WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG
AND ON YOUR OWN
HOW DID IT FEEL
HOW DID IT FEEL TO BE ALONE ?
After the Gold Rush
is the third
studio album
by the
Canadian-American musician
released in
September 1970
on Reprise Records.
It is one of four
high-profile solo albums
released by the
members of
folk rock group
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
in the wake of their
chart-topping 1970 album
Déjà Vu.
Young's album consists
mainly of country
folk music
along with
several rock tracks,
including
"Southern Man".
The material was inspired by
the unproduced
Dean Stockwell
and
Herb Bermann screenplay
After the Gold Rush.
entered
Billboard
Top Pop Albums chart
on September 19,
and peaked at number eight
in October.
Two of the three singles
taken from the album,
"Only Love Can Break Your Heart"
and
"When You Dance I Can Really Love"
, made it to number 33
and number 93
respectively on the
Billboard
Hot 100.
Despite a mixed initial reaction,
the album has since appeared
on a number of
greatest albums
of all time lists.
In 2014,
the album was
inducted into
the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Background
Young recorded the album
while living in
Topanga Canyon,
an artistic community in
Southern California.
It was largely recorded
in his home studio there.
Songs on the album
were influenced by
people he met
while living there,
including producer
David Briggs,
Young's then wife,
Susan Acevedo,
and actor
Dean Stockwell,
whom he met through Susan.
The album was recorded with
members of both
of his associated groups
at the time,
Crazy Horse
and
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,
as well as the first appearance
by long-time collaborator
Nils Lofgren.
By the time the album
was released,
however,
Young had split with Susan
and had moved to his
Broken Arrow Ranch
in Northern California,
where he would record
many of his
subsequent albums.
Writing
Songs on the album were inspired by
a screenplay written by
Dean Stockwell
and
Herb Bermann
also titled
After the Gold Rush.
The screenplay's plot involves an
apocalyptic ecological disaster
that washes away the
Topanga Canyon hippie community.
Stockwell,
a lifelong friend of Young,
was also part of the
Topanga Canyon artist culture
of the time
the script, now lost,
is described as an
end of the world movie
which culminates in
a tidal wave crashing into
local music venue
and hangout
The Topanga Corral.
Stockwell explains,
"I was gonna write a movie
that was personal,
a Jungian self-discovery
of the gnosis.
It involved the Kabala;
it involved a lot of arcane stuff
Ultimately,
only two songs
on the album were
directly influenced by
or had been intended
for use in the film:
"After the Gold Rush"
and
"Cripple Creek Ferry".
The lyrics to
"After the Gold Rush"
were inspired by a dream
and consider a future
when mankind uses
space travel to perpetuate
the species in wake of
environmental destruction.
The chorus of
"Tell Me Why"
features the memorable
chorus question
"Tell me why/
Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself/
When you're old enough to repay/
But young enough to sell?"
Young shared in a June 1988 interview
for Spin
that the lyrics lost meaning
for him over time,
and made it difficult
to sing the song live
The song
"Only Love Can Break Your Heart"
was written for
Graham Nash
in the aftermath of
his breakup with
Joni Mitchell.
Nash would tell
Constant Meijers
in September 1974:
"I'd broken up with Joni
and Neil came to me
and said he'd written
a song for me,
because he knew
exactly how I felt.
Joni is one of
those people
who can't make a
good relationship last.
When we were doing alright, she quit."
The lyrics to
"Southern Man"
address slavery and segregation.
The intensity of the song
was influenced by conflict
with Young's then wife,
Susan Acevedo:
"'Southern Man'
was an angry song.
I wrote
'Southern Man'
in my studio in Topanga.
Susan was angry at me
for some reason."
"Those girls always get jealous
when you're working on something
with great intensity.
Susan, who was
a lot older than me,
was very jealous.
One morning,
I got up early to work on
'Southern Man'
in the studio,
she threw breakfast
against the door.
When I opened the door
to see what was going on,
she threw the coffee at me."
"Oh Lonesome Me"
is a cover of the 1957
Don Gibson song,
recorded in a somber
and radically
different arrangement
than the original.
Young's
arrangement dates
from his
coffeehouse folk days
in Toronto in late 1965:
"I wanted to give the acoustic solo thing
a try in the Village (Yorkville).
I took my acoustic twelve-string
to a few gigs and
got some bad reviews.
I had an arrangement of
'Oh Lonesome Me'
that I really liked,
and people laughed at it,
thinking it was a
parody or something.
I used it on
'After the Gold Rush',
and that worked."
The song is the first recording
by Young to
feature harmonica,
as well as the first song
Young recorded that
he didn't write himself.
The song was released
as a single in advance
of the album in
February 1970.
The lyrics to
"Don't Let It Bring You Down"
deal with falling into depression,
and how new experiences
or acquaintances
can snap you back out.
Young explains to Spin
in 1988:
"Every once in awhile something
could happen,
especially when I was younger,
that would get me
really depressed,
then I would run into
somebody and
forget about it,
just because I got into
an another thing.
People are wonderful that way;
the presence of another
human being can be
so strong that it’ll change
your whole outlook."
Young wrote the song during
his first transatlantic trip,
while touring with CSNY.
On the album
4 Way Street,
Young jokes as
he introduces the song:
"Here is a new song.
It's guaranteed to bring
you right down.
It's called
'Don't Let It Bring You Down'.
It sort of starts off
real slow
and then it
fizzles out all together."
"Birds"
dates from at least 1968.
Young attempted recording
the song several times
before the take featured on
After the Gold Rush.
One attempt,
available on his
Archives website,
was recorded as a duet
with new bandmate
Graham Nash.
Its lyrics concern
a breakup,
To mark its 50th anniversary,
a CD version of the album
was re-released by
Reprise in 2020,
as
After The Gold Rush
50th Anniversary Edition,
the original cover having been
enhanced with a
50 below its title.
A limited edition
vinyl box set
came out on
March 19, 2021.
The re-release includes
two different versions
of the song
"Wonderin'"
on the CD
as two extra tracks
and in the vinyl box set
as a 45 rpm single
in a picture sleeve.
Side A,
originally included on
the
Topanga 3 disc
in
The Archives Vol. 1: 1963-1972,
was recorded in
Topanga, California,
in March 1970;
Side B
is a
previously unreleased
version
recorded at
Sunset Sound
in Hollywood
in August 1969.
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