Harvest - Neil Young

After three critically well received albums for Reprise, along came 1972's Harvest. This is the album that altered Neil Young's position in the music world to an unimaginable degree. Harvest reached number one on both sides of the Atlantic and produced a radio staple and chart topping single in Heart of Gold. Young moved into a new level of fame momentarily greater than Crosby Stills & Nash. Harvest may have done more to popularise country-rock than any other album. It also fixed an image of Young in many minds (except his own) as a benign, home on the range, hippie songwriter. The album was a painful year in gestation, especially for Young who underwent ...

The year was 1972. I was 9. My dad was a music nut. I knew all the Beatles albums, all the Stones. I learnt the lyrics to Sgt Pepper almost as soon as I could read. But this night he was playing something different on our gramophone (one of those that looked like a sideboard, that you could stack half a dozen LPs or singles on and it would - when it worked properly - let them drop down and play one at a time. Tonight I was hearing a voice like I'd never heard before. It sounded like a grown man crying. I'd never heard a grown man crying. I wasn't sure what the lyrics meant, but I knew they were tortured, tragic, and utterly personal. ...

Neil Young: writer of songs, scarer of children (both with his voice and his head, really) and maker of some of the best folk\rock songs ever. Harvest is full of these songs, and is my personal favourite of Neil Young's albums. I have a lot of respect for Neil Young, mostly because of his attempts to piss off his record company by being as uncommercial as possible, but also because being one of the freakiest looking beasts that ever hatched on this planet (if it was on this planet) hasn't stopped him becoming a great songwriter. So, about those songs... The album starts off with Out On The Weekend, which begins with a solid drumbeat and lazy ...