June 16, 2023 —– Chart #200
Hello Music Friends,
Hey folks, Can you believe this? Chart of the Week #200! Whoa . . . Can’t believe I have done 200 of these. You can look aback at all 200 and download charts for every one on my website www.songchart.space. Go check all that’s there and get some of your friends to join the mailing list.
Today we go back to a golden year, 1970. This song was written and recorded on piano, but I love playing it on guitar. “After the Gold Rush” is a song written and performed by Neil Young and is the title song from his 1970 album of the same name. In addition to After the Gold Rush, it also appears on the compilation albums Decade, and Greatest Hits, and on Live Rust.
Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian-American singer and songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, joining the folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield. Since the beginning of his solo career, often with backing by the band Crazy Horse, he has released critically acclaimed albums such as Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), After the Gold Rush (1970), Harvest (1972), On the Beach (1974), and Rust Never Sleeps (1979). He was also a part-time member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with whom he recorded the chart-topping 1970 album Déjà Vu.
His guitar work, deeply personal lyrics and signature high tenor singing voice define his long career. Young also plays piano and harmonica on many albums, which frequently combine folk, rock, country and other musical genres. His often distorted electric guitar playing, especially with Crazy Horse, earned him the nickname “Godfather of Grunge” and led to his 1995 album Mirror Ball with Pearl Jam. More recently he has been backed by Promise of the Real.
Young has said that he doesn’t recall what the song is about. Dolly Parton, recalling a conversation while in the process of recording a cover of the song, along with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, for their 1999 album Trio II, said:
“I loved the song on Neil Young’s album and I loved it when Prelude had it out in 1974. But I didn’t know what the song meant. Linda and Emmy knew Neil, so we called him and asked him. He said, ‘I have no idea.’ I thought that was so funny. I think it’s about the Second Coming or the invasion of aliens, or both.”
Trio – Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris https://youtu.be/ykMzS6ugnPI
However, in his 2012 biography Young reportedly gave a different explanation of the song’s origin and meaning, describing the inspiration provided by a screenplay of the same name (never produced), which apocalyptically described the last days of California in a catastrophic flood. The screenplay and song’s title referred to what happened in California, a place that took shape due to the Gold Rush. Young eventually concluded that:
After The Gold Rush is an environmental song… I recognize in it now this thread that goes through a lotta my songs that’s this time-travel thing… When I look out the window, the first thing that comes to my mind is the way this place looked a hundred years ago.
Video by Prelude: https://youtu.be/W2Taxuott5s
“After the Gold Rush” consists of three verses which move forward in time from the past (a medieval celebration), to the present (the singer lying in a burned out basement), and, finally, to the end of humanity’s time on Earth (the ascension process in which the “chosen ones” are evacuated from Earth in silver spaceships). On the original recording, in addition to Young’s vocals, two instruments are utilized: a piano and a French horn. In the decades since the song was first released, the horn solo in the song has typically been replaced by a harmonica solo by Young in live performances.
The line “Look at Mother Nature on the run / In the 1970s” has been amended by Young in concert over the decades and is currently sung as “Look at Mother Nature on the run / in the 21st century.”
The country music trio of Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt covered the song on the 1999 album Trio II with two changes to the lyrics: The line “Look at Mother Nature on the run / In the 1970s” became “Look at Mother Nature on the run / in the 20th century“, and the line “There was a band playin’ in my head / And I felt like getting high” was changed to “There was a band playin’ in my head / And I felt like I could cry.” Parton performed the song during the 2019 Grammys with Maren Morris and Miley Cyrus. The Trio version of the song was also released as a single, and while it received modest radio airplay, a video accompanying the song was very popular on a number of cable video outlets, including CMT, and the song received the Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals in 2000.
Try playing this one on an acoustic guitar. It’s pretty fun, especially if you finger pick some of the melody. Looking forward to Number 201.
Keep Rockin’,
Stan Bradshaw