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Neil Young: Harvest

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Warner Bros. Records
Released: 1972.02.10
Time:
 37:32
Category: Pop/Rock
Producer(s): See Artists ...
Rating: *********. (9/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.neilyoung.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 1998
Price in €: 9,99



 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Out on the Weekend (N.Young) - 4:35
[2] Harvest (N.Young) - 3:03
[3] A Man Needs a Maid (N.Young) - 4:00
[4] Heart of Gold (N.Young) - 3:05
[5] Are You Ready for the Country? (N.Young) - 3:21
[6] Old Man (N.Young) - 3:22
[7] There's a World (N.Young) - 3:00
[8] Alabama (N.Young) - 4:02
[9] The Needle and the Damage Done [live] (N.Young) - 2:00
[10] Words [Between the Lines of Age] (N.Young) - 6:42

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Neil Young - Guitar, Harmonica, Composer, Vocals, Producer

Stray Gators - Group, Performer
Kenneth A. Buttrey - Drums
David Crosby - Guitar, Vocals
Tim Drummond - Bass, Drums
John Harris - Piano
Ben Keith - Guitar, Steel Guitar, Vocals
Graham Nash - Vocals
Jack Nitzsche - Guitar, Piano, Arranger, Keyboards, Producer, Slide Guitar

Linda Ronstadt - Vocals
Stephen Stills - Vocals
James Taylor - Vocals

The London Symphony Orchestra - Orchestra, Performer
David Meecham - Conductor

Henry Lewy - Producer
Elliot Mazer - Producer
Joel Bernstein - Photography
Tom Wilkes - Design


 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s

1972 LP Reprise 2032
1982 LP Nautilus NR-44
1990 CD Reprise 2-2277
1990 LP Reprise MSK-2277
1990 CS Reprise M5-2277
2002 DVA Warner Bros. 48100
2007 CD Wea Japan 75089

Young's fourth album includes the No.1 single 'Heart Of Gold'. Essentially a folk-rock country album, its songs are treated to a much more lavish production than those of his previous release 'After The Goldrush'. On 'Harvest' he is accompanied by Jack Nitsche, Ben Keith, Tim Drummond and Kenny Buttrey.

Recognized as one of Young's (and hence one of rock & roll's) finest albums, HARVEST put the singer on the mainstream map with the mega-hit "Heart of Gold," which defined a soft folk-rock style frequently revisited by lesser artists throughout the 1970s. It also features some of his darker compositions, like the entropy-obsessed "Old Man" and the junkie eulogy, "The Needle and the Damage Done," one of Young's most haunting and compelling songs.

Deceptively laid-back-sounding country-rock plaints like "Out on the Weekend" and the title cut caress the ear unassumingly, pulling you into the more ominous subtext that is present even in the rollicking "Are You Ready for the Country." As always, Young has an ear for contrasts, laying down heavy rock ("Alabama") beside his balladry, and even employing the London Symphony Orchestra on the excellent confessional "A Man Needs a Maid." Due to back troubles, Young recorded much of this material while wearing a brace, a fact that seems audible in the tension and unease that underlies the friendly, acoustic surface of this superb release.

Recorded at Quadrafonic Sound Studio, Nashville, Tennessee; Broken Arrow Studios, San Francisco, California; Barking Town Hall, London, England; Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, California.



Neil Young's most popular album, Harvest employs a number of jarringly different styles. Much of it is country-tinged, although there is also an acoustic track, a couple of electric guitar-drenched rock performances, and two songs on which Young is accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. But the album does have an overall mood and an overall lyric content, and they conflict with each other: the mood is melancholic, but the songs mostly describe the longing for and fulfillment of new love. Young's concerns are perhaps most explicit on the controversial "A Man Needs a Maid," which contrasts the fears of committing to a relationship with simply living alone and hiring help. Over and over, he sings of the need for love in such songs as "Out on the Weekend," "Heart of Gold," and "Old Man," and the songs are unusually melodic and accessible; the rock numbers "Are You Ready for the Country" and "Alabama" are in Young's familiar style and unremarkable, and "There's a World" and "Words (Between the Lines of Age)" are ponderous and overdone. But the love songs and the harrowing portrait of a friend's descent into heroin addiction, "The Needle and the Damage Done," remain among Young's most affecting and memorable songs.

William Ruhlmann - All Music Guide



Proclaiming his intentions with "Are You Ready for the Country?" Young detoured briefly to the Nashville mainstream. On this No. 1 1972 album, even the singer's acquired-taste voice comes across smooth and beautiful--the smash "Heart of Gold," with steel guitars and Linda Ronstadt's backup vocals, is by far Young's most commercial-sounding song. His usual dissonant touches, like the otherworldly guitar in "Out on the Weekend," are less spooky in this new context. The last two tracks, the deceptively gentle "The Needle and the Damage Done" and the hypnotic rocker "Words (Between the Lines of Age)," predict "Tonight's the Night," Young's haunted 1975 classic.

Steve Knopper - Amazon.com essential recording



Seine Absichten machte er deutlich mit der Frage "Are you ready for the country?" und dann machte Young einen kurzen Abstecher zum Nashville Mainstream. Dieses Album wurde 1972 zur Nummer eins, sogar die vornehm-geschmackvolle Stimme kommt sanft und angenehm rüber -- der Erfolgshit "Heart Of Gold", mit Stahlgitarren und Linda Ronstadts Stimme im Hintergrund, ist der bei weitem kommerziellste Song von Young. Seine sonst eher dissonanten Klänge, wie das völlig entrückte Gitarrenspiel bei "Out On The Weekend" klingen in diesem neuen Umfeld weniger gespenstisch. Die beiden letzten Tracks, das enttäuschend sanft geratene "The Needle And The Damage Done" und der hypnotisch wirkende Rocker "Words (Between The Lines Of Age)" deuten bereits auf "Tonight's The Night" hin, Youngs faszinierenden Klassiker aus dem Jahre 1975.

Steve Knopper - Amazon.de



Mit dem vierten Album fuhr der Sänger mit der Fistelstimme 1972 erstmals die volle Ernte ein und landete in den USA und in England auf Platz 1 der Charts - nicht zuletzt wegen seines Heart Of Gold.

© Audio



At the end of this, five'll getcha ten, most of you are going to be exclaiming lividly, "O what vile geeks are rock critics! How quick are they to heap disapproval on one whose praises they once sang stridently at the first sign of us Common Folk taking him to heart en masse! How they revel in detesting that which we adore!" However often I might second with a hearty "right on!" such a perception of the critic/audience chasm, though, I will swear under oath before the highest court in the land that such an exclamation is far from apt in the case of a displeased review of Neil Young's Harvest.

Different folks, it must be seen, respond to overwhelming mass acceptance with different strokes. While some respond to commercial prosperity as a means to realizing all those brainstorms that a lack of loot formerly made impossible, to expanding and growing as an artist through the exploitation to heretofore unattainable resources, others either wilt artistically in the face of a mass audience's expectations–resorting to conscious imitations of what was once instinctive and spontaneous–or greatly relax the standards by which they once judged themselves, having concluded (usually quite correctly) that once one attains superstar status the audience will eagerly gobble up whatever half-assed baloney he pleases to record.

On the basis of the vast inferiority relative to his altogether spectacular Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere of the two albums he's made since teaming up with Crosby, Etc. (and thus insuring that he'd never again want for an audience), it can only be concluded that Neil Young is not one of those folks whom superstardom becomes artistically.

Harvest, a painfully long year-plus in the making (or, seemingly more aptly, assembling), finds Neil Young invoking most of the L.A. variety of superstardom's weariest cliches in an attempt to obscure his inability to do a good imitation of his earlier self.

Witness, for example, the discomfortingly unmistakable resemblance of nearly every song on this album to an earlier Young composition–it's as if he just added a steel guitar and new words to After The Gold Rush. Witness his use of said steel guitar to create a Western ambience worlds less distinctive than that conjured in earlier days by his own vibratodrenched lead guitar.

Witness, in fact, that he's all but abdicated his position as an authoritative rock-and-roller for the stereotypical laid-back country-comforted troubadour role, seldom playing electric guitar at all any more, and then with none of the spellbinding economy and spine-tingling emotiveness that characterized his playing with Crazy Horse. Indeed, his only extended solo on the album, in "Words," is fumbling and clumsy, even embarrassing.

Neil's Nashville backing band, the Stray Gators, pale miserably in comparison to the memory of Crazy Horse, of whose style they do a flaccid imitation on such tracks as "Out On The Weekend," "Harvest," and "Heart of Gold." Where the Crazies kept their accompaniment hypnotically simple with a specific effect in mind (to render most dramatic rhythmic accents during choruses and instrumental breaks), the Gators come across as only timid, restrained for restraint's sake, and ultimately monotonous.

With that going on behind him, Neil's lyrics dominate the listener's attention far more than befit them. Neil's verbal resources have always been limited, but before now he's nearly always managed to come up with enough strong, evocative lines both to keep the listener's attention away from the banality of those by which they're surrounded and to supply the listener with a vivid enough impression of what a song is about to prevent his becoming frustrated by its seemingly deliberate obscurity and skeletal incompleteness. In his best work, as in Everybody Knows, wherein Crazy Horse's heavy, sinister accompaniment made unmistakable the message (of desperation begetting brutal vindictiveness) which the almost impenetrably subjective words hinted at only broadly, the basic sound of a song further vivified what lyric fragments suggested.

Here, with the music making little impression, the words stand or fall on their own, ultimately falling as a result of their extremely low incidence of inspiration and high incidence of rhyme-scheme-forced silliness. A couple are even slightly offensive–"The Needle And The Damage Done," is glib, even cute, and displays little real commitment to its subject, while "There's A World" is simply flatulent and portentuous nonsense. Only "A Man Needs A Maid," in which Neil treats his favorite theme–his inability to find and keep a lover–in a novel and arrestingly brazen (in terms of our society's accelerating consciousness of women's rights) manner, is particularly interesting–nearly everything else being limitlessly ponderable, but in a scant, oblique way that offers few rewards to the ponderer.

It might be noted (with remorse) that neither of the symphony-orchestrated tunes of Harvest even approaches "Expecting To Fly," from 1967, in terms of production or over-all emotional power. Would that the two unreleased movements of that earlier masterpiece, originally conceived as a trilogy, been given the grooves used for "Maid" and "There's A World." (Apologies if "The Emperor of Wyoming" or "String Quartet From Whiskey Boot Hill," from Neil Young, or "Broken Arrow" are in fact the missing two-thirds).

"Alabama" aspires to the identical effect of "Southern Man" but contains nothing nearly so powerful as that Gold Rush song's "I heard screamin' and bullwhips crackin'," followed by a vicious slash of Danny Whitten's rhythm guitar and a stinging lead line from Neil. "Old Man's" first line promises a lot more than the song ever delivers in terms of compassionate perception. "Heart of Gold's" basic conceit would be laughed off the airwaves coming from another solo troubadour. "Are You Ready For The Country," like "Cripple Creek Ferry," seems an in-joke throwaway intended for the amusement of certain of Neil's superstar pals. The title tune is lyrically cluttered and oblique, and "Out on The Weekend" is puerile, precious, and self-indulgent, not to mention musically insipid.

Truth be told, I listened to the entirety of Harvest no less than a dozen times before touching typewriter to paper, ultimately managing to come with only one happy thing to say about it: Neil Young still sings awful pretty, and often even touchingly. For the most part, though, he's seemingly lost sight of what once made his music uniquely compelling and evocative and become just another pretty-singing solo superstar.

Which can't help but bring me down.

JOHN MENDELSOHN - Mar 30, 1972
Rolling Stone
 

 L y r i c s


Out On The Weekend

Think I'll pack it in
and buy a pick-up
Take it down to L.A.
Find a place to call my own
and try to fix up.
Start a brand new day.
The woman I'm thinking of,
she loved me all up
But I'm so down today
She's so fine, she's in my mind.
I hear her callin'.
See the lonely boy,
out on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy,
he tries to speak and
Can't begin to say.
She got pictures on the wall,
they make me look up
From her big brass bed.
Now I'm running down the road
trying to stay up
Somewhere in her head.
The woman I'm thinking of,
she loved me all up
But I'm so down today
She's so fine she's in my mind.
I hear her callin'.
See the lonely boy,
out on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy,
he tries to speak and
Can't begin to say.


Harvest

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.
Did she wake you up
to tell you that
It was only a change of plan?
Dream up, dream up,
let me fill your cup
With the promise of a man.
Did I see you walking with the boys
Though it was not hand in hand?
And was some black face
in a lonely place
When you could understand?
Did she wake you up
to tell you that
It was only a change of plan?
Dream up, dream up,
let me fill your cup
With the promise of a man.
Will I see you give
more than I can take?
Will I only harvest some?
As the days fly past
will we lose our grasp
Or fuse it in the sun?
Did she wake you up
to tell you that
It was only a change of plan?
Dream up, dream up,
let me fill your cup
With the promise of a man.


A Man Needs A Maid

My life is changing
in so many ways
I don't know who
to trust anymore
There's a shadow running
thru my days
Like a beggar going
from door to door.
I was thinking that
maybe I'd get a maid
Find a place nearby
for her to stay.
Just someone
to keep my house clean,
Fix my meals and go away.
A maid. A man needs a maid.
A maid.
It's hard to make that change
When life and love
turns strange.
And old.
To give a love,
you gotta live a love.
To live a love,
you gotta be "part of"
When will I see you again?
A while ago somewhere
I don't know when
I was watching
a movie with a friend.
I fell in love with the actress.
She was playing a part
that I could understand.
A maid. A man needs a maid.
A maid.
When will I see you again?


Heart Of Gold

I want to live,
I want to give
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean
for a heart of gold
I've been in my mind,
it's such a fine line
That keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keep me searching
for a heart of gold
You keep me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm growing old.
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold.


Are You Ready For The Country

Slipping and sliding
and playing domino
Lefting and then Righting,
it's not a crime you know.
You gotta tell your story boy,
before it's time to go.
Are you ready for the country
because it's time to go?
Are you ready for the country
because it's time to go?
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
You gotta tell your story boy,
you know the reason why.
Are you ready for the country
because it's time to go?
Are you ready for the country
because it's time to go?


Old Man

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.
Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.
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.
Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.
I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.
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.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.


There's A World

There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part
All God's children in the wind
Take it in and blow hard.
Look around it, have you found it
Walking down the avenue?
See what it brings,
could be good things
In the air for you.
We are leaving. We are gone.
Come with us to all alone.
Never worry. Never moan.
We will leave you all alone.
In the mountains, in the cities,
You can see the dream.
Look around you. Has it found you?
Is it what it seems?
There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part
All God's children in the wind
Take it in and blow hard.


Alabama

Oh Alabama
The devil fools
with the best laid plan.
Swing low Alabama
You got spare change
You got to feel strange
And now the moment
is all that it meant.
Alabama, you got
the weight on your shoulders
That's breaking your back.
Your Cadillac
has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track
Oh Alabama
Banjos playing
through the broken glass
Windows down in Alabama.

(Song is Interupted after which there is some studio talk and then the song resumes again)

See the old folks
tied in white ropes
Hear the banjo.
Don't it take you down home?

(Song is again interupted and the Song "God Bless America, My Home Sweet Home" is introduced)

God Bless America.
Land that I love
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies ,
To the oceans, white with foam

(Song fades out while a David Crosby makes some remarks, after that you hear a Richard Nixon Speach and the songs kicks back in again)

Alabama, you got
the weight on your shoulders
That's breaking your back.
Your Cadillac
has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track
Oh Alabama.
Can I see you
and shake your hand.
Make friends down in Alabama.
I'm from a new land
I come to you
and see all this ruin
What are you doing Alabama?
You got the rest of the union
to help you along
What's going wrong?


The Needle And The Damage Done (Live)

I caught you knockin'
at my cellar door
I love you, baby,
can I have some more
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.
I hit the city and
I lost my band
I watched the needle
take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.
I sing the song
because I love the man
I know that some
of you don't understand
Milk-blood
to keep from running out.
I've seen the needle
and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's
like a settin' sun.


Words (Between The Lines Of Age)

Someone and someone
were down by the pond
Looking for something
to plant in the lawn.
Out in the fields they
were turning the soil
I'm sitting here hoping
this water will boil
When I look through the windows
and out on the road
They're bringing me presents
and saying hello.
Singing words, words
between the lines of age.
Words, words
between the lines of age.

(song is interupted after which there is studio talk, then the song continues)

Words, words
between the lines of age.
Words, words
between the lines of age.

If I was a junkman
selling you cars,
Washing your windows
and shining your stars,
Thinking your mind
was my own in a dream
What would you wonder
and how would it seem?
Living in castles
a bit at a time
The King started laughing
and talking in rhyme.
Singing words, words
between the lines of age.
Words, words
between the lines of age.

Someone and someone
were down by the pond
Looking for something
to plant in the lawn.
Out in the fields they
were turning the soil
I'm sitting here hoping
this water will boil
When I look through the windows
and out on the road
They're bringing me presents
and saying hello.
Singing words, words
between the lines of age.
Words, words
between the lines of age.
 

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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