Occasional Albums Thing 038 - Neil Young “Harvest”

Neil Young has appeared in this Blog before, back in October 2024 to be precise (have a look here https://www.whiterabbitrecords.co.uk/blog?row=4&year=2024 for the whys and the wherefore’s). I’ve always kept an eye out for acceptable copies of “Harvest” and “After The Gold Rush” as they both contain songs I’m a big fan of from that original CSN&Y comp I owned and both are classic Neil Young records. Finally “Harvest” came my way, nothing special, a 1980’s German pressed re-issue but it still had its lyric insert and was in nice condition, so why not.

“Harvest” was Young’s fourth solo album, released at the start of 1972. It was the follow up to 1970’s  “After The Gold Rush” which had been recorded with his fearsome backing band Crazy Horse and a cast of guest musicians (Nils Lofgren, Jack Nitzsche and Stephen Stills). For “Harvest” Crazy Horse were stood down and in came a superstar cast to assist, all of CSN, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. The band, herein dubbed by Young the Stray Gators, were a collection of Nashville session musicians cobbled together by Nitzsche one Saturday night when Young appeared on the Johnny Cash TV show and wanted to record some new songs afterward. They also appeared on Young’s next album, “Time Slips Away”, and on the “follow up” to “Harvest”, 1992’s “Harvest Moon”.

The first song I ever head fro “Harvest”, completely in isolation, on a compilation whose identity is now lost to time, was the beautiful “The Needle And The Damage Done”. It’s strange describing a song about Heroin addiction and its effect on addicts as beautiful, but it is. Young had seen at first hand how the drug affected Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten (who would succumb to an overdose the same year this song was released). The version on this album was a live recording made in January 1971 and Young said of the song in the sleeve notes to his “Decade” compilation "I am not a preacher, but drugs killed a lot of great men”.

I've seen the needle and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's like a settin' sun...

Title track “Harvest” is a minimalist Country lament, seemingly about a relationship. It’s dreamy and hypnotic and quite lovely. “A Man Needs A Maid” is one of two songs (the other being "There's a World”) recorded at the decidedly unglamorous Barking Town Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra. “Old Man” was written about Louis Avila, the caretaker at Young’s Broken Arrow ranch in northern California, comparing the similarities between the older and younger man. All of this is done with a psuedo-Canadian Country feel to everything.

“Harvest” is still Neil Young’s best selling album, it gave him his only #1 single, “Heart Of Gold”, and set him on a path to stardom, of which he said “(it) put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there" when he pulled back from all that, his recent Glastonbury performance suggests he’s still trudging along that ditch . I know Mr Young is seen by many as an acquired taste, one they've yet to acquire, his voice is not one that is easy to listen to sometimes (sit him alongside Dylan in that department) but he is arguably Canada’s greatest songwriter (although the argument would have to include Joni Mitchell) and long may he continue making challenging music.

The Needle And The Damage Done - https://youtu.be/k0t0EW6z8a0?si=iOWfj0F-aTh98D-u