Neil Young - After The Gold Rush (1970) {Warner-Pioneer Japan} 24-bit/96kHz Vinyl Rip plus Redbook CD Version

is the third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in August 1970 on Reprise Records. It was one of the four high-profile albums released by each member of folk rock collective Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu. After the Gold Rush peaked at number eight on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart; the two 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. Neil Young's third solo album was released during a prolific period of his career, with the artist having recorded two solo albums and Déjà Vu with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in less than a year; after being sidelined with a back injury, he would wait until 1972 for his subsequent LP Harvest, which would make Young a household name. Although his work with Buffalo Springfield had shown him experimenting with a variety of musical styles, on Gold Rush Young continued the mix of hard rock with the country and folk-flavored acoustic approaches from CSNY and on 1969's . The Young biography Shakey claims he was intentionally trying to combine Crazy Horse and CSN on this release, with Crazy Horse appearing alongside Stephen Stills and CSNY bass player Greg Reeves. Initial sessions were conducted with Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles amid a winter tour that included a well-received engagement with Steve Miller and Miles Davis at the Fillmore East. Despite the deteriorating health of rhythm guitarist Danny Whitten, the sessions yielded the released tracks, "I Believe In You," "Oh, Lonesome Me", "Birds" issued as a b-side, and "When You Dance I Can Really Love". Most of the album was recorded at a make-shift basement studio in Young's modest Topanga Canyon home during the spring of 1970 with Greg Reeves, Ralph Molina of Crazy Horse, and burgeoning eighteen-year-old musical prodigy Nils Lofgren of the Washington, DC-based band Grin on piano. This was a typical idiosyncratic decision by Young; Lofgren had not played keyboards on a regular basis prior to the sessions. Along with fellow Young stalwart Jack Nitzsche, he would join an augmented Crazy Horse sans Young before enjoying his own group and solo cult success alternating with a 25 year membership in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Critics were not immediately enamored; the original review in Rolling Stone Magazine began, "Neil Young devotees will probably spend the next few weeks trying desperately to convince themselves that After the Gold Rush is good music. But they'll be kidding themselves. For despite the fact that the album contains some potentially first rate material, none of the songs here rise above the uniformly dull surface." As is typical of Young releases, critical reaction has improved with time. By 1975, Rolling Stone had changed its view to the point of referring to the album as a "masterpiece", and Gold Rush is now considered a classic album in Young's recording career. was remastered and released on HDCD-encoded CD and digital download on July 14, 2009 as part of the Neil Young Archives Original Release Series. The remaster has been released on audiophile vinyl and a high resolution digital version on Blu-ray disc is also planned although a release date for this format has not yet been announced. has appeared on a number of greatest albums lists. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted After the Gold Rush the 89th greatest album of all time. It was ranked 92nd in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. In 2003, Rolling Stone named the album the 71st greatest album of all time, his highest ranking on this list. Pitchfork Media listed it 99th on their 2004 list of the "Top 100 Albums of the 1970s". In 2006, Time Magazine listed it as one of the 'All-TIME 100 Albums'. It was ranked third in Bob Mersereau's 2007 book The Top 100 Canadian Albums. Its followup album, Harvest, was named the greatest Canadian album of all time in that book. In 2005, Chart Magazine readers placed it fifth on a poll of the best Canadian Albums. In 2002, Blender Magazine named it the 86th greatest "American" album. New Musical Express named it the 80th greatest album of all time in 2003. The credits read that "Most of these songs were inspired by the Dean Stockwell-Herb Berman screenplay After the Gold Rush." Young had read the screenplay and asked Stockwell if he could produce the soundtrack, and though the movie came to naught, the album After the Gold Rush was released nonetheless. When asked by Shakey author Jimmy McDonough which songs were inspired by the script, the only tracks Young could recall were "After the Gold Rush" and "Cripple Creek Ferry". Stockwell said of it "I was gonna write a movie that was personal, a Jungian self-discovery of the gnosis...it involved the Kabala (sic), it involved a lot of arcane stuff." Described in Shakey by fellow Topanga resident Shannon Forbes as "...A sort of an end-of-the-world movie...at the end, the hero is standing in the Corral parking lot watching this huge wave come in and this house was surfing along, and as the house comes at him, he turns the knob - and that's the end of the movie." Unfortunately, not much else is known about the screenplay, as it is currently missing. Stockwell would work with Young later in his career, creating the cover for the album, as well as writing and co-directing Young's film . Allmusic 5/5 stars Pitchfork Media 10/10 Rolling Stone 5/5 stars Robert Christgau A+

LP track listing
All songs written by Neil Young except when noted.

Side One

1. "Tell Me Why" - 2:54
2. "After The Gold Rush" - 3:45
3. "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" - 3:05
4. "Southern Man" - 5:31
5. "Till the Morning Comes" - 1:17

Side Two

6. "Oh Lonesome Me" (Don Gibson) - 3:47
7. "Don't Let It Bring You Down" - 2:56
8. "Birds" - 2:34
9. "When You Dance, I Can Really Love" - 4:05
10. "I Believe In You" - 3:24
11. "Cripple Creek Ferry" - 1:34


Released: August 31, 1970
Recorded: August 1969 - June 1970 at Sunset Sound and Sound City, Hollywood, California
Genre: Country Rock
Length: 41:00
Label: Reprise/Warner-Pioneer
Producers: Neil Young, David Briggs with Kendall Pacios

Personnel

* 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
* Bill Peterson - flugelhorn