After the Gold Rush

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. Mutual friend Dennis Hopper encouraged Stockwell to write his own screenplay in wake of Hopper's success with Easy Rider. Hopper recalls writing the script:

"Dennis very strongly urged me to write a screenplay, and he would get it produced. I came back home to Topanga Canyon and wrote After The Gold Rush. Neil was living in Topanga then too, and a copy of it somehow got to him. He had had writer's block for months, and his record company was after him. And after he read this screenplay, he wrote the After The Gold Rush album in three weeks."[9]

Young recalls coming in contact with the script in his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace:

"When I returned to Topanga, Dean Stockwell came by the house with a screenplay called After the Gold Rush. He had cowritten it with Herb Bermann and wanted to know if I could do the music for it. I read the screenplay and kept it around for a while. I was writing a lot of songs at the time, and some of them seemed like they would fit right in with this story. The song "After the Gold Rush" was written to go along with the story’s main character as he carried the tree of life through Topanga Canyon to the ocean. One day Dean brought an executive from Universal Studios to my house to meet me. It looked like the project was going to happen, and I thought it would really be a good movie. It was a little off-the-wall and not a normal type of Hollywood story. I was really into it. Apparently the studio wasn't, because nothing more ever happened."[10]

In Young's biography Shakey, 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."[11] In a December 1995 interview with Nick Kent for Mojo Magazine, Young recalls:

"It was all about the day of the great earthquake in Topanga Canyon when a great wave of water flooded the place. It was a pretty 'off-the-wall' concept, they tried to get some money from Universal Pictures. But that fell through because it was too much of an 'art' project. I think, had it been made, it would stand as a contemporary to Easy Rider and it would have had a similar effect. The script itself was full of imagery, 'change'. It was very unique actually. I really wish that movie had been made, because it could have really defined an important moment in the culture.[12]

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".[11] The lyrics to "After the Gold Rush" were inspired by a dream[13] 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 shares in a June 1988 interview for Spin Magazine that the lyrics lost meaning for him over time, and made it difficult to sing the song live:

"That's a hell of a question, isn't it? I don't understand it. It sounds like gibberish to me. I stopped singing that song because when I get to that line I go, what the fuck am I talking about? You know, I don't edit my songs. I knew something was happening at the time that I wrote it to make that right, but I can't remember what it is and it doesn't apply to what I'm doing now. "I Am a Child" is like that. What is the color when black is burnt? It's a charcoal kind of color, I guess, but what the fuck does that mean? I ask myself over and over, what the fuck am I talking about?"[14]

The song "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" was written for Graham Nash in the aftermath of his breakup with Joni Mitchell.[15][16]

"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:[11] "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.[10] The song is recording by Young to feature harmonica. It is also the first song Young recorded that he didn't write himself. Young considered releasing the song as a single.[17]

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."[14] Young wrote the song during his first transatlantic trip, while touring with CSNY.[18] 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, using bird imagery as metaphor.

"I Believe in You" is a somber ode to abandoned love. Young describes the song in a June 1988 Spin interview:

"Now that you made yourself love me, do you think I can change it in a day? That's a heavy one. That song has the most haunting lyrics. Am I lying to you when I say I believe in you? That's the difference between the song and the poem. The song makes you think of the hook, and the hook is I believe in you, but the rest of it is in a whole other place. That song I can hardly talk about. That one is too deep. I think I only sang it live two or three times, and only in the studio two or three times, so I may have only sung that song six times total."[14]

Initial sessions were conducted with backing band Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound Studios in August 1969, shortly before Young embarked on a tour of the US with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young that would include their now-famous appearance at Woodstock. Although progress was hampered by the deteriorating health of rhythm guitarist Danny Whitten, the sessions yielded two released tracks, "I Believe In You" and "Oh, Lonesome Me". Young would explain to author Nick Kent:

"See, the way I used to work then, this would be the summer of 1969 we're talking about now, I'd usually go in and record with Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound Studios every morning. Then I'd go to CSN&Y rehearsal in the afternoon through to the evening. Then I'd go home, crash out, get up the next morning and do the same routine all over again. That's when "I Believe In You", "Oh Lonesome Me", "Wonderin'", a couple of others on After The Goldrush, all those songs were conceived there and recorded there. That's where I first cut "Helpless", by the way, and the only reason the Crazy Horse version didn't come out is because the engineer didn't record the perfect take, so, bam, that was lost."[19]

Except for the track "Birds", recorded on June 30, 1970, at Sound City Studios, the remainder of the album was recorded at various sessions in a makeshift basement studio ("Redwood Studios") in Young's Topanga Canyon home during March and April 1970. Young recalls building the studio in the liner notes to Decade: "I put the wood on the walls myself and loved that feeling. My house was on a steep hill overlooking the canyon. The French horn player ran out of breath on my steep driveway." Musicians for these sessions generally feature CSNY bassist Greg Reeves, Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina and burgeoning eighteen-year-old musical prodigy Nils Lofgren of the Washington, D.C.-based band Grin on piano. The incorporation of Lofgren was a characteristically idiosyncratic decision by Young, as Lofgren had not played keyboards on a regular basis prior to the sessions.[20] Along with Jack Nitzsche, Lofgren would join an augmented Crazy Horse sans Young before enjoying success with his own group as well as solo cult success and membership in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Biographer Jimmy McDonough has asserted[21] that Young was intentionally trying to combine Crazy Horse and CSNY on this release, with members of the former band appearing alongside Stephen Stills (who contributed backing vocals to "Only Love Can Break Your Heart") and Reeves. The album is also the first to feature Young on piano, which he plays on several tracks.

The session for "When You Dance, I Can Really Love" at Young's Topanga home studio marks the last time Crazy Horse played together with Danny Whitten. Young remembers in a post on his website: "Danny Whitten could not make the sessions but he did come in at the end and recorded with us, doing a lot of chorus singing on many songs and playing on one song, "When You Dance I Can Really Love". Jack Nitzsche was there on a wild piano. Billy Talbot on bass. What a memory that is! Ralph Molina played drums on every track."[22] He continues in his memoir:

"We had finished a lot of the recording when word came through Billy that Danny had cleaned up. He came out and we played "When You Dance I Can Really Love" with him, Billy, and Jack. Crazy Horse was back together again. We rerecorded a lot of the chorus vocals with Danny singing, and they were a lot better than what we had before. It was great having Danny back! It really made the record better, and it felt so good to play with Danny again. Jack, too! Jack's piano on that track is unreal. We were really soaring! But that was it for the original Crazy Horse with Danny and Jack."[10]

He further reminisces in Shakey:

"'When You Dance' is a funky record. Me and Billy and Ralph and Danny and Jack. They were all crazy. Jack plays great: I was pushing him. A lotta leakage, boy. That's a unique take, 'cause that's the only take ever done in the studio by the Horse with Jack playing. That group actually didn't work as well as I would've liked. It was nice havin' Jack with us, but some of the stuff, he was in the way tonally. Crazy Horse was so good with the two guitars, bass and drums it didn't need anything else. 'When You Dance' is probably the last record with Danny that we played together on. That was done near the end of the sessions. When I did all the other stuff, Danny wasn't on it; Nils, Ralph and I did the singing. Stills came up and sang, but I didn't like those vocals, so I re-did them all with Danny. Danny kinda got himself together, did the overdubs. He wasn't lookin' too good at that point.[11]

After the Gold Rush was originally released on vinyl by Reprise on September 19, 1970.[23] It was subsequently reissued on CD in 1986.[24]

After the Gold Rush is one of four high-profile albums (all charting within the top fifteen) released by each of the members of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu, along with Stephen Stills (Stephen Stills, November 1970), If I Could Only Remember My Name (David Crosby, February 1971) and Songs for Beginners (Graham Nash, May 1971).

The cover art is a solarized image of Young passing an old woman at the New York University School of Law campus in the Greenwich Village district of New York City. The picture was taken by photographer Joel Bernstein and was reportedly out of focus. It was because of this he decided to mask the blurred face by solarizing the image.[25] The photo is cropped; the original image included Young's friend and CSNY bandmate Graham Nash.[26]

Lead single "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 24, 1970.[5] An outtake version of "Birds" recorded at the initial Sunset Sound sessions has now been added to the album on the Neil Young Archives website, as have two versions of the song "Wonderin'". The Sunset Sound "Birds" was first released, accidentally, as the B-Side of the "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" single.[11]

A remastered version was released on HDCD-encoded CD and digital download on July 14, 2009, as part of the Neil Young Archives Original Release Series. The remastered CD exists both as a standalone album and as Disc 3 of a 4-CD box set Official Release Series Discs 1-4, released in the US in 2009 and Europe in 2012.[27]

To mark its 50th anniversary, a CD version of the album was re-released by Reprise on December 11, 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 45rpm 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.

Digital high-resolution files of the album are also available via the Neil Young Archives website, including a longer 3:36 outtake of "Birds" recorded at the same Sunset Sound sessions as "Wonderin'".

Retrospective professional reviews

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[3]
Christgau's Record Guide	A+[28]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[29]
Pitchfork	10/10[30]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[31]

Critics were not immediately impressed; the 1970 review in Rolling Stone magazine by Langdon Winner was negative, with Winner feeling that, "none of the songs here rise above the uniformly dull surface."[32] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau was more enthusiastic, saying: "While David Crosby yowls about assassinations, Young divulges darker agonies without even bothering to make them explicit. Here the gaunt pain of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere fills out a little—the voice softer, the jangling guitar muted behind a piano. Young's melodies—every one of them—are impossible to dismiss. He can write 'poetic' lyrics without falling flat on his metaphor even when the subject is ecology or crumbling empire. And despite his acoustic tenor, he rocks plenty. A real rarity: pleasant and hard at the same time."[28]

Critical reaction has improved with time; by 1975, Rolling Stone was referring to the album as a "masterpiece",[33] and Gold Rush is now considered a classic album in Young's recording career.[34]

All tracks are written by Neil Young, except where noted. Track timings are from the original 1970 vinyl release, catalogue number RS 6383.[44]

• Neil Young – guitar, piano, harmonica, vibes, lead vocals
• Danny Whitten – guitar, vocals
• Nils Lofgren – guitar, piano, vocals
• Jack Nitzsche – piano
• Billy Talbot – bass
• Greg Reeves – bass
• Ralph Molina – drums, vocals
• Stephen Stills – vocals (credited as Steve Stills)
• Bill Peterson – flugelhorn