After the Gold Rush
After the Gold Rush is the third studio album by the Canadian-American musician Neil Young, 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".[3] The material was inspired by the unproduced Dean Stockwell-Herb Bermann screenplay After the Gold Rush.
This article is about the album. For the song, see After the Gold Rush (song).After the Gold Rush
September 1970[1]
August 1969 – June 1970
Sunset Sound, Hollywood, CA
Sound City, Hollywood, CA
Redwood Studios, Topanga, CA
33:32
Reprise: RS 6383
Neil Young, David Briggs with Kendall Pacios
After the Gold Rush entered Billboard Top Pop Albums chart on September 19, and peaked at number eight in October.[7] 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. 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.[8]
Background[edit]
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.[9]
Release[edit]
After the Gold Rush was originally released on vinyl by Reprise on September 19, 1970.[28] It was subsequently reissued on CD in 1986.[29]
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).
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.[9]
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.[30]
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'".