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I’ve Been to Hollywood, I’ve Been to Redwood

Harvest, Nashville, and the Stray Gators

For Neil Young, Harvest was the album that forever changed everything.

Released in February 1972, the album was a complete blockbuster in every sense of the word. Both the album and its single “Heart of Gold” went straight to #1 on the Billboard charts, and the reaction was equally spectacular in Europe and much of the rest of the world. In America, it also ended up closing out 1972 as the top seller of the year. If Young was already a star, Harvest propelled him to the uppermost echelons of seventies rock royalty. The days of being mostly referred to as “the Young of CSN&Y” were over for good.

Nothing would ever be the same again, and to this day, Harvest remains the biggest-selling album of Neil Young’s career.

I’ve Been to the Desert on a Horse with No Name

The success of Harvest also spawned imitators like the soft-rock trio America, who hit #1 that same year with “A Horse with No Name,” a single powered by the lead vocals of a Neil Young soundalike that managed to fool many people (including Young’s own father) into thinking it was actually Neil Young himself.

At one point, even Young’s label Warner Brothers might have been hoodwinked, as some copies of Harvest were shipped to record stores with a sticker proclaiming “Includes the hit ‘A Horse with No Name.’” When Elliot Roberts took on the soundalikes as a client for his Lookout Management company, Young’s reaction was a predictably cranky one, as he complained, “Why do you need copy bands when you’ve got the original right here?”

Although most agree that Young previous three solo albums, as well as his work with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, were clearly building toward a commercial breakthrough, the smash success of Harvest was something else entirely. By some accounts, Young himself was not altogether comfortable with it either. Producer Elliot Mazer has even recalled Young’s reaction to hearing “Heart of Gold” played on top forty radio as one of being rather nonplussed by it all.

A decent argument could even be made that with the follow-up albums Time Fades Away, On the Beach, and Tonight’s the Night, Young was actually sabotaging his success (or at least running as far away from it as he could). At the time, more than one of his associates labeled the three albums making up the so-called Ditch Trilogy as “career suicide” (an accusation that would also dog Young during the eighties).

Sheet music for “Old Man” from Neil Young’s breakthrough album Harvest. The song was one of several hits from the 1972 blockbuster.

Courtesy of Tom Therme collection

Even so, he has returned to the mellow country-rock of his most successful record many times over the course of his career—probably most notably on the early nineties Harvest “sequel” Harvest Moon, but also on albums as early as Comes a Time and as recent as Prairie Wind.

I Fell in Love with the Actress

One thing for sure, is that some of Harvest’s loveliest songs were directly inspired by the artist having fallen deeply and madly in love with the actress Carrie Snodgress. In the Harvest song “A Man Needs a Maid,” in between lyrics that could be construed as sexist, but also as more honest, direct, and perhaps even oddly humorous (“Just someone to keep my house clean, Fix my meals and go away”), Young even describes in simple but accurate detail exactly how he fell in love with Snodgress (“I was watching a movie with a friend/I fell in love with the actress.”).

The movie was Diary of a Mad Housewife, which garnered Snodgress two Golden Globe awards and an Oscar nomination. Young had gone to see the movie during a tour break from the solo shows he’d been doing in 1971, accompanied by roadie Guillermo Giachetti. Young was so smitten, he later dispatched Giachetti to set up a meeting with the actress. After a few dates (one of which took place in a hospital room where a bedridden Young was nursing severe—and ongoing—back problems), the two fell in love and began a live-in relationship.

With Snodgress taking up residence at the Broken Arrow Ranch (along with a large contingent of family and friends some insiders began referring to as “the Snodgress People”), the union eventually produced their son Zeke, born in September 1972.

Since both their stars were on a fast ascent at the time, you might think they had all the makings of a Hollywood power couple. But perhaps due to the still-lingering, antiestablishment hippie politics of the sixties, Snodgress in particular seemed to want no part of it. She effectively turned her back on a promising career as an actress, no-showing the Oscars after Young complained about having to wear a tux, to become Neil Young’s lover, mother, and even occasional nurse (which, ironically, had been one of her earlier career choices). It would seem the man had found his maid.

Southern California Brings Me Down

A quick sidebar here to the whole “A Man Needs a Maid” story …

With the burgeoning women’s liberation movement gathering a lot of steam back in the early seventies, the fact that Young’s lyrics about needing a woman to “clean house, fix meals, and go away” never became a target for feminists is particularly remarkable. As his fan base grew exponentially with Harvest, one of the larger constituencies in this newly broader demographic was in fact young women, many of whom became smitten with Young’s seemingly sensitive, romantic, and introspective lyrics.

Others just found the song either strikingly honest or more often just plain funny. In a particularly hilarious (and dead-on) Neil Young parody that came out around the same time called “Old Maid (Southern California Brings Me Down),” the National Lampoon comedy troupe sent the song up with hilarious lyrics like “I need someone to live with me, to keep my bed warm, and sew patches on my jeans.” In the song’s four-minute running time, it likewise skewers a number of other Neil Young songs ranging from “Ohio” to “Alabama,” nailing both Young’s voice and distinctive guitar sound dead to rights in the process.

The song can be found on the now hard-to-find National Lampoon’s Goodbye Pop. The album also features equally brutal send-ups of the popular reggae, progressive rock, and Philly soul sounds of the day, sandwiched in between bits that include a pre-Saturday Night Live Bill Murray portraying a typically laid-back, stoned seventies FM rock DJ. The album is definitely worth a listen, providing you can find a copy.

A Wheel in the Ditch and a Wheel on the Track

During 1970–71, Young played a series of concerts that saw him working in a solo acoustic format for the first time on an extended tour. The concerts were basically Young accompanying himself on guitar, piano, and harmonica and were played in small theatres and concert halls in America, Canada, and England (where he played at London’s prestigious Royal Festival Hall).

Many of the songs that eventually wound up on Harvest were premiered at these shows, including songs that would go on to be considered Neil Young standards like “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done.” Early versions of two of Harvest’s key tracks, “A Man Needs a Maid” and “Heart of Gold,” were being performed together as a medley at the time, as can now be heard on the Archives Performance Series release Live at Massey Hall 1971.

One of the best—if not the best—recorded documents of a Neil Young solo performance, producer David Briggs felt so strongly about the recording that he forcefully lobbied for Young to release it as his next record instead of the studio sessions that became Harvest. Briggs lost that battle in life, which led to a rift between artist and producer that lasted a few years (“he wouldn’t listen,” Briggs would later say about the experience). Years later, while reviewing material for the Archives project, Young finally did listen, and in 2007—some thirty-five years after the fact—Briggs finally got his wish.

Sadly, he was no longer alive to see it.

As it turned out, Young did end up going with the studio versions for his new songs, and as a result ended up with his biggest record ever.

Harvest was recorded in a total of four locations. Two tracks (“A Man Needs a Maid” and “There’s a World”) were recorded in England with the London Symphony Orchestra (with wildman Jack Nitzsche as arranger). “The Needle and the Damage Done” is taken from a live performance at UCLA’s Royce Hall. The rest of the tracks were recorded either at “Broken Arrow Studio #2” (which was actually a converted barn on Neil’s ranch, causing Nitzsche to later bitterly and hilariously complain about making an album in a bale of hay) or at Nashville’s Quadrafonic Sound Studios.

In another humorous story related to the barn locale, Young had Elliot Mazer preview the Harvest album for his friends David Crosby and Graham Nash by placing one huge speaker on the porch at the main house at Broken Arrow, with the other stereo channel rigged up to the P.A. system in the barn. Crosby and Nash then sat in a rowboat on the pond between the two structures. When asked how the album sounded, Crosby and Nash would then yell things back to Mazer like “More barn!” or “More house!”

But it is the Nashville sessions that are really the heart and soul of the record. For the album, Neil began working with a group of Nashville-based studio musicians that included drummer Kenny Buttrey, bassist Tim Drummond, and multi-instrumentalist Ben Keith. The Stray Gators, as they came to be known, came from a variety of musical backgrounds ranging from Buttrey serving time in James Brown’s touring bands (also the source of the Stray Gators name, which comes from a slang term that Brown’s crew used for stoned musicians on the tour bus) to Drummond playing on some of Bob Dylan’s albums, to Keith’s work with country artists like Patsy Cline.

Single picture sleeve 45 of “Old Man” from the Harvest album.

Courtesy of Tom Therme collection

The Stray Gators (in various combinations) have over the years served as the band Young returns to time and time again whenever his artistic muse turns toward more folk or country directions (or what some fans simply refer as his “Harvest” records).

Ben Keith in particular remained Young’s chief musical accomplice right up until his death in 2010 (Keith was also staying at Young’s Broken Arrow ranch at the time he passed). But the association didn’t start out that way. Some of the Nashville veterans were initially taken aback by Neil’s approach to making records, with Kenny Buttrey in particular complaining about Neil’s controlling nature in the studio (“none of those drum parts are mine,” Buttrey has said for the record about the Harvest sessions, “they were all Neil’s”).

Harvest-era double-A side single for “Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done.”

Courtesy of Tom Therme collection

By some accounts, the musicians weren’t even Young’s first choice for Harvest and were only called in when the usual Nashville ringers weren’t available for the spur-of-the-moment sessions.

Young had been in Nashville for a taping of the Johnny Cash Show, and had only arranged the sessions after being introduced to producer Elliot Mazer by his manager Elliot Roberts (the two Elliots were already longtime friends).

When Young said he wanted to record some new songs, Mazer hastily arranged the sessions at Quadrafonic Sound, bumping other sessions off the schedule in order to secure the slot for Young. With the Nashville sessions striking gold (particularly with the single “Heart of Gold”), an association with Mazer began, and he would go on to produce or co-produce a string of Young’s albums from Time Fades Away and Tonight’s the Night, right up through such “lost eighties” albums as Old Ways and Everybody’s Rockin’.

Since they happened to be in town at the time (also for the Johnny Cash Show), Young was able to secure the services of two of the biggest names from the then commercially huge soft-rocking singer-songwriter genre—Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor—to sing backup vocals on several songs, most notably “Heart of Gold.” Taylor also plays banjo on the album—reportedly for the first time ever, after being urged to pick up the instrument by Young.

For all of the control he is famous for exercising over his recordings, this is one of his more curious habits. Other examples of Young playing this bizarre game of musical chairs with the hired help include having guitarist Nils Lofgren play piano on the After the Gold Rush album and piano player Jack Nitzsche pick up a slide guitar on Harvest. Like Taylor, neither had ever played the instruments until Young asked them to.

For all of Harvest’s success, though, Young himself was restless as ever when it came to following the muse, and just as soon as Harvest became a smash hit, he began to distance himself—some would even say run like hell—from it.

The Devil Fools with the Best-Laid Plan

Faced with his first headlining tour as a solo artist and newly anointed superstar, for Neil Young the pressure of playing sold-out sports arenas led to doubts that the Harvest material—which in fairness, probably was far better suited to a more intimate setting—would translate well in the sort of barns built more for things like NBA Basketball, the Ice Capades, and the occasional Rolling Stones concert.

There were troubles within the band as well. With all the big bucks now involved, some of the musicians—particularly Kenny Buttrey—complained about their paychecks (which ended up being adjusted upwards).

Young had also decided to give his old Crazy Horse running buddy Danny Whitten another chance by offering him a slot in the Stray Gators for the tour. As a result of a severe addiction to heroin, Whitten had fallen on hard times, first getting sacked by Neil during the After the Gold Rush sessions, and then finally being fired by the other members of Crazy Horse—the band he had created—altogether.

When it soon became apparent that Whitten—despite all personal assurances to the contrary—wasn’t in any better shape during rehearsals for the Harvest tour, Young was again forced to dismiss him, handing him fifty dollars and a plane ticket back home to Los Angeles. Whitten was found dead of an overdose of alcohol and valium later that same day. While the final verdict on Whitten’s death was accidental overdose, there are also some who believe that he might have committed suicide—including Jack Nitzsche.

In the years since, Nitzsche has related the story of receiving a strange phone call from Whitten the same day, where he asked “would you be there for me no matter what?” When Nitzsche replied that indeed he would, Whitten said “that’s all I wanted to know.” It may have been the last phone call Danny Whitten ever made.

Sheet music for “Heart of Gold,” the smash hit that propelled Harvest to become the biggest-selling album of 1972 and ultimately the biggest of Neil Young’s career.

Courtesy of Tom Therme collection

It has been suggested that “The Needle and the Damage Done” was written about Whitten, although in doing research for this book it’s a little hard to match his death with that exact timeline.

What is certain, though, is that Whitten’s death had a profound impact on Neil Young personally and that it would also significantly influence the abrupt artistic turn away from “the middle of the road” and towards “the ditch” of his next three albums—and most notably on his masterpiece Tonight’s the Night.

Over the course of what was supposed to be the Harvest tour, Young began focusing less on the crowd-pleasing favorites of that album and more on testing out his new, decidedly harder, edgier, and even abrasive songs. In the wake of the drug-related deaths of both Whitten and, later, roadie Bruce Berry, these rawer expressions of grief had also come to represent his world view at the time—depressing as it may have been.

These songs would eventually make up what may be the strangest follow-up to a multiplatinum smash album in all of rock-’n’-roll history, a live recording called Time Fades Away—the first of the infamous Ditch Trilogy.

Single release of “Heart of Gold” from Harvest.

Courtesy of Tom Therme collection