While in ‘Music City’, Young accepted a dinner invite from young producer Elliot Mazer, who had just launched Quadrafonic Sound Studios, a converted two-storey house in Nashville’s Music Row.
NEIL YOUNG HARVEST TV
A month after Toronto, while playing with Taylor and Ronstadt for a Johnny Cash TV Show session recorded in Nashville, Young was still travelling light, with just his (now iconic) Martin D-45 acoustic. In fact, Young’s relocation to balladville was purely a practical concern: persistent back problems, which later required surgery, had made it painful for him to play his weighty ‘Old Black’ Les Paul and he simply couldn’t perform properly with it, or even standing up. “I’ve written so many new ones that I can’t think of anything else to do with them other than sing them” – Neil Young
NEIL YOUNG HARVEST FREE
As part of his then Journey Through The Past tour, a newer image of Young alone – free from Buffalo Springfield and CSNY – hunkered over his Martin acoustic, hammering out those clanking chords, was one soon set in stone. Young liked them, his audience loved them. Potent, stripped-down songs called Heart Of Gold, Old Man and The Needle And The Damage Done were duly tested. In a now-legendary performance at Toronto’s Massey Hall on 19 January 1971, Young shuffled in front of his hometown audience and remarked of his songs: “I’ve written so many new ones that I can’t think of anything else to do with them other than sing them.” Get a copy of Harvest in patina’d-paper gatefold sleeve (preferably with that original lyric sheet inlay) and you can hold it up proudly to anyone: “This, people, is a real ‘record’.” “I can’t think of anything else to do…” Slap Harvest into a 2017 Hoxton coffee shop, and its artisanal charms would positively scream ‘hipster’!īut it’s also more genuine than that. Yet there was also a simultaneous, if seemingly contradictory, desire to go back to ‘old ways’ lofty ideals on ‘green’ LP packaging… It all adds up to vinyl paradise. There were crucial decisions about where to record and new technological methods to be explored. But there were more factors involved in making Harvest than Young finding some pals to embellish his reedy whine. He also tapped future folk/country ascendants Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, while previous bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash all provided backing vocals. Although his name alone adorns the cover, he hooked some celebrated Nashville country session musicians he dubbed the Stray Gators, and also the London Symphony Orchestra.
NEIL YOUNG HARVEST SERIAL
And Harvest may not even be Neil Young’s best albumĭespite his notorious hard-headedness, Young has always been a serial collaborator. It’s the one Neil Young album people who don’t really like Neil Young own. And it’s ultimately because Harvest yields some of the most accessible music Neil Young has ever made.
Lord knows, he can be an acquired taste, but if there’s one Neil Young LP that everyone seems to have – and by rights it should be owned on vinyl – it’s this. Young himself wasn’t always comfortable with Harvest’s fruits – more of which later – but it was almost a triumph of Young against himself. That’s right: Ed Sheeran is Neil Young’s fault (we joke). That well-worn ‘broken-hearted singer-songwriter’ vibe as valid ‘rock’ performance? It kinda starts with Harvest. 1 in the US: according to Billboard’s own figures, Harvest was 1972’s best-selling album – more copies, even, than The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street, Simon And Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits, Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust… and releases from Elton John, and a then-rampaging Deep Purple.Įven more than that, Harvest tapped into the growing sense in the early 70s that music really didn’t need to be ever-more grandiose – take that, Yes and your Fragile intricacies called The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)! Another noted star of the day was Carole King, whose Tapestry and Music also proved that good songs simply always win the day. It was Neil Young’s first big hit: and despite his ‘legend’ status, he’s really not flirted with the mainstream that often. But Harvest was and is more than just ‘another Neil Young LP’. Indeed, critics say it most certainly isn’t, with preceding solo salvos Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After The Gold Rush trumping it for sophistication and consistency. And Harvest may not even be Neil Young’s best album. Unintentionally, Harvest made Neil Young more famous than he’d ever been… Oddness followed, with one-armed drumming in old kitchens and the classic mixing instruction “More barn!” shouted from a boat. Wary of his growing fame and suffering a debilitating back problem, 1971 saw Neil Young retreat from the limelight to record a simple “homey” LP.
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