Writer’s block hits every songwriter at one time or another. The best rise above it and produce something special. Neil Young is certainly one of the best. He once shook off his creative doldrums to create one of the best albums of his career.
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That album, After The Gold Rush, arrived on shelves 55 years ago this month. It managed to show off many different sides of Young’s artistic personality, making it a one-stop sampler for those first getting to know what he brought to the table.
‘Rush’ Hour
Record labels will only be sympathetic about writer’s block to a point. After a while, they’re going to start getting itchy for more product. Neil Young was starting to feel that heat circa 1970. He wavered a bit about how to proceed following his excellent 1969 solo debut, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
It didn’t help that he was getting pulled in different directions with his various artistic endeavors. Crazy Horse, the band that helped him make his debut, was still in the picture. But Young, who had played with Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield, was also starting to gig and record with Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
Young started to unlock his creativity thanks to an unlikely source. He happened upon a movie script written by actor Dean Stockwell, a sci-fi tale about a kind of hippie apocalypse. It spurred Young to write the title track. And, if nothing else, it helped set the elegiac tone for the songs that would soon come pouring out of him.
In terms of recording, Young took a somewhat haphazard approach. Crazy Horse was somewhat involved, but Young also turned to Stephen Stills for backing vocals. And he enlisted Nils Lofgren, who was only 18 years old at the time and just starting an amazing career, to help on guitar and piano.
After The Gold Rush produced no major hit singles, even with Young’s exposure on the rise, thanks to his involvement with CSN. Reviews were mixed, with Rolling Stone among the ones that judged it harshly. But the album has rightly taken its place as a classic. And several of the songs are at the core of Young’s legend.
Revisiting the Music of ‘After The Gold Rush’ by Neil Young
After the fact, albums like After The Gold Rush often get assigned as representatives for the times in which they appeared. It’s doubtful Neil Young was writing any of these songs with the idea of a new decade arriving while an old one staggered to its conclusion. But you can’t deny that much of the material here focuses on unavoidable, painful changes and passages.
Young finds different ways of presenting these themes. On songs like “Southern Man” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”, he charges him with some of the frazzled energy of the debut album. The piano, prominent in the mix, stabs more than soothes on these songs.
But Young also finds room for plenty of quieter meditations. The title track is the most celebrated of these. But songs like “Birds”, “I Believe In You”, and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” also spill over the brim with hard-earned wisdom.
“Cripple Creek Ferry”, the only other song besides the title track to be directly inspired by Stockwell’s script, closes out the album on an offbeat note. Young worries that it will be a “tight squeeze” for the titular boat. After The Gold Rush offers candor and succor for those who might be feeling that pressurized pinch in their own lives.
Photo by Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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