Neil Young on how ‘Harvest Moon’ surprised him: “It blew my mind how well it all turned out”
In the 1960s, Neil Young first reached our ears as part of the Los Angeles folk-rock band Buffalo Springfield. The Canadian musician moved to America’s West Coast to find fellow musicians and follow his passion for music, but his heart was always reserved for the countryside. As he revealed in the enduring classic ‘On the Beach’, “I need a crowd of people / But I can’t face them day to day.”
Fans will remember a line elsewhere in the song, “The world is turning / I hope it don’t turn away.” These lyrics perfectly reflect Young’s conflicted mindset: as an entertainer, he relies on people and enjoys sharing his art, but he is a rural being who longs for the tranquillity of the countryside. Young has expressed this passion profusely throughout his long, eclectic discography.
Whether inventing grunge with barbed wire intensity in ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’ or depicting horrific scenes in ‘Down by the River’, Young never fails to evoke his inner rancher. However, none of his releases reflect this side of the artist more than Harvest, Young’s fourth solo album.
In the documentary Heart of Gold, Young remembered writing material for Harvest while living on Broken Arrow Ranch. After breaking through in his career, he bought the picturesque farmland in Woodside, California, and used it as a place to escape from the Los Angeles bustle. When he first moved to the ranch, the old caretaker named Louis Avila took Young for a ride in his jeep.
The old farm manager drove Young to a viewpoint on a hill above the ranchland near a lake that irrigated the pastures. “He says, ‘Well, tell me, how does a young man like yourself have enough money to buy a place like this?’” Young recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, just lucky, Louis, just real lucky.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s the darnedest thing I ever heard.’ And I wrote this song for him.”
The song Young wrote was ‘Old Man’, a song rich in Young’s rural spirit. Besides the lyrics, the song contains earthy acoustic textures courtesy of James Taylor’s banjo, Ben Keith’s pedal steel and Young’s six-string. Very few songs in popular music capture the sound of an American ranch so perfectly.
In 1992, following years of sonic exploration, from the bluesy licks of On the Beach to the heavy rock sounds of Crazy Horse, Young returned to the sonic pastures of Harvest in Harvest Moon. The album saw Young reunite with Ben Keith and was highlighted by the title track, one of his most beloved hits.
Speaking to AXS in 2016, Young reflected on his career, noting that the songs that stay with him are always those that make the impression on his fanbase. For that reason, he picked out ‘Harvest Moon’ as one of his favourite creations. “It’s a real song about real feelings,” he explained.
Young said “singing the song” was always fun and, “Linda Ronstadt came in and put these beautiful vocals on, and it blew my mind how well it all turned out.” Above all else, he likes the song because of its propensity to bring families and lovers together with its rural wedding vibe. “People come up to me now, and they say, ‘We played that at our wedding,’ you know, ‘When we first met, that song was playing,’” Young concluded. “There’s a romantic atmosphere of the song, there’s something about it that brings that out in people. It’s interesting. It’s nice to see.”
