Discovering After the Gold Rush: The Story Behind The Album Cover

"After the Gold Rush" by Neil Young
Composite by PopSpotNYC.com

In some truly amazing research, PopSpotNYC.com by Bob Egan has performed extensive forensics on the famous Neil Young "After the Gold Rush" album cover photo by Joel Bernstein. Bernstein writes:

"The photo was not "a mistake." I saw the small, old woman coming towards us down the sidewalk, was intrigued, and wanted to catch her passing Neil. The mistake, to me, was that I had in my haste focused the lens just past the two figures, closer to the fence than to Neil's face. That was the original reason why I made a small-sized print and solarized it; to help with the apparent sharpness. But the solarization in this case added a somewhat spooky dimension to the image, which Neil took to immediately."

Joel also helped clear up something that had remained a mystery to me - why some of the smaller bricks above the fence weren't still there.

He write that in designing the final artwork to be photographed for the cover: "For some reason Gary chose to strip in rows of bricks instead of using those which were there. If you look on the cover, you can clearly see the cut line 3 brick layers above the top of the fence. The small brick is in the layer that has been stripped in, and (though I haven't looked yet) is probably from higher up the wall than it appears on the cover."

See PopSpotNYC.com for full photo analysis details. We must admit that we love this because whenever we come across things like this, it gives us hope that some folks are way more passionate than we are or ever will be... ;)

Nice job Bob E.!

Thanks Melanie!

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