Harvest by Neil Young

Harvest was the first album that got me thinking about this blog. In the context of Young's diverse discography it has almost moved into the territory of ‘guilty pleasure’, tainted by a ‘middle-of-the-road’ tag that has been fostered by Young himself. It's reputation cannot fail to be impacted by the darker shadow cast by what came next.

His hand-written liner notes for “Heart of Gold” on his 1977 compilation Decade famously remarked, "This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I met more interesting people there." "Heart of Gold", one of the two singles from Harvest, is perhaps his only genuine 'hit'. As the Pitchfork review for the Harvest reissue notes, this meant that “To embrace Young as an artist after Harvest would mean accepting his many flaws, which have made his career unusually rich and varied as well as maddeningly inconsistent.”

But the back cover puts lie to the perception that Harvest is just a slick mellow album. It captures the creation of some of the ragged, more spontaneous sounding tracks of the band playing live…in a barn (naturally).

An extract from the excellent Neil Young biography 'Shakey' by Jimmy McDonough captures the circumstances of the back cover shot:

"Young's back problems would draw out the completion of the Harvest album. In March [1972], Young went to London with Jack Nitzsche to record a pair of songs live with the London Symphony  - "A Man Needs a Maid" and "There's a World." In April, Young returned to Nashville to cut "Harvest." September would bring the first recordings done on [Young's] ranch, with "Words," "Are You Ready for the Country?" and "Alabama" cut by backing up a remote-recording truck to a dilapidated old barn on the property, where Nitzsche would join Young's Nashville outlaws [session musicians dubbed the the Stray Gators] for these sessions, playing piano and, for the first time in his life, slide guitar....

...Much to Nitzsche's embarrassment, he was soon sitting amid bales of hay accompanying Young on a Kay guitar he barely knew how to play. Bernstein would capture the barn vibe in a photo Young used for the back cover of Harvest: all the Stray Gators, hands at their instruments, staring apprehensively at Young bent over his guitar, his long mane of hair totally obscuring his face, indifferent to their attention..."

For more images by Joel Bernstein go to: www.joelbernstein.com