I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: NEIL YOUNG-Harvest (1971).

I like loud rocking songs and I dislike most country.  So really I shouldn’t like Neil Young’s Harvest (at least compared to his more rocking albums).

But Neil is Neil and while I would never say he can do no wrong (he definitely can), I give him the benefit of the doubt.  And on this album he delivers.  Plus, it’s really not a country album at all.

I think what I particularly like about Harvest is the looseness of it, which I see signified primarily by Neil’s harmonica which is never off, but which is never perfect either.  Plus, and I’m sure this has a lot to do with it–I’ve heard these songs a lot and they have really sunk in.

“Out on the Weekend” is the opening track and it was one of the songs I knew least well–which is odd certainly for an opening song.  There’s slide guitar and harmonica.  But it’s followed by “Harvest,” which is so simple and so notable–bass, a gentle acoustic guitar and basically a snare drum play that simple up and down melody as Neil sings “dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup with the promise of a man.”  It’s those steel guitar lines that seems to fade in from nowhere that really rather make the song.

“A Man Needs a Maid” is one of those weird songs that is so odd to me–the song is literally about him getting a maid (but much more): “keep my house clean fix my meals and go away.”  Neil sounds like he is singing from a mile away as he plays the melody on the piano.  And then after the first verse all kind of orchestration fills in–bells and strings and the song gets really really big.  By the time the song comes around again, the chorus is swallowed by the strings and bells.  It feels much longer than its 4 minutes.  I sort of hate it but kind of like its oddness at the same time.

And then comes the wonder that is “Heart of Gold,” another simple melody with soft bass notes and that harmonica.  Incredibly catchy and undeniably great.

Harvest is more of a folk album with slide guitar (and orchestration), but a song like “Ready for the Country” certainly leans toward country (or is it mocking country?).  It’s got a good beat and is kind of fun, with a lighthearted joshing about the country.

“Old Man” is a another slow classic.  When the harmony vocals come in later in the song it’s really wonderful.  I never knew that James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt sang backing vocals on this song and that that’s Taylor on the banjo.  “There’s a World” is a ponderous song from the get go–almost as if it left off from “Maid,” with strings and kettle drums.  After a verse a harp swipes away the song and plays a delicate melody which is just as quickly wiped away as this song which seems so big comes to a rather quick ending–only 3 minutes in total.

“Alabama” introduces a fuzzy electric guitar with what seems like it should be a classic riff but which …isn’t.  It doesn’t quite resolve into anything and the chorus is almost satisfying–it starts really big with a chorus of “Alabama!” but it also doesn’t exactly resolve into anything.  I think I keep thinking it’s other songs, and yet it is distinctly its own.

“Needle and Damage Done” is just great.  A terrific riff and a poignant song simple and brief (2 minutes!) but really powerful.

“Words (Between the Lines of Age)” is nearly 7 minutes it’s the longest by far on the record.  It builds slowly with a big chorus.   There’s a great instrumental section with a nice piano melody.  The song ends with a very Neil Young guitar solo as well.  Pretty great stuff.

I’m not gushing about the album only because it is a classic and all classics have flaws.  But I could listen to this any day, even “Man Needs a Maid.”

[READ: July 1, 2016] Harvest

I have often thought I should read this series.  Of course, the last time I thought about it, there were 50-some books in the series and that seemed like way too many.  Well as of June 2017, there are 120 books in the series, which is an insane series to jump into.  But at work, four of the books came across my desk and if that’s not an invitation to read something, I don’t now what is.  So I’ve decided to read these four and we’ll see if that leads to more.

This story gives a lot of history of Neil himself and a lot of context of the albums surrounding this one.

Inglis starts by talking about how when Harvest Moon came out in 1992, it was a call-back to Harvest and it was highly regarded, even though Harvest itself wasn’t at the time.  Even Neil himself seemed to recoil from the unexpected success of Harvest by playing every kind of music but folk/country for decades.

In fact, Harvest was panned when it came out–described as superficial and without meaning.  It was deemed pleasant rather than passionate.  It also worked to define Neil Young as a melancholy songwriter full of catchy tunes, smiling with prairie straw n his mouth.  Meanwhile other fans dismiss this picture entirely, preferring the gritty songwriter from Tonight’s the Night.

A true statement opens chapter two “Neil Young is one of those artists who always sounds like himself.”

There’s some history of Neil.  Polio left him weak down his left side.  His parents divorced when he was 12 and he moved to Winnipeg with his mother.  His first band, The Squires, played mostly instrumentals.  But Neil wanted to rock like The Stones and write lyrics like Dylan.  The Squires incorporated some of that, including Neil’s wild solos.  But success eluded them.

So he joined The Mynah Birds, a band that combined black soul and white rock.  They did well and even signed to Motown, but they were shot down when their singer Rick James (not that one) went AWOL from the Navy.

Young moved illegally to the States (take that, trump) and hooked up with Stephen Stills to form The Buffalo Springfield (with Richie Furay and Bruce Palmer) named for a company that made mowers.  The band fostered Young’s folk side and his wild solos.  Young was self-conscious of his own high-pitched, thin voice but he didn’t like when others sang his songs.

The band disintegrated and Neil went solo.  Then he met Jack Nitzche.  They worked hard on his first album full of all kinds of production and studio trickery which did not succeed.  Young fell into a band called the Rockets who became Crazy Horse.  There was no question that Neil was the leader and they were his backing band.  They gave him a solid foundation that didn’t require trickery or production.  Everybody Knows This is Nowhere was very different from the debut.  The songs were simple and the performances live and un-doctored.  It didn’t do very well but has become a fan favorite.

During this time Stephen Stills had been successful and had recently joined with Crosby and Nash to make a surprisingly successful supergroup.

Young hated worked with CSNY.  He hated that Stills used studio trickery to replace his (Stills’) magical vocal with a more precise one (on “Woodstock”).

When Young returned to Crazy Horse, Danny Whitten had become a junkie and Neil scrapped all the work they’d done.

He recorded After the Gold Rush with Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina and CSNY bassist Greg Greeves and had Nils Lofgren (a Neil fan) play piano (instead of guitar, which was his instrument).  Neil  wanted musicians who could find the core of a song without obscuring it through virtuosity.  It was a success.

Although his marriage to Suasn Acevedo wasn’t.  But then he met and married Carrie Snodgrass in 1971.  Most of the songs on Harvest (and many others from other albums were written at the cottage in 1970.  “A Man Needs a Maid” was based on Carrie and her mother Carolyn was the inspiration for the song “Harvest.”

Neil toured as a solo artist (since Danny was still out of commission).  His shows were a success and they planned a double live album.  It may have been scrapped because CSNY was releasing a live album Four Way Street on which Neil would also appear.

He didn’t want to lose touch with Nitzsche and so Jack orchestrated “Maid” and “World,” presumably thinking the whole album would go that way. It didn’t.

In 1971, country music was run by A&R men who chose songs and a band for singers to work with.  Nashville also specialized in quick turnover.  It was expected that bands could turn out four songs in 3 hours.   Studios also had their own engineers–it was rare for anyone to have worked in another studio or to even know anything about the other studios.

Young was also possibly not welcome in Nashville since his polemic against the KKK “Southern Man” certainly ruffled feathers.  Not to mention hippies were anti-establishment and country music was the establishment.

Embracing country music was a brave move for a counter culture hero.  At least it was when Bob Dylan did it.  1966’s Blonde on Blonde was made with Nashville musicians and it must have seemed like a slap at his fans (the first of millions).

Young hated the racism of the south but since he grew up in Canada, he didn’t have first hand experience with the legacy of the civil war.  Country music was part of his childhood like all other music that made it to Canada.

Young went to Nashville because he had been invited to appear on The Johnny Cash Show alongside Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Tony Joe White.

Talking around to people got him to record an album in Nashville with Kenny Buttrey on drums, Tim Drummond on bass, Teddy Irwin, a studio guitarist and Ben Keith on pedal steel.  The band recorded in a living room–wood panels and lovely sound. Neil stayed between rooms and they knew there would be drums bleeding in ,but had no plans to overdub.

Neil laid down the law about the musicians.  Crazy Horse played the basics –they made a virtue of their lack of proficiency.  Nashville session musicians were very proficient.  But Young insisted on the simplest arrangements–like trying to reduce talented and experienced musicians to the level of Crazy Horse.  Kenny played no fills on one song.  No hi-hat on another.  On one song he sat on his right hand.

This new assembly would be The Stray Gators and even though they were limited so much by Neil they never sounded like Crazy Horse.

It was Ben Keith’s pedal steel that filled in spaces–skirting around the edges of the songs.  Neil’s voice has been described as pedal steel–mournful, high-pitched, keening, never quite in tune it was matched perfectly by the sound of the pedal steel.

Neil also brought in the Johnny Cash guest stars James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.  For “Old Man” he gave James Taylor a six string banjo–an instrument he’d never played before.  And they sang backing vocals in a rather offhand and non-star-worthy manner.

Producer Elliot Mazer says “With Neil, you can tell from the start if a take is going to be magic.  He lets that happen when he feels the band and the studio are ready…  “these session were warm and friendly [they] felt like the way the music sounded.”

The first session yielded “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man.”  They had also recorded “Bad Fog of Loneliness,” but it was not included.

Neil was so excited by these results that he scrapped the idea of a live album entirely and didn’t even listen to the recordings.

Neil and Jack Nitzsche went to London and recorded for The Old Grey Whistle Test.  While there they recorded the two orchestral pieces with the London Symphony Orchestra: “A Man Needs a Maid” and “There’s a World.”

Back in Nashville they recorded “Out on the Weekend” and “Harvest.”  “Alabama” and “Words” were deemed not yet ready.

Neil’s back was bothering him so he went to his ranch to recuperate.  Meanwhile But “Words,” “Alabama” and “Are You Ready for The Country” needed to be cut in a much bigger room than the living room in Nashville.  The Stray Gators went to the ranch a month later and recorded some songs there.  He had pianist Jack Nitzche play pedal steel on “Country” (which he’d never played before).  Backing vocals were recorded by Crosby Stills and Nash.

This leads to a great story that Young and Mazer had set up an outdoor stereo system with a stack of speakers in the barn and another in Young’s house.  They would row out to the lake to listen.  When Mazer came to ask how it sounded, Young yelled back “More barn!”

The album was rounded out with a fragment from the aborted live album–a track from his solo tour: “The Needle and the Damage Done.”

After talking about the recording, Inglis switches gears:

Every year albums go multi-platinum because they strike a chord with the casual listener–the kind of album for people who buy one album a year.  And some critics started that Neil set out to make that one album.

But Inglis maintains

few people would suggest that Harvest is a better alum that After the Goldrush.  It’s flawed in ways that it’s predecessor isn’t.  The most obvious criticism being that it’s uneven.  Harvest contains some of Neil Young’s most enduring songs, but it also contains songs that are difficult to make sense of, songs so basic they night have been written in minutes, ans at least one turkey that escaped quality control. It’s proof, if proof were wanted, that a classic album need not be uniform, or uniformly good.”

Each song on Harvest is meant to stand or fall on its own merits.  Harvest resists any linear narrative.  The songs are slight enough to be grasped the first time you hear them, yet the thread that binds them together remains elusive even on repeated listening.  We play it again because we want to “get” Harvest to find out what links the pieces of the puzzle.

“Out on the Weekend” and “Harvest” work together to create a pleasant melancholic mood.  Then just when you’ve got used o the wistful sound of Country Neil, Epic Neil appears from out of nowhere with the LSO.

The orchestration might not seem overblown by itself but following the simplicity of the first two songs, it’s crazy,

“Heart of Gold” and “Old Man” could work together but they’re separated by a “mediocre country-blues jam” and the end of the side.

Its harder to give Epic Neil the benefit of the doubt when you hear the delicate “Old Man” give way to the ill-judged bombast of “There’s a World.”  Then without warning we discover that Neil Young is going to rock out after all…”Alabama” is a great piece of menacing rock.  But no sooner had the ragged electric guitar died away then there’s another twist–Young the folk troubadour lecturing the audience on the evils of heroin.

The churning tide of “Words,” endless waves of guitar eddying around fragments of incomprehensible verse.

Despite all the variety, people determined that Neil had gone country.  And since country rock happened to be flavor of the month, Neil had accidentally hit the wave.

But Inglis demurs from that idea as well.  He says the rustic cover art suggests countrification, as does the pedal steel guitar, a Nashville pick-up band and a song called “Are You Ready for the Counrty,” but the album doesn’t engage very deeply with country music.  A few pedal steel licks do not make Harvest a country album any more than violins and timpani make it a symphonic one.

It was country and western for people who don’t like country and western.  But for many fans it’s Neil Young for people who don’t like Neil Young.

Harvest’s good qualities have, all too often, been overlooked.  It had many virtues: strong tunes, artfully artless arrangements, and great performances, especially from Young himself.  Perhaps its best feature is that it never becomes boring: even when you’re aware of its faults, you don’t want to stop listening to it.

Harvest made Neil a rich hippie which made him uneasy.  And the rest of the book looks at what he did up until Harvest Moon came out

His next project was the film Journey Through the Past.  Warner Brothers wanted to release a soundtrack to coincide and make money.  But it was a disaster–a couple new Neil songs and some concert songs and songs from the Beach Boys.

Neil wanted to make a new album with The Stray Gators and he invited Danny Whitten to join them.  He was told that Whitten was clean but he clearly wasn’t.  He sent Whitten back to L.A with 50 bucks, which he spent on heroin and overdosed and died.

Neil toured Harvest but released Time Fades Away as a live album of 8 new songs.  The band were sloppy, Young’s voice sounded strained and out of tune and the songs were really personal or strangely obtuse.

He followed this with an extended drunken wake for Whitten: Tonight’s the Night.  Neil delayed the release for two years trying to make the track listing as harrowing as possible.

Young had planned to release Homegrown, a collection of folkier songs, but chose Tonight’s the Night instead–homegrown was never to be released.

He didn’t expect Tonight’s the Night to sell well, and then he went on the most successful and lavish tour in history with CSN&Y.

Neil went back to Nashville to record Comes a Time, but it was Rust Never Sleeps with one side folkie Neil and one side punk Neil that really sold.  But the next decade was spent trying out Elctro Neil, Rockabilly Neil, Pop Neil even Blues Neil.  Then came Trans, which sold poorly, and an album of country songs which Geffen refused to release–instead, he did Old Ways, the most country album he’s released.

His career revived with 1989’s Freedom and “The Godfather of Grunge” came out with 1990s Ragged Glory.   By the time Harvest Moon came out the critics were eating out of his hand.

The final section of the book looks at each track in even greater detail.

“Out on the Weekend” a ponderous two note bass line drags behind it a skeletal drum beat and plaintive harmonies.  Inglis says the song is not very personal–it is the creation of songwriting craft and skill, not naked emotion.  The recording is what saves it–no virtuosity is there to sink the song–it was recorded live with no overdubs.

“Harvest” has lyrics that are hard to understand even if there is no notable allegory.  It was inspired by Carrie’s stories about her eccentric family and her mother’s threats to commit suicide. The understated lyrics are matched by the straightforward charm of the music .  The piano was done by a session musician and the drummer played one-handed using only bass and snare.

“A Man Needs a Maid” in some quarters this was understood as a statement of male chauvinism, but the theme is not masculine power but an expression of bewilderment and inadequacy.  It is confessional–his life is changing and he doesn’t know how to cope with it.  Critics say the song is too delicate to handle the orchestration “turning a fragile ballad into a monument to pretension” but it does attempt to make a pop song into an orchestral piece.

“Heart of Gold” was Neil’s only major hit single–a good song written for the sake of writing a good song.  It doesn’t sound like Neil, it’s sounds like anybody.   Inglis is rather harsh on it: a slight affair, an effortless straightforward melody set to a spare four chord backing with a lyric amounting to barely ten lines. The entire track was done in less than two hours.

“Are You Ready for the Country”  a chaotic false start gives way to giggling and a piano stomp.  The Stray Gators are there but they are in a barn and it sounds like it.  Lyrically it’s vague with nothing really to say, even if the Country is meant to be the South.

“Old Man” In purely musical terms, “Old Man” is perhaps the absolute high water point of Neil Young’s crafts as a songwriter.

“There’s a World” is the second orchestral number and that orchestration is the only thing of any merit in this song.  It is one of the worst songs Neil Young has ever written.  It is, to be blunt, dull.  The melody is insipid, the lyrics platitudinous and cliched…this shows nothing of the man or his talent.

“Alabama”  Inglis says a rock song is a terrible place for politics.  And that Neil’s interest in politics has been at best sporadic.  The song has been called clumsy heavy-handed and simplistic and a rehash of Southern Man.  But Inglis says the song has powerful imagery and that the music is even better–the Stray Gators reveal their muscle.  Inglis raves about Young’s use of the Gretsch White Falcon guitar.  It was for a time the most expensive guitar in the world.  It verged on being kitshcy.  Split pickups allowed the guitarist to track the sound for the treble strings and the bass strings out independently to two different amplifiers–which makes it sound great on this record.

“The Needle and the Damage Done”  Young’s first anti heroin statement.  It’s a pleasant song but a song about the devastation of heroin should not be pleasant.

“Words Between the Lines of Age”  The song never gathers enough pace to rock.  It settles into a weary chug with Young declaiming incomprehensible lyrics and spitting out pinched fragments of guitar solo.  There’s no anger or even joy.  The opening riff and instrumental sections alternate between 6/8 and 5/8 time while the verse and chorus are 4/4.   But Neil was no Robert Fripp, the time signatures only add to the song’s feeling of alienation and the lyrics are Young’s most opaque.

Inglis ends the book by talking about the personnel on the record”

Elliot Mazer the producer.  He had done Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company and Silk Purse by Linda Ronstadt.

Glyn Johns produced in London.  He had done Who’s next by The Who.

Bernard Jack Nitzsche had worked in Hollywood for a decade.  He died in 2000.

Henry Lewy recorded “The Needle and the Damage Done” live.

Kenny Buttrey was the kind of drummer who ate engineers alive if they did not get a good drum sound and a good earphone mix.

Tim Drummon toured with Conway Twitty and has since recorded with tons of people included on Harvest Moon.

Ben Keith was a last-minute addition.  He says they cut half the album before Neil even introduced himself snd yet since then he has been Young’s most constant musical collaborator.

James Taylor had been pigeonholed as a sensitive singer songwriter (like Young) he also had seen heroin claim one of his best friends.  He was a former addict himself.  He was also on Harvest Moon.

Linda Rondstadt was one of the first musicians to combine country with folk and rock.  She had released two pioneering country rock albums and her third album was backed by a band that would become The Eagles.

David Crosby.  Was in The Byrds. Tensions in CSN mounted because of Young’s addition to the trio.

Graham Nash was a harmony singer in the clean cut band The Hollies.  It was a surprise for him to go to California and do a psychedelic album.

Stephen Stills. Buffalo Springfield revolves around the rivalry between Stills and Young played out live in noisy guitar duels.

The final chapter (yes there’s still one more) is about the technicalities and sound qualities of the various releases.

For an early CD, Harvest is acceptable although a little sterile and cold.  He starts talking about a 2003 release on DVD audio, but there’s no point in following up on that.