Day 377: Neil Young – Harvest
The weather has officially turned here in Scotland, so I needed an autumnal album to celebrate the change of the seasons. I also wanted a familiar classic album today, so I thought I’d go for as familiar and autumnal as it gets with an album that’s practically like an old friend: Neil Young’s Harvest.
Album cover courtesy of Reprise
I’m sure he needs very little introduction to the people who are interested in daily album blogs, but Neil Young is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter who made a name for himself as a part of the folk rock group Buffalo Springfield. He went solo in 1968 and continued releasing solo work, even after he reunited with Buffalo Springfield bandmate Stephen Stills and joined Crosby, Stills, Nash in 1969.
He released Harvest in 1972 after he’d purchased a rural ranch in Northern California. He injured his back while renovating his new place, and he wasn’t able to play an electric guitar due to mobility issues, so he picked up an acoustic guitar and started writing the songs.
The resulting album is mellow, easy and open, where Neil Young really bares his soul – there’s a reason why it’s so enduring, and I think his vulnerability is a big part of it, whether it be about his relationship with fame or his budding relationship with his actress girlfriend Carrie Snodgrass. The sound is warm and meandering but you really get a feel for what he was going through from the words, like you’re being given a very intimate peek into someone’s internal world. It’s like a campfire record, sitting around a fire at night listening to a man with a guitar telling stories.
The only stinker of the album is the song "A Man Needs a Maid", where he muses whether he’d like to hire a maid to cook and clean for him or just get his girlfriend to do it pro bono, while accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. He responded to criticism by saying "Robin Hood loved a maid long before women's liberation" – yeah, whatever Neil, jesus christ. He was born in 1945, so I guess I should chalk him up as a product of his time, back before some knew that women were people I think they married them just to have full-time cleaners and cooks, but that doesn’t really make it any better.
Putting that aside, it’s still a wonderful album, and I’m assuming it’ll be a comfort album for me for the rest of my life. I think it scratches my secret itch to go someplace in the middle of nowhere to be on my own, I hope I make that dream come true and get to listen to this album in its natural habitat one day. Harvest gets a 9.5/10 now, but in that situation I’m sure it’d be a 10.