Which Everly Brothers song inspired Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’?
The title track from Neil Young’s 1992 album Harvest Moon has to be a highlight of the singer-songwriter’s output during his later years. The gentle ode to a late summer’s evening sees Young reunite with vocalist Linda Ronstadt, who features prominently on his 1972 LP Harvest, for some heavenly backing harmonies.
It owes even more to some erstwhile harmonisers, however, in the form of brothers Don and Phil Everly. Young bases ‘Harvest Moon’ on a lilting acoustic guitar lick, which is as pretty as it is simple, without which Ronstadt and Ben Keith’s backing vocals wouldn’t have much of a hook to cling to.
This lick is lifted straight from the Italian jazz-style riff that propelled The Everly Brothers to the top of the UK charts for a third time in 1961. While most people his age would perhaps only be familiar with the brothers’ two best-known songs, ‘Bye Bye Love’ and ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’, Young is clearly familiar with their back catalogue.
The song in particular that caught his ear is ‘Walk Right Back’, which begins with a virtually identical guitar riff to the one he plays on ‘Harvest Moon’ before a piano joins in playing the same chords. Young only shortens the riff slightly, holding on a third chord where ‘Walk Right Back’ wavers between a third and a second before returning to its root chord.
Did the Everly Brothers get credit for Young’s song?
The practice of lifting bits and pieces from other people’s songs has been around since music was invented, so Young’s decision to work an Everly Brothers hook he liked into one of his songs is hardly worth a joint songwriting credit. Besides, the melody and song structure of ‘Harvest Moon’ and ‘Walk Right Back’ are markedly different, despite the songs sharing the same basic guitar hook and, in part, the same chord pattern.
What’s more, Don and Phil Everly don’t have a songwriting credit on ‘Walk Right Back’ anyway. The duo tended not to write their own songs, although they did play guitar on the single.
The song’s composer was actually Sonny Curtis, a guitarist with Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets. Curtis is also the songwriter behind ‘I Fought the Law’, a Crickets song released after Holly’s death. It was then covered by the Bobby Fuller Four and, more famously, The Clash.
In an interview with the International Songwriters Association, Curtis explained that he’d come up with the hook that Neil Young later borrowed for ‘Harvest Moon’ some time before he wrote the song. “I had the guitar riff for a while,” he said. When he went to a recording session with the Crickets in Hollywood, the Everly Brothers happened to be there, and he played them his new song.
“Don called Phil down, and they worked out a gorgeous harmony part.,” Curtis recalled. He’d only written one verse for the song and promised the brothers a second so they could record it. The next morning, he received a message that they’d gone ahead and recorded the song anyway, simply repeating the first verse, and it was already on its way to radio stations.
Young took a little longer to write and record his song between the autumn and winter of 1991. It was certainly worth the wait, though, for those swooning vocals and Ben Keith’s gorgeous embellishments on the pedal steel guitar.
