded almost entirely in Nashville, which explains much of the country element, at a time during which Young was forced to wear a brace because of a persistent back problem (something which may contribute to the honesty and despair that can be felt resonating throughout the disc), several guest artists were also used. Besides the other members of CSB&Y, contributors also included James Taylor and Linda Rondstadt, as well as the London Symphony Orchestra.
Harvest opens with Out On The Weekend, a slow and plodding number that is based mostly around a strong backing rhythm and some beautiful harmonica work by Young. The lyrics seem to have a very mystical quality to them, with a very emotionally draining quality. Young’s singing voice isn’t spectacular, but much like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, it has a quality to it that makes it feel very special.
The title track, Harvest follows at about the same pace, but this time, there’s also an absolutely beautiful accompaniment by a piano, and a rhythmic strumming of an acoustic guitar. The vocals are very slow and deliberate, with some of the finest lyricism I’ve ever heard:
Did I see you down
in a young girl's town
With your mother in so much pain?
I was almost there
at the top of the stairs
With her screamin' in the rain
A Man Needs A Maid, as close to a love song as your going to find on Harvest, has the London Symphony Orchestra playing the accompaniment. As a result, the song has several parts where the Symphony begins to swell as Young croons softly. The contrast of Neil’s raspy, honest voice, is a sharp contrast to the intense beauty of the Symphony’s playing, which adds a very “Beauty and The Beast” persona to the song. The song is supposedly about Young’s then girlfriend, actress Carrie Snodgress. Upon first inspection, the lyrics might seem to be sexist, but upon a closer look, there is a very innocent and helpless feeling in Young’s voice as he sings.
Heart Of Gold is the fourth track, and is Neil Young’s only U.S. number one hit. The song follows the same, slow and measured pace as much of the rest of the album, with the steel and slide guitars playing in the background. Lyrically, the song is about Young’s search for a “heart of gold,” which I guess could be interpreted as love, or something else entirely. It’s not really the best track on the record, but it is probably one of the more commercially viable numbers found on Harvest.
Are You Ready For The Country?, a really honky-tonk, rockabilly number, is followed by my favourite song from the record, Old Man. Featuring James Taylor on banjo and the rest of The Stray Gators playing a very conservative accompaniment behind Neil Young. The song, written about the caretaker of a ranch he purchased on 1970, is probably the slowest number on the record, even more ballad-like than some of the early songs. At the same time, though, this song is also the one with the largest country “element” to it, with the banjo and the steel guitars playing more in the forefront than in any of the other songs. The way Neil sings the chorus, there is absolutely haunting and heartbreaking feeling to it, that never fails to get me depressed:
Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true
There’s A World is the second track featuring the London Symphony Orchestra, which begs the question, “How much does it cost to rent these guys for a couple of days?” I don’t know if they did it as a favour or Young had to pay to get them, but either way, it’s worth it. The results speak for themselves, with the Orchestra providing an absolutely magnificent piece to compliment Neil’s writing. In fact, the first time I heard it, it reminded me of the music in movies when the bad guy enters the room. That must have been exactly what they were going for, because it works perfectly with the gravely voice of Young.
The only hard-rocker on Harvest is Alabama, another song (along with Southern Man and a couple of others) that examines the redneck (for lack of a better word) and racist-attitudes still prevalent in the American South. The track features a great, slow-paced , electric guitar, likely the only one found on the entire album. Even with the electric guitar, though, the country element still remains, with the rest of the Stray Gators still tinkling away on the piano and the steel guitars. Lyrically, Alabama is one of the strongest pieces Neil ever wrote, and one of the ones that is the most straightforward.
Oh Alabama
Banjos playing
through the broken glass
Windows down in Alabama.
See the old folks
tied in white ropes
Hear the banjo.
Don't it take you down home?
Alabama and, to a lesser extent, Southern Man, became fodder for Lynyrd Skynryd when they wrote the tune Sweet Home Alabama, a song that rebuts much of what Neil says, even referring to Young in a couple of different verses. But despite the songs, the Skynyrd and Young never feuded and were supposedly good friends. In fact, after the plane crash that killed much of the originally Skynyrd, Young played a portion of Sweet Home Alabama in concert.
The Needle And The Damage Done is a live performance by Young employing nothing but his voice and an acoustic guitar. I wondered what would possess him to put a single live track on an otherwise studio album, but it becomes obvious after a listen that giving the song any other treatment would suck all of the emotion out. The fact that it’s just Neil and his guitar playing to an audience heightens the emotion of the song, which contain very personal lyrics Neil wrote about the heroin use of many of his friends (the story goes that he fired a member of one of his back-up bands for being a junkie, giving him a plane ticket to L.A. and fifty bucks to enter a rehab facility. Instead, the guy used the money to buy pure heroin, which he overdosed on). The song is more sympathetic than anything because Young had experience with the drug from all the people he knew who were users. The song actually includes the line “milk-blood to keep from running out,” which is a reference to the way junkies would draw their own blood and then re-inject it to get a high (the reason being that they were so far gone on the drug that their blood contained enough of it to get a high). The song is very chilling in it’s presentation, and definitely would have been a fitting ending to the disc if it weren’t for Words.
Words (Between The Lines Of Age) returns to the studio format after the brief applause at the end of The Needle And The Damage Done. Once again, it’s more of a country number than anything, although this is the source of another electric guitar (although only at specific points during the song). Clocking in at 6:42, Words is the longest song on the entire album and does a magnificent job of finishing it with a bang rather than a whimper. There are several points where the band just seems to wander off on their own, creating a jam atmosphere not found anywhere else on the record. As the song nears the end, the guitars pick up and begin to solo before beginning to slow and fade into silence. It’s a very disturbing track that haunts you until the record ends and the silence is all that is left.
Harvest is easily one of the best albums that I’ve bought in recent years (regardless of the fact it dates back thirty or so years), and is a reminder that something doesn’t have to contain loud, thrashing guitars and endless solos to be rock and roll. Much like punk, rock and roll is an attitude - and Neil Young embodies that attitude to a ‘T,’ one of the reasons that Harvest is such an amazing listen.
Harvest is worth a listen by anyone, be they a fan of rock and roll, country, metal, whatever. It’s an album that transcends genres and contains a powerful message that still remains important to this day. Neil Young was once referred to as the Canadian Bob Dylan. I love Dylan, but Neil Young writes songs far more effective and gorgeous than Dylan, and he also writes songs that stand up better today. Alabama and The Needle And The Damage Done are two songs that are just as meaningful as a statement today as they were the day they were pressed to vinyl.
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