My dad and I were listening to “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young last weekend (it’s not on this album, but is a great song nonetheless). It’s this peaceful song about finding yourself still in love years after meeting someone– which is not a theme you hear a lot in a love songs (unless you’ve been rocking out the Orleans’ classic to “Still the One” on repeat). But to the point, we were laughing because it’s this really pretty, romantic song and you could have anyone in the world sing that song and it wouldn’t sound nearly as good or as pretty as it does in Neil’s tinny, nasally voice. So much for the Grandpa of Grunge.
neil young’s 1972 album (first solo record after CSN&Y)
I’m a big Neil Young guy. He gets me. I get him. I’ve cultivated a pretty serious relationship with his music. (Although I don’t know him, at this point, I’m pretty sure we’d be buddies). It’s important to stop and note, however, the dichotomy of Mr. Young. With Neil, you can have it one of two ways. You can have “Rocking In the Free World” Neil Young or “Harvest Moon” Neil Young. In other words, the grunge side of Neil or the folk side. Harvest, on the other hand, is a masterful intersection of the two sides of Neil.
After he left Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Neil recruited a group of country music session players known as The Stray Gators to play on his new album. I think the mix between these musicians and the songs Neil wrote really created an alternative blend of rock. They really pioneered something and the sound they cultivated remains extremely relevant in today’s music. I can’t help but feel that artists like Drive-By Truckers, Wilco, and MMJ channel the sound Neil originated on Harvest.
neil & the stray gators pictured here on the back of the vinyl recorded a majority of the album on neil’s ranch in California (the foreman of the ranch provided the inspiration for “old man”)
On the album, Harvest has debatably the two greatest Neil Young songs ever, “Old Man” and “Heart of Gold,” which are both the type of song that can play a pivotal role in shaping someone’s musical tastes (I know they did for me). It’s also cool to think that James Taylor played the “banjitar” (banjo guitar) on “Old Man.” Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang the majority of the backing vocals for the album. Harvest gained Neil Young unprecedented commercial success and he took that success in a pretty classic “stick it to the man” fashion later writing that the record “put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.” (Maybe that’s why I’ve yet to meet the man. I’m pretty sure I’m more of a middle of the road human being)
Some of my favorites:
“Out on the Weekend”
As the album’s opener, “Out on the Weekend” grabs you hypnotically. It has one of my favorite of Neil’s harmonica bits and showcases the pedal steel guitar that remains prevalent throughout the rest of the album. The lyrics deal with a women that is really “out of league” of the singer. Not so far out that she won’t have anything to do with him, but just far enough for anything to really happen. The best he can do is to just try to “stay up somewhere in her head.”
“Alabama”
Alabama is one of Neil’s biting criticisms of the South. As to the message, I think being an advocate or an ally for an underrepresented, marginalized people can be extremely hard to do well. Neil Young, however, is gifted when it comes to critiquing the rooted racism of white culture in the deep south (and at pissing off Lynyrd Skynyrd) .
Musically, it drones a little, but it’s a really good example of how the album incorporates grunge and folk– and if the line “banjos playing through the broken glass” doesn’t evoke the perfect image of the deep south, I don’t know what else could.
“The Needle and the Damage Done”
This track is one of the more well-known songs on the album and it’s pretty obvious lyrically what it deals with. In addition to confronting the subject of heroin addiction, however, Neil manages to work in to the lyrics the most sonorous word in the English language (well, at least according to Edgar Allen Poe) “cellar door.” The track is a live recording from a performance at UCLA in 1972.
#vinylvednesdays 
Reblogged this on AMERICA ON COFFEE.
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