There is only one way for me to listen to the new 50TH ANNIVERSARY AFTER THE GOLD RUSH release: head for Topanga Canyon. There's a twisting and turning road that runs through the mountains and deep canyons there. Driving through it feels like a trip to another land, one far away from the endless freeways that course through Los Angeles like the automobile arteries they are. It always seems like things are happening in the woods in Topanga that we'll never know about.There are stores and restaurants sprinkled along the way, and the timeless Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum theatre space, but mostly it's rocks and trees, and not hard to imagine how it must have been six hundred years ago before anything was there but wild animals, Native Americans and their proud culture. It's one of the last places in Los Angeles where mysteries still thrive.
At the end of the 1960s Neil Young and several other Laurel Canyonites had headed west towards the Pacific Ocean for a quieter and less-crowded part of Los Angeles County to call home. Topanga Canyon was perfect. The houses there were more spread out, the traffic that ran through Topanga Canyon Boulevard was less dense and it was only a few miles down to Pacific Coast Highway and the endlessly beautiful ocean that begins there and looks like it will never end. The land really was at the outer edge of America, and held an aura which allowed artists to exist without boundaries.
There was more room to think and be left alone in Topanga. It had always been an outpost from the city, and with all the roar of the '60s a person could get lost a little easier. 1970 was going to be a challenge: Nixon's Vietnam War was roaring, there was still a cloud of paranoia over Los Angeles and the Rolling Stones' Altamont concert in December 1969 had turned down the lights for a new age. The hippie dream was being tested at every turn and there was no telling which way the country was going to go. In some ways it wasn't that far from today.
Neil Young's music was on fire though: his self-titled debut album and the follow-up with Crazy Horse EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE had kicked off the post-Buffalo Springfield years in fine form, and the first Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young release was right on the horizon as the '70s started. DEJA VU included two songs Young had written alone: "Helpless" and "Country Girl." The former has become a lifetime classic, while the latter includes chorus lyrics that have haunted me for half a century: "Too late to keep the check / too late to pay / no time to stay the same / too young to leave…" As so much turmoil roiled the United States when the '70s began, these lines had a prescient presence that felt like things were definitely headed for the dark end of the street. Like all great lyrics, they contain the kind of mystery to be forever questioning, like we are being given hints at something which is just around the corner. A change was going to happen, and it was not necessarily going to be for the good of us all. Neil Young has always been a weather vane, and there were some queasy clouds on the horizon among the peace and love front we were all trying to believe.
Enter AFTER THE GOLD RUSH. Neil Young, visionary producer David Briggs and various members of Crazy Horse and CSNY, along with new face Nils Lofgren had done some recording in late 1969 in Hollywood, but then headed for Young's basement in Topanga Canyon to continue creating songs soon to become eternal. There must have been some rarified air in that underground room. Listening to the songs now feels like the clock has stopped. During much of the best music I've heard there is a sense of suspended animation, like nothing else is moving in the world. Only what you are hearing carries the essence of life, and it becomes part of the human heartbeat which zeroes out all other sounds. It is an entry way into the glory of the world, all inside yourself. It's probably why music remains the key to the self, like nothing else that's been discovered. It works its own wonder.
AFTER THE GOLD RUSH's first song, "Tell Me Why," is like an announcement that things are starting to happen, like the song that's going to kick off an evening's dance. It is a question and an answer all at once, and a call to action with the promise of a smile. Sometimes the sound and words of loneliness have a way of opening up a new realm, like sharing a secret which changes everything. The best songs leave more questions than answers because that's when the possibility of love takes over, which is surely the force that continues to push us forward.
The title song "After the Gold Rush" quickly starts, and from the mesmerizing opening piano chords it's clear that a brand new ethos has taken over. It's like we're listening to a fevered dream, one that is a warning to the earth's existence itself. It also includes my very favorite Neil Young lyric ever--"I was thinking about what a friend had said I was hoping it was a lie"--that fifty years after first hearing still makes it hard to breathe because of the way it completely captures the feeling of being lost in life. Everything stops when those words are sung, and all the exit doors get locked as the smoke fills the room. Deceit is the toughest pain of all. Bill Peterson's flugelhorn solo defines what an instrument can do to create a brand new world. The sound takes us to a place we don't normally go; it's like the time zone has changed for two minutes. The last verse remains unequaled in pulling the curtain back on a possible future that still cannot be truly contemplated. It is too overwhelming. Once again, time stops.
Those are just the first two songs of an album that has announced a new era of singer-songwriters. Remember, it's 1970 and rock bands still reigned supreme. Neil Young was a member of the most popular one on the planet: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. But AFTER THE GOLD RUSH is a whole new approach, and as the '70s progressed there is no question that Young's album made it possible for the guitars to be turned down and the truths told turned up. "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" carries that style all the way home.
Of course, being multidimensional at heart, Young has to wander into different territory with "Southern Man." The electric guitars get turned up and a musical essay on the national travesty of racial hypocrisy on "Southern Man" takes the stage. It's an abrupt shift, but that's the way tension in rock & roll really works. Out of the frying pan into the fire. In the present time when institutional racism is still being battled, this song kicks open a door that hopefully will someday be left open and truly dealt with. For now, the piercing guitars and anguished vocals say it all. And the most poignant problems at our core come to the surface.
"Til the Morning Comes" is like a quick breath-catcher after "Southern Man," and leads quickly into "Oh Lonesome Me," which might just be the most emotional cover song of Neil Young's long career. Don Gibson's 1958 original version is an upbeat, almost happy-go-lucky ode to heartbreak, if such a thing exists, while Young's version kicks out all the lights and zeroes in on the crushing pain of being alone. For someone whose debut album's song "The Loner" was an early defining moment it makes total sense he zeroes in on this classic. He brings the tempo down to a soul-chilling dirge, and lets his voice turn on the king tears while the chillbumping devastation of the lyrics cannot be ignored. Losing love will always be the most hurtful emotion on earth, and it's totally telling that Neil Young doesn't dodge this bullet. Rather, he takes a direct hit and hopes for a new day.
It's like the artist needs a song to help stand up straight after "Oh Lonesome Me," and "Don't Let It Bring You Down" does that in aces. Following a romantic breakup, every sign of help is a godsend. When love looks like it's been smashed into a million pieces, anything helps. This song saves the day. And it appears like the heartbreak tables get turned on "Birds," a gorgeous rumination on having to leave a lover behind. In just the space of three songs, Young has hit on the yin and yang of love, the back and forth of what happens when people love and leave, and through the music, it offers a hand to all who must bear those moments. It's at times like these that an album becomes a handbook of survival, a chance to see how others go through the flames and maybe someday thrive.
There is nothing like a true-blue to-the-wall rock & roll song to bring back the spirit in the night. "When You Dance I Can Really Love" is a machine gun-spray of drums, guitar notes and righteous belief that resets the buttons on what goes on inside the heart. There is no way to really change other than time, but a song like this goes a long way in getting the action started. "I Believe in You" is the flip side of the sonic coin, where everything is laid on the line, and a romantic zenith is reached in just a few verses. Belief is the beginning of faith, and vice versa when it comes to romantic relationships. They are the things that make reality real.
As the journey of AFTER THE GOLD RUSH comes to an end, "Cripple Creek Ferry" is where the spaceship lands and hopefully the passengers get to return to land. As Young sings, it's a tight squeeze but it looks like everyone made it. In the liner notes Neil Young explains that most of the album's songs were inspired by Dean Stockwell and Herb Berman's screenplay "After the Gold Rush," and while the work itself has been lost to time, what made it into the songs is surely a deep insight how the human race is going to be up against the wall of survival in years ahead. Now, a half century since the album was released, very similar challenges stand in front of everyone, and the same dilemma exists: how do we change who we are and how we behave. Like everything, all anyone can do is try to embody how their lives can impact others for the good, and offer whatever insights they've learned in sharing some part of the solution.
For good measure at album's end, there are two versions of the Archives gem "Wonderin'" that were recorded with Crazy Horse in 1970. The song finally appeared on 1983's EVERYBODY'S ROCKIN' album, but these early renditions display such a wide gaze on the whole aspect of having an open mind about, well, everything. Sometimes not knowing is what keeps curiosity going, and if anything Neil Young has been possessed by a questioning mind since the start. Maybe he's giving us another tip to a sure-footed survival: keep guessing and the golden road remains right ahead.
Like all the music coming from the Neil Young Archives now, the sound is superlative here, the hand-written lyrics a joy to read and then there's the cover photo by Joel Bernstein. 50 years ago when AFTER THE GOLD RUSH was originally released the solarized image was an outre move from an artist. It looks like Neil Young's face has suffered radiation burn from who knows what. The short woman behind him in the black and white image rushes hurriedly past, as both walk in front of an austere brick wall protected by an iron fence. But the best art is that which doesn't really explain anything, but only leads to more examination and emotional reaction. Perhaps this gold rush really isn't about gold at all. Maybe the real gold in our lives is love, and that's what we all keep searching for. When it's found, the world lights up and there is nothing that can't be done. And when it's gone, well, that's when the search begins again. There is a good chance that life's circle is really a wheel that keeps turning, and we turn with it hoping to stay on while we can. And wonderin’.
Bill Bentley